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BuSsYBoI-sTaYpOpPiN t1_itleh46 wrote

Hope these guys were treated like human beings if/when they came home.

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BSB8728 t1_itm1fi1 wrote

*Twenty years* after the Tuskegee airmen came home, Colin Powell did *two* tours of duty in Vietnam. When he returned to the States and tried to order a hamburger at a restaurant in the South, he was advised to go to the take-out window around back.

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HawkeyeTen t1_itmkorr wrote

What makes the southern states look even more pathetic is when you read about how some states like Iowa had enforced integration for decades by the 60s (all public accommodations HAD to serve them). The South had no excuses for their treatment of others.

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BSB8728 t1_itn0x3y wrote

My dad was a WWII veteran, and I remember he was furious in the '70s when there was a news story about a VFW post (I can't remember where it was located) that turned away a Black veteran, telling him there were posts for people "on his side of town" -- or words to that effect. Dad wanted that post shut down.

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Lexicontinuum t1_itng8tc wrote

Hell, Cleveland Ohio had a black mayor in 1968 while the southern states were still tripping over the mere suggestion that people with African ancestors were, y'know, human.

Pathetic. And as you say, no excuse.

Edit: just looked up the year. Nineteen freakin sixty-eight!

Edit 2: Apparently he took office precisely 100 years after the United States finally granted black men full citizenship. Wow.

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slater_just_slater t1_itlng2k wrote

Better than many, but they were still black men in the 40s and subject to Jim Crow laws, red lining and all the other institutionalized racism that Black Americans faced

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lotusflower64 t1_itndwf0 wrote

Some men were lynched in their uniform in the US, medals and insignia removed.

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Radiant-Reporter8624 t1_itng08e wrote

Nah they gave them syphilis and left it untreated their entire lives just to see what happens

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MisterJawsh t1_itohndq wrote

Nope, they did not. The syphillis study started ten years before the war, and was not at all related. Really sad that any time Tuskegee Airmen get brought up, someone tries to connect the two things.

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