On December 5, 1941, Parrish was promoted to the position of Director of Training at Tuskegee Army Flying School in Alabama.

Born in Versailles, Kentucky,[1] to a Southern white minister, Parrish spent parts of his youth living in Alabama and Georgia.

The lack of work meant hunger, so he chose to join the United States Army's 11th Cavalry Regiment as a private on July 30, 1930, serving in Monterey, California.

The Air Corps at that time, which had never had a single black member, was part of an army that possessed exactly two black Regular line officers at the beginning of World War II: Brigadier Generals Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Benjamin O. Davis Jr.[10] The first Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) students completed their instruction in May 1940.

The creation of an all-black pursuit squadron resulted from pressure by civil rights organizations and the black press who pushed for the establishment of a unit at Tuskegee, an Alabama base, in 1941.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who was interested in the Tuskegee aviation program, took a 40-minute flight around the base in a plane piloted by Charles "Chief" Anderson on April 19, 1941.

[5][14][15] Over 250 enlisted men formed the first group of black Americans trained at Chanute in aircraft ground support trades.

This small number became the core of other black squadrons subsequently formed at Tuskegee and Maxwell Fields in Alabama.

[3][4][8] As Director of Training and later Tuskegee Field commander, Parrish played a key role in the program's success.

[1] Exercises at a Booker T. Washington monument located at the Tuskegee Institute commemorated the beginning of black American pre-flight training for military aviation.

The first twelve candidates for officer-flier positions were cited by America's black press as "the cream of the country's colored youth".

[8] The first classes started at the institute, and flying lessons soon began at the Tuskegee Army Air Field (TAAF) some approximately ten miles away.

[7] The experience of the AAF during World War II necessitated that the military review its policies on the utilization of black servicemembers.

Confrontation, discussion, and coordination with both black and white groups led AAF leaders to the conclusion that active commitment, leadership, and equal opportunity produced a more cost-effective, viable military force.

In 1948, President Harry Truman signed an Executive Order on equality of treatment and opportunity in the military, due in no small part to the successes of the Tuskegee Airmen.

[16] Parrish, stated in his memoirs that he often mediated between the Army officials, whites near Tuskegee who felt that the airmen were uppity, and the aviation trainees themselves.

"[17] Parrish stayed in command of the Tuskegee Airmen through the end of World War II in 1945 until August 20, 1946, when he was assigned to the Air University at Maxwell.

Parrish also commented: "It is a discouraging fact that officers of the Army Air Force, whose scientific achievements are unsurpassed, and whose scientific skill is unquestioned in mechanical matters and in many personnel matters, should generally approach the problem of races and minorities with the most unscientific dogmatic and arbitrary attitudes....

In September 1954 he became Air Deputy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Defense College, which was then located in Paris, France.

[2] Parrish died on Tuesday, April 7, 1987, of cardiac arrest at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Piney Point, Maryland.

[2] According to a 2001 presentation that won top prize at a National History Day competition, an 18-year-old Topeka High School student John Freeman wrote that the Tuskegee Airmen, America's first black military pilots, helped lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement.

[18] Historians generally give credit to Colonel Noel Parrish, Commander of Tuskegee Field from 1942 to 1946, for his enlightened leadership and fair treatment of cadets which improved morale by reducing the amount of segregation and overcrowding and improving relations with both blacks and whites in the town of Tuskegee.