Rest In Peace, Mr. Montgomery

[bobabode]

Dabney Montgomery, Tuskegee Airman who safeguarded Martin Luther King Jr., dies at 93. WaPo

"For Dabney Montgomery, the indignities at home stung more because of the noble tasks he performed for his country abroad — serving with the Tuskegee Airmen to help win World War II in a role that would eventually earn him a Congressional Gold Medal.

But at a train station in Atlanta in 1945, carrying an Army duffel bag over his shoulder after receiving his honorable-discharge papers, he was abruptly confronted with Jim Crow America.

“Before I could get in, a white officer threw up his hands [and said]: ‘You can’t come in this door, boy. You got to go around the back,'” Montgomery told Alice Bernstein in a video interview. “‘You can’t come in here; you’re black. You got to go around the corner.'”

Montgomery, who served as a member of the all-black fighter group and, decades later, as a bodyguard to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. died at age 93 of natural causes Sept. 3, his wife, Amelia Montgomery, told the Associated Press."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...omepage%2Fcard

[merrylander]

My dentist is originally from Tuskegee as I discovered when I asked him about the P-51 fighter plane model with the red nose. He was not in that squadron though as he is not old enough.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by merrylander

My dentist is originally from Tuskegee as I discovered when I asked him about the P-51 fighter plane model with the red nose. He was not in that squadron though as he is not old enough.

Though the Tuskegee Airmen sometimes painted the spinners on their plane red, they always painted the tail in that color. This led to the Allied bomber crews calling the Airmen the Red Tails or Red-Tail Angels.

There's a P51C painted in their colors that flies out of the Petaluma Airport here. Beautiful, as is the exhaust note from her Rolls Royce Merlin.

[merrylander]

I stand corrected as I got it bass ackwards, indeed the tail was red. Probably because I so enjoy visiting the dentist.