Hotmail
Messenger
My MSN
MSN Directory
Tuskegee Airman Charles Dryden dies at 87
One of the first of the pioneering black pilots served 21-year military career
 AP file On April 7, 1943, Lt. Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., on wing, talks with Lt. Charles W. Dryden before Dryden goes on a mission in a P-40 fighter plane at the Army air base in Tuskegee, Ala. Dryden, one of the first of the pioneering black World War II pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, died Tuesday. He was 87. |
|
 | Slide show |
 | Martin Luther King Jr. See the civil rights leader in speeches and marches from Alabama to Washington. more photos |
Stand and be counted |
In the year of Barack Obama, there is much discussion of the state of race relations in America. But many other race-related topics are barely being discussed. Read NBC Senior Vice President Mark Whitaker's essay on the subject and then tell us what's going on in your town or community. |
 | Video: Race & ethnicity |
 King: 'One of our nation's defining moments' Aug. 27: Rev. Bernice King and Rev. Martin Luther King III pay tribute to their father at the Democratic National Convetion on the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington. |
 | The Big Picture |
 | (broadband only) |
ATLANTA - Lt. Col. Charles "Chuck" Dryden, one of the first of the pioneering black World War II pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, has died. He was 87.
Dryden died Tuesday in Atlanta of natural causes, said Roger Neal, a spokesman for the National Museum of Patriotism in Atlanta. Dryden was on the museum's board of directors.
"He was not just a part of American history; he helped to make it," museum founder Nick Snider said Thursday.
Dryden's 21-year military career included combat missions in Korea and assignments in Japan, Germany and U.S. bases. He retired from the Air Force in 1962.
About 1,000 pilots trained as a segregated Army Air Corps unit at the Tuskegee Army Flying School in Alabama during World War II.
Dryden was selected for aviation cadet training at Tuskegee in August 1941, only a month after the program began and four months before the U.S. entered World War II.
He was one of three men commissioned in April 1942 as a second lieutenant. Just five pilots had earned their wings in the program ahead of Dryden's class of three.
Dryden was a member of the famed 99th Pursuit Squadron and later the 332nd Fighter Group, which served in North Africa and Italy.
His P-40 airplane was nicknamed "A-Train," and Dryden titled his autobiography "A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman." It was published by the University of Alabama Press in 1997.
Last year, President Bush and Congress awarded the Tuskegee Airmen the Congressional Gold Medal. Some 300 surviving airmen — including Dryden — gathered in Washington for the ceremony in March 2007.
While attending the Washington gathering, Dryden told The Associated Press that he had mixed feelings about the event, since it came so many years after the war. But he added that the medal helped convince him that the country does recognize the airmen's contributions.
"It's really something," he said.
He recalled that after returning from his overseas service, he was stationed in Walterboro, S.C., where he saw German prisoners of war get privileges in theaters and cafeterias that were denied to black soldiers.
Click for related content |
Dryden was born in 1920 in New York City to Jamaican parents. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Hofstra University and a master's degree in public law and government from Columbia University.
In 1998, Dryden was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame. He was also a professor of air science at Howard University.
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
- Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM RACE & ETHNICITY |
 Race & ethnicity Section Front |
| Add Race & ethnicity headlines to your news reader: |