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Tuskegee Airmen's legacy celebrated at Compton's Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum
Robin Petgrave holds up the traditional Tuskegee thumbs up with the students touring his museum.
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Corey Bridwell/KPCC
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James Knox, President of the Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum Youth Leadership Council, looks at Tuskegee Airmen memorabilia.
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Robin Petgrave walks past a T-6 Warbird. Petgrave says that Buford Johnson changed out the entire engine of a plane like this by himself during the 1940s.
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Students tossing their paper airplanes for a chance to win a Red Tails poster autographed by real Tuskegee Airmen.
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Students feverishly put together their paper airplanes before competing to see who can toss there's the farthest.
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After the competition, several kids kept trying to outdo each others' paper airplanes.
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Students clamor to have Robin Petgrave choose them to help push a couple of planes forward.
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A couple of trainees from the Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum show off the inside of a training plane to one of the students taking today's tour.
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Retired Master Sgt. Buford Johnson holds up a photograph of his 99th Fighter Squadron from 1947.
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Buford Johnson's replica of the Congressional Gold Medal given to the Tuskegee Airmen.
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Buford Johnson has a chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen named after him.
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A photograph of the Tuskegee Airmen accepting the first "Top Gun" trophy in 1949.
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A GI Joe Tuskegee Airmen action figure inside of Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum.
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Kids touring the Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum get to practice on a flight simulator.
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One of the types of planes used by the Tuskegee Airmen during their training at Moton Field during World War II.
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Tuskegee Airmen's legacy celebrated at Compton's Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum
Staff Sergeant Buford Johnson recounts how he and other Tuskegee Airmen won the very first Top Gun competition in 1947 only to have the trophy hidden until 2009.
Wednesday was day two of a three-day event honoring the original Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African-American pilots who fought in World War II. The event was held at Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum in Compton.
It serves as a lead-in to the Friday release of "Red Tails," a film about the Airmen produced by George Lucas.
The museum's exhibits include the Warbird planes the Airmen piloted. Some of the Airmen themselves awaited students visiting the museum. The events included a paper airplane competition judged by original members of the Airmen.
“They get to meet the Airmen, they get autograph opportunities,” said Robin Petgrave, executive director of Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum.
Master Sgt. Buford A. Johnson, a crew chief and “one of the best in the business,” was one of the original Airmen at the museum.
“They were not good. They were the best,” Johnson said of his old unit. “We won first place trophy for Top Gun in 1949. My aircraft was there, I was there. But they hid the trophy.” Johnson said it was because of race.
“It’s just the way the country was running,” said Johnson. “They didn’t want anybody to know that we won. Plain and simple. ‘A black group won that?’ They weren’t ready for it.”
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Johnson and Lt. Col. James Harvey III are the only two surviving members of the original winners of the 1949 Top Gun competition.
Author Zellie Rainey Orr found the missing trophy in 2009 and successfully advocated for its acknowledgement. It is now on ongoing display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum provides free tutoring, Internet and computer access to area students. It also teaches them how to fly planes.
High school sophomore James Knox, president of the museum’s youth council, has been in the program for “seven or eight years.”
“I joined the program when I was 7 or 8,” Knox recalled. “But I didn’t fly my first two or three years because I was terrified. Then Robin [Petgrave] bet me like $20 or $30 to let him take the helicopter an inch off the ground. I was like, ‘$20 or $30? Oh, let’s go!’”
Knox has since logged up to 30 hours of flight training and is preparing to test for his commercial pilot’s license when he turns 17.
Petgrave summed up his hopes for the event by saying that, despite the museum's lack of resources, “[students] will go back and say this is the best field trip they ever had.”
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“This isn’t just ‘go and look at something cool,’” Petgrave concluded. "This is ‘go and get empowered.’”
The Tuskegee event continues Thursday with a fundraising gala. Guests are requested to “arrive dressed in your finest formal wear or in a flight suit.”
Who were the Tuskegee Airmen? Find out more in this video from the Smithsonian:
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