Tuskeegee Airmen and Modern Art

Title: Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian
artist: Michael Richards
date created: 1999 

The United States military was racially segregated until 1948. 

President Harry S. Truman ended the practice of having military units organized according to race.



Who were the TUSKEEGEE Airmen? 

Here is a WW 2 Era video that gives details about the Tuskeegee Airmen: "Wings for this Man" was produced by the U.S. military at the end of World War Two (1945). It details the trials and accomplishments of the first unit of African American airplane pilots in the U.S. military. The narrator is a very young future president, Ronald Reagan.

The video below is a more modern review of the history of the Tuskeegee Airmen.(part 1 of 2)

The piece of artwork below is an homage to the Tuskeegee Airmen. Examine the work and then read the informational placard at the end: an eerie twist awaits.

Here is some more information about the work from the North Carolina Museum of Art.