"In recognition of their unique record:" Tuskegee Airmen awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

On Thursday March 29, 2007, the Tuskegee Airmen were awarded a Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush in the Capitol Rotunda. The President was accompanied by the leaders of the United States Congress and spoke in front of more than 350 of the World War II veterans. It was, indeed, an emotional event, and those honored were rightly proud. Both houses of Congress had passed legislation: "To award a congressional gold medal on behalf of the Tuskegee Airmen collectively, in recognition of their unique record, which inspired revolutionary reform in the Armed Forces."

It was undeniably a unique record and achieved in the face of unmitigated prejudice. The legislation explicitly exposed the bigotry of the pre-World War II U.S. Army by citing reports completed by the Army War College of 1920s and 1930s: "Studies commissioned by the Army War College between 1924 and 1939 concluded Blacks were unfit for leadership roles and incapable of aviation." It was worse than the legislation indicated, however, because the analyses were openly racist.

Then as now, the War College was an institution reserved for those officers destined for senior rank. These executives asserted blacks were a "mentally inferior subspecies," low in the scale of "human evolution" with a "smaller cranium than whites" and a brain that weighed only "35 ounces contrasted with 45" for the whites. In the 1924/1925 study the entire student body and faculty worked on this analysis to outline recommendations for the Army Chief of Staff regarding the use of blacks in war. Nine other such studies were written during the interwar years, the last in 1939, all of which were savagely racist. In addition to the pseudo-scientific rant above, other deeply hurtful generalizations were made, including the notions that blacks were lying, thieving, immoral, and…