Caribbean Actors Star in Red Tails movie - Caribbean Americans Served as Tuskegee Airmen

Article Index
Caribbean Actors Star in Red Tails movie - Caribbean Americans Served as Tuskegee Airmen
David W. D. Dickson
Ivan McRae, Jr. - Jamaican Tuskeegee Airman
Conrad De Sandies - Tuskeegee Airman from Trinidad and Tobago
All Pages

As we gear up for the release of the much anticipated movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, Red Tails, we can't forget that the history of the Tuskegee Airmen includes men of Caribbean heritage. There were Tuskegee Airmen from Barbados, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and other Caribbean islands.

(Pictured: Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients: Austin McKenzie - Jamaican/Cuban; Major Victor Terrelonge - Jamaican - Photo from http://www.199armytour.com/)

Many have passed away, but as Caribbean Americans we should remember, and teach our children, that much of American and African American history is our history too. Since so many of the Tuskegee Airmen have passed away, and to our kids, it is ancient history (my youth is officially "back in the day" according to my children, and every time I talk about a historical figure, they immediately ask if they are dead yet), when you take them to see Red Tails, if it is age appropriate for your children, let them know that the present day actors in the movie also have Caribbean heritage.  Cuba Gooding, Jr's grandfather is from Barbados, Tristan Wilds' mother is from the Dominican Republic, and Andre Royo is Cuban.

Red Tails opens on January 20th, and has several African American and West Indian members of the cast, and crew.  African American and Caribbean American children and families will definitely be able to connect with this part of American history.

I was going to support the movie and go see it anyway, but now I have a new reason to feel connected to it.

Here are a few quick facts about some of the men of Caribbean descent who served as Tuskegee Airmen.

(photo still from Lucasfilm)

Dr. Albert Forsythe: b. 1897- d. 1986

In 1933, Dr. Forsythe and C. Alfred Anderson became the first black pilots to complete a cross-country flight, traveling from Bader Field in Atlantic City, N.J., to Los Angeles.

The flight, along with trips to Montreal and the Caribbean in 1934, was made in an attempt to break down the color barrier in aviation. At that time, the only place that would train blacks to fly was a school in Phildelphia, Dr. Forsythe recalled in a 1984 interview.

Dr. Forsythe stopped flying in 1935 to carry on his medical practice in Atlantic City and, later, in Newark. He retired in 1977.

He was born in Nassau, the Bahamas, and came to the United States in 1912 to study architecture at Tuskegee Institute. He earned his M.D. at McGill University Medical School in Montreal. (Source: NY Times)

Read more about Dr. Albert Forsythe here... Caribbean Role Models for Our Children: Dr. Albert E. Forsyth

Lt. Colonel Charles W. Dryden (USAF-Retired): b. 1920 - d. 2008

Charles Walter Dryden was born on September 16, 1920 to Jamaican parents Charles Levy Dryden and Violet Buckley Dryden. Dryden recalls in his book, A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman, how at two years of age, he would call call out, “Air’pwane! Airpwane! and tearing paper into bits and throwing them into the air to tell the world he wanted to fly airplanes.” After many setbacks and tribulations, he did fly airplanes, living out his dream. Then he lived to write about living out that dream, and later, with a renaissance of his career, enjoyed the celebrity his stellar career afforded him.

Following graduation from NYC’s Peter Stuyvesant High School, he earned a BA in Political Science from Hofstra University and later earned a MA in Public Law and Government from Columbia University. In August, 1941 he was selected for Aviation Cadet Training at the Tuskegee Army Flying School in Alabama. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lt on April 29, 1942 in a class of only three graduates. His was the second class of black pilots to graduate in the history of the U.S. Army Air Corps. He served in the famed 99th Pursuit Squadron, later the 332 Fighter Group, which served in North Africa, Sicily and Italy during World War II. The Tuskegee Airmen broke the Army’s ban against black pilots serving in aviation units and established an outstanding record of performance in bomber escort cover and combat during World War II. On June 9, 1943, then Lt. Dryden in his P-40 nicknamed “A-Train” led a fight of six pilots engaging enemy fighter aircraft in aerial combat over Pantelleria, Sicily. It was the first time in aviation history black pilots of the U.S. Army Air Corp engaged in combat. Dryden’s career covered 22 years and also included combat missions in Korea, duty assignments in Japan, Germany and ten different bases in the United States. He also served as an Air Science professor at Howard University and retired in 1962 as a Command pilot with 4,000 hours flying time.

He was on the board of directors of the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame, a member of the Atlanta Metro Lions Club, and Quality Living Services, the Atlanta Chapter-Tuskegee Airmen, Inc.. He helped found the Atlanta chapter in 1978, served as president, and twice as vice and national convention chairman in 1980 and 1995. He was inducted into the Honorable Orders of the Daedalians, the Kentucky Colonels and the Palmetto Gentlemen of South Carolina, the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame. In March 2007, President Bush conferred the Congressional Gold Medal on Lt. Col. Dryden and all Tuskegee Airmen. He was often a speaker to youth and college students encouraging them to seek careers in military and civilian aviation.

He was eulogized the Reverend Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Colonel Dryden and his bride of 32 years, Marynal Morgan Dryden, never stopped living life to the fullest.

(Press Release from FirstClass Inc.)

David W.D. Dickson: b. 1919 - d. 2003

David W. D. Dickson, a scholar of Renaissance and biblical literature, was the first African-American (Jamaican) to head a New Jersey state college or university. He was president of what is now Montclair State University while it emerged from its origins as a teachers' college.

He spent more than 40 years in academia as a teacher and administrator before he retired in 1989 as professor emeritus from what was then Montclair State College. He headed Montclair State from 1973 to 1984.  Dr. Dickson raised the college's academic standards and balanced its liberal arts and professional offerings with 30 new undergraduate and graduate programs.  In the years that he led the college, 11 buildings were constructed and enrollment tripled to nearly 14,000, according to the university. The School of Humanities and Social Sciences building is named after him.  He was active in community affairs and represented Montclair State on various state and national bodies.

David Watson Daly Dickson was born in Portland, Me., the son of Jamaican immigrants. His father was a janitor, and his mother was a maid and seamstress. Despite their modest means they sent him and three siblings to Bowdoin College with the help of scholarships. He graduated first in his class, summa cum laude, in 1941 and received a master's degree at Harvard in 1942.

In World War II, he served in the Army, in a segregated quartermaster's unit on Cape Cod, before receiving officer's training. He rose to first lieutenant as the adjutant to the commanding officer of the medical unit of the Army Air Forces base in Tuskegee, Ala.  Dr. Dickson returned to Harvard to complete a doctoral program in English literature in 1949. By then he had become the first African-American on the faculty of Michigan State University, where he taught for 15 years.

He took time out to study Greek, Hebrew and Palestinian archaeology at Harvard and at Syrian University in Damascus.

Later, in the mid-1960's, he held academic and administrative positions at Northern Michigan University in Marquette and at Federal City College in Washington.  From 1969 to 1973 he was a professor of English, assistant to the president and dean of continuing education at Stony Brook University on Long Island.  In 1973, he became president of Montclair State and also taught as a distinguished service professor from 1984 until his retirement.

He won the Michigan State University's first Distinguished Faculty Award in 1952 and the Distinguished Bowdoin Educator Award in 1971. He also published several books, including "Memoirs of an Isolate."

(Wolfgang Saxon - New York Times)

 

Ivan McRae, Jr. - son of Jamaican Immigrants - On behalf of the President, Congressman Steve Israel presented Tuskegee Airman Ivan Mcrae of Dix Hills the congressional Gold Medal at the American Airpower Museum on Thursday 7 September 2010.

(photo from Facebook.com - American Airpower Museum)

Conrad De Sandies: d. 2011

Conrad De Sandies emigrated at age 21 from Trinidad and Tobago, joining his parents and other family members already in Harlem. Within a year he was drafted into the Army Air Forces and sent to Tuskegee. The War Department had set up an experimental program there "to see if blacks could fly," said Ron Brewington, former national public relations officer of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., an organization that preserves the airmen's history. Conrad De Sandies enjoyed the accolades that came his way as an original Tuskegee Airman.

The Teaneck resident was at the U.S. Capitol in March 2007 when President George W. Bush bestowed the Congressional Gold Medal collectively on the legendary World War II-era group that fought the enemy overseas and racism at home.  In October 2008, he attended the grand opening of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site at the Alabama airfield where the nation's first African-American military pilots trained. Three months later, he was back in Washington as a guest at President Obama's inauguration, and a year after that he was at Madison Square Garden, receiving honors from the Knicks.

"He enjoyed every second of it," said daughter S. Patois De Sandies. "When they came home from the Army, they got nothing."

Mr. De Sandies, who rose to sergeant, was an aircraft mechanic. He spent part of the war in Italy.

Mr. De Sandies returned to New York after his December 1945 discharge from the military. He studied business at City College of New York and went into the hardware business. He owned Sandy's Hardware at Eighth Avenue and 132nd Street in Harlem.  Mr. De Sandies and his wife, Elsie, a New York City schoolteacher, moved their family to Teaneck in 1960.

S. Patois De Sandies said she and her siblings were unaware of their father's Tuskegee Airman credentials until 1995, when HBO aired a movie, "The Tuskegee Airmen," starring Laurence Fishburne.

"They never told anyone until the Fishburne movie came out," she said, referring to her father and his fellow Tuskegee Airmen. "We were shocked."

She added: "The reason they never talked about it was they didn't want anyone to take it away from them."

(From Jay Levin - The Record)

 

---

Socamom.com continues to research the Caribbean American contribution to American and World History, so that the information can be shared with our children.  This may help you in your conversation with your kids when they ask about their culture and how it relates to American history.  Join the site, join us on Facebook, and follow us on twitter to get the latest information on the Caribbean American Tuskegee Airmen.