Freeman Field mutiny
Historically, most African-American soldiers and sailors were relegated to support functions rather than combat roles, with few opportunities to advance to command positions.
Under the command of Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the first African American to fly solo as an officer, the 99th saw action in North Africa and Italy in 1943.
Continued pressure from African-American civilian leaders led the Army to let blacks train as members of bomber crews, a step that opened many more skilled combat roles to them.
Although the 477th had an authorized strength of 270 officer crew members, only 175 were initially assigned to Selfridge, a circumstance that led many of the black trainees to believe that the Army did not want the unit to advance to full combat readiness.
Colonel Selway's superior, Major General Frank O'Driscoll Hunter, commander of the First Air Force, insisted on strict social segregation of black and white officers.
On May 5, 1944, possibly out of fear of a repeat of the previous summer's race riot in nearby Detroit, the 477th was abruptly relocated to Godman Field at Fort Knox in Kentucky.
The morale of the 477th remained poor because the field was not suited for use by the B-25 and because black officers, including combat veterans of the 332nd Fighter Group who had transferred to the bomber unit, were not being advanced to command positions.
It was scheduled to enter combat on July 1st, which made it necessary to relocate once more, this time to Freeman Army Airfield, a base fully suited to use by the B-25.
Young, the future mayor of Detroit and an experienced labor organizer, a group of black officers still at Godman decided on a plan of action to challenge the de facto segregation at Freeman as soon as they arrived there.
When 19 of the officers, including Coleman Young, entered the club against the instructions of Lieutenant Rogers and refused to leave, Major White put them in arrest "in quarters."
After doing so, Colonel Pattison gave each officer a copy of the regulation and told them to sign a statement certifying that they had read it and fully understood it.
In the meantime, pressure from African-American organizations, labor unions and members of Congress was brought to bear on the War Department to drop the charges against them.
He was assisted by Harold Tyler, a Chicago lawyer, and by Lieutenant William Thaddeus Coleman Jr., who later became the chief defense counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and United States Secretary of Transportation under President Gerald Ford, Ten officers appointed by General Hunter presided over the court-martial.
Sixty years later, in 2007, it was reactivated as the 477th Fighter Group (477 FG), the first Air Force Reserve Command unit to fly the F-22 Raptor.
[4] The events at Freeman Field, along with his own experiences in the USAAF, were the basis of the novel Guard of Honor (ISBN 0-679-60305-0), for which James Gould Cozzens won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1949.
