Students from the Cleveland School for the Arts have painted portraits of 28 Ohio Tuskegee Airmen to be used to create a mural to honor the airmen's service in World War II and their struggles against the segregation, discrimination and racism they faced.
“It’s very interesting that we’re able to paint people that have changed history,” said freshman Briana López Díaz. “I do feel honored.”
Before World War II, the Army Air Corps, the precursor to the U.S. Air Force, barred African Americans from service, according to the National Air and Space Museum. In 1941, the Corps accepted Black pilots into racially segregated units. An air base at Tuskegee, Alabama became the center training program for training Black air personnel, who contributed to the war effort in the Mediterranean and flying from bases in North Africa and Italy.
Before painting individual portraits of airmen from Ohio, the art students studied their history and researched their lives.
“I’d never heard of them before we started learning this,” said freshman Cecilia Abkemeier. “Since it was such a crucial part of American history, especially with the Civil Rights movement, I think it’s extremely amazing that we got to learn about this and do something for it.”
Today, a Northeast Ohio historical advocacy group, the North Coast Tuskegee Airmen, works to preserve the history and legacy of the airmen. The group created the project to honor the Tuskegee Airmen from Ohio and create a mural that is scheduled to be installed in Northeast Ohio this summer.
There were more than 200 Tuskegee Airmen from Greater Cleveland — about two dozen of them pilots, said Thomas Cargill, a group member. All told, there were more than 16,000 Tuskegee Airmen trained in Alabama. About 1,000 were pilots and out of them 352 were deployed and fought in combat.
“It’s really sad that some of them were forgotten, but they were definitely heroes and I’m glad that us, this group of students, we know about them now."Janet Jackson, a freshman at Cleveland School for the Arts
“It was really kind of the realization that there wasn’t any real recognition for the airmen in Cleveland,” Cargill said. “I think it’s going to be extremely powerful. It’ll really kind of drive home the point what these men and women did.”
Cargill said the mural will be a collage made up of images of the students' portraits of airmen. Those portraits were completed Wednesday and will be unveiled at the school Friday and will soon be displayed at the Western Reserve Historical Society in University Circle.
