Tuskegee Airmen honored at LI theaters

Long Island civic group members honored the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen on Saturday by buying movie tickets.

They helped fill a Deer Park theater for a screening of "Red Tails," an action film that depicts the pioneering black World War II aviators as heroic daredevils.

So many people showed up -- with nearly 400 tickets sold Saturday night -- that theater managers had to scramble to show the film on a second screen.

Julie Dade-Howard, president of a local chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, said she began urging fellow Long Islanders to see the film two weeks ago.

"There was a perception that this film would not do well," said Dade-Howard, who also sent fliers to local churches. "I took it as a personal challenge to get a large turnout."

Local leaders in other predominantly black organizations, including Links, the Urban League of Long Island, NAACP, 100 Black Men, and sororities and fraternities, took up the challenge, sending emails to members and posting messages on Evite and Facebook.

The Tuskegee Airmen were graduates of a program initiated at the beginning of World War II to train black men as pilots, crew members and ground support personnel. Despite facing skepticism and hostility from white colleagues and superiors, the unit -- disbanded shortly after the war -- won acclaim and hundreds of medals for its combat prowess in Europe.

The film, however, faced stiff winds at the box office.

Executive producer George Lucas financed "Red Tails" on his own after failing to win the backing of a major movie studio -- a skittishness Lucas has attributed to the film's mostly black cast.

Convinced of the movie's historic value, however, educational organizations are helping promote it.

The American Airpower Museum in Farmingdale invited surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen to participate in a film-related event there Sunday, and students in the aviation program at Farmingdale State College were urged to see the movie.

"Before there were men like Martin Luther King, there were these guys," said Lou Scala, an associate professor in the program.

Scala said the performance of the Tuskegee Airmen helped persuade President Harry Truman to end segregation in the U.S. military in 1948.

"This is not a black thing," he said. "It's an American thing."