Tuskegee ‘Top Gun’ James Harvey turns 100

BY DEBORAH GRIGSBY DGRIGSBY@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

James Harvey remembers when there were two Air Forces.

“One comprised us, and the other was for the whites,” explained the soonto-be centenarian from his home in Lakewood, Colorado.

Harvey knows this as fact because he’s one of just a handful of remaining Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black military pilots and airmen who fought not only against enemy aircraft but against overt racism in the same Air Force they pledged to serve.

Born July 13, 1923, in Montclair, New Jersey, James H. Harvey III was the oldest of four children born to James and Cornelia Harvey. He attended high school in Pennsylvania, where he was an outstanding student, the captain of the basketball team, class president, and graduated as valedictorian.

Harvey said he never encountered much racism until he raised his right hand, swore an oath to serve and protect his country — and entered the segregated U.S. Army.

Drafted in 1943, he was soon reassigned to the Army Air Corps, the predecessor of today’s modern U.S. Air Force.

Harvey will tell you in great detail that things in the military were di erent back then.

Very di erent — especially if you were a Black man.

“You just go with the ow,” said Harvey of how he coped. “You just go with the ow or something happens — something mysteriously happens. So, I just went with the ow.”

When asked why he did, he replied, “Because I wanted to live.” e report stated they “lacked intelligence and were cowardly under combat conditions” and lacked the “ability to operate complex machinery.”

Harvey settled into military service, classi ed as an engineer. As the war in the Paci c raged, engineers were needed to build and maintain the many makeshift jungle runways used by American forces. But Harvey was more interested in ying planes than building places for them to land. So, he applied to the Aviation Cadet Training Program in hopes of being accepted into the Tuskegee Flight Training Program in Alabama, a separate school designated for Black pilots.

In 1925 the U.S. Army War College released called “ e Use of Negro Manpower in War.” Many say this report “set the overall tone” for how the military viewed Black men.

To prove this, the U.S. Army set up an “experiment” in 1941 to prove the ndings of the War College Report.

Tuskegee was an experiment that was designed to fail — to prove that Black men didn’t have the capacity to y.

But instead, the program produced some of the nation’s most pro cient ghter pilots.

“I applied. I was accepted,” said Harvey. “However, I had to take an examination rst, and there were 10 of us that reported to Bolling Field to take this test — nine whites and myself.”

Both Black and white candidates took the same preliminary tests to get into the Aviation Cadet Program. Black pilots, however, would be trained at a segregated eld in Alabama.

Testing for this program was known among servicemembers to be notoriously rigorous and particularly unforgiving.

“Well, we took the examination, did everything they wanted us to do, and when the dust cleared, there were only two of us standing — this white guy and myself,” Harvey said.

Long were the hours and challenging were the tasks for Harvey, a selfdescribed perfectionist.

“If everything is perfect, there’s no challenge after that,” he said. “I never dreamed or thought about washing out in ying school. I knew I was gonna make it because I did everything right.” Because, as a Black man, he had to.

“You only had so many hours or days to learn something and if you didn’t, you were out. It’s that simple,” Harvey said. “You only had a certain amount of time to learn something and if you exceeded that time, you were gone.”

When asked if he’s still a perfectionist, he grins.

“Well, I’m back at it,” he laughs. “I got married, so that was kind of the end of the perfectionism, but my wife passed, so I’m back at it again.”

Perfectionism.

“I’ve always been that way,” Harvey said. “Like Disney, when I was growing up… the Disney characters, I’d sit down and draw them — they were better than what Disney put out!”

His favorite?

“Mickey Mouse, of course… I don’t think Minnie was on the scene yet.”

So, what should we call you?

Harvey earned his wings at Tuskegee Army Air Field on Oct. 16, 1944, near the end of the war. A graduate of Class