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Ivan G Thompson
a book bubble about
The Air Force’s Black Ceiling
Politics & Social Sciences
Author Insight
Dr. Daniel Haulman & the Tuskegee Airmen
In my first book, “The Air Force’s Black Ceiling,” I wrote about the Tuskegee Airmen. In one particular chapter, shared in this book bubble, I wrote about Dr. Daniel Haulman, who seemed to have made a career of systematically dismantling the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen. Today, I was saddened to hear that he is still being invited to speak as an “expert” on the Tuskegee Airmen. In 2016, I researched his body of work, and it seemed that much of his work was spent refuting key elements of the Airmen’s legacy. Today I did a 10 min Google search that showed he published a paper containing nine myths about the Tuskegee Airmen in 2011, a book containing eleven myths in 2012, an article containing 52 misconceptions in 2018 and in 2023 a book containing 55 misconceptions entitled, “Misconceptions about the Tuskegee Airmen: Refuting Myths about America's First Black Military Pilots D Haulman - 2023 - books.google.com.” NINE MYTHS ABOUT THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN Dr. Daniel L. Haulman 21 October 2011 Daniel L. Haulman, PhD Chief, Organizational Histories Branch Air Force Historical Research Agency. “Eleven Myths About the Tuskegee Airmen,” Dr. Daniel Haulman (New South Books, 2012). I am publishing this book bubble in the hope that those who consider him an expert on the Tuskegee Airmen will understand why I believe he has profited from finding greater ways over the years to diminish their legacy.
Book Excerpt
The Air Force’s Black Ceiling
When I refer to the stereotypes of today, I am not only referencing the unspoken but tangible assertion that black people don’t do well in pilot training or that they really aren’t cut out to be fighter pilots. I am also underlining the kind of characterizations that are being published now that are similar to those found in the 1925 Army War College report.Dr. Daniel Haulman, a historian employed by the Air Force’s own Historical Research Agency has seemingly made it his career ambition to systematically dismantle every significant achievement of the Tuskegee Airman’s legacy. In his most recent report “Misconceptions About the Tuskegee Airmen” he lists 43 “misconceptions” that take aim at every significant achievement of the Tuskegee Airmen with the goal of proving that the Airmen were neither “superior” or “inferior” but “that they were equal to the other fighter pilots with whom they served” (Haulman, 2015).Dr. Haulman starts out this report with a quote from the famed Commander of Tuskegee Army Air Field Noel Parrish:Each establishment of a ‘Negro unit’ project was finally covered with a smoke screen of praise, which clouded the issues and obscured the facts.” In another part of the same thesis, Parrish noted that the black units “gathered more than necessary praise,” and that “military men showed an overwhelming tendency to believe, repeat, and exaggerate all the stories.” He commented, “Such a situation [segregation] leads to an exaggeration of both the honors and the defamations.” Philosophically, he wrote, “When it is difficult to tell which praise is merited, it is certainly difficult to determine what blame is deserved.”Dr. Haulman concludes his 104 pages of “misconceptions” by mirroring his opening comments:Whoever dispenses with the misconceptions that have come to circulate around the Tuskegee Airmen in the many decades since World War II emerges with a greater appreciation for what they actually accomplished. If you read the entire report you come to understand that what Dr. Haulman really seems to say is that “whoever dispenses with the” 43 misconceptions that I have uncovered, “misconceptions that have come to circulate” for decades “will have a greater appreciation for what they actually accomplished”. (Haulman, MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN , 2015)He then proceeds like a Panzer tank to obliterate every “circulating” Tuskegee Airmen achievement. Here is a listing of Dr. Haulman’s first 10 “misconceptions.” The entire list can be viewed/ retrieved from the Air Force Historical Research Agency website: http://www.afhra.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-141118-042.pdf.1. The misconception of inferiority2. The misconception of “never lost a bomber”3. The misconception of the deprived ace4. The misconception of being first to shoot down German jets5. The misconception that the Tuskegee Airmen sank a German destroyer6. The misconception of the “Great Train Robbery”7. The misconception of superiority8. The misconception that the Tuskegee Airmen units were all black9. The misconception that all Tuskegee Airmen were fighter pilots who flew red-tailed P-51s to escort bombers10. The misconception that after a flight with a black pilot at Tuskegee, Eleanor Roosevelt persuaded the President to establish a black flying unit in the Army Air CorpsAlthough Dr. Haulman says that black and white fighter pilots “were equal” in terms of their WWII performance, he systematically dismantles every significant accomplishment of the greatest black pilots that ever lived, and in doing so, directly contributes to the stereotypes that exist in 2016. Consequently, if the best black fighter pilots that ever lived, the people Haulman calls “the cream of the crop” were average and most of their highly touted successes were “misconceptions” and inaccuracies, what is the black pilot of today supposed to believe about himself and what he can be become in the Air Force?The issue is not if Dr. Haulman’s misconceptions can be verified as facts, but the tone and attitude in which those “facts” are presented. In the opening paragraph of his 43 misconceptions paper, Dr. Haulman highlighted a quote from Noel Parrish that said, “military men showed an overwhelming tendency to believe, repeat, and exaggerate all the stories” (Haulman, “Misconceptions About the Tuskegee Airmen”, 2015). However, I would think this phenomenon, if it were true, would be true of all military men, black, white or otherwise. This would be similar to the notion that all men exaggerate their accomplishments. However, Dr. Haulman seems to imply that only the Tuskegee airmen and their supporters exaggerated their stories. In conclusion, from reviewing Dr. Haulman’s body of work, it seems that his zeal for ‘historical accuracy’ and his search for exaggeration does not extend beyond the Tuskegee Airmen. I have seen that Dr. Haulman has been involved in the verification of sorties during the Vietnam War but his approach with the Tuskegee Airmen seems to target more than the facts and figures concerning their units’ accomplishments but also their heritage and identity. Dr. Haulman inappropriately crosses a line by questioning the racial identity of the Tuskegee Airmen. His statement is egregious, blatantly distasteful, offensive and outlandish:“Even the black pilots of the Tuskegee Airmen units were not all black. Many of them descended not only from African Americans, but also from European Americans and native Americans. Some were a mixture of all three. Yet, no matter how little African American blood they had, most of the members of the Tuskegee Airmen organizations were classified as “colored” in the World War II period. The skin color and hair texture and facial features of the Tuskegee Airmen varied as greatly as their height. Some of the Tuskegee Airman pilots looked more white than black (Haulman, “Misconceptions About the Tuskegee Airmen”, 2015).To suggest that a black person is not black if he has any white or native American blood or both or because he was fair-skinned would likely erase a significant percentage of the black population. There is a biblical adage that says “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” These words from Dr. Haulman expose the fire behind the zeal for Dr. Haulman’s career focus. Seemingly the one thing that Dr. Haulman couldn’t take away from the Tuskegee Airmen was the fact that they were black, but he tried.When I read this disgusting quote I was compelled to research Dr. Haulman’s background, hoping to find something that would excuse the overt racism in the quote and perhaps attribute it to unbelievable ignorance or insensitivity. What I found though is a historian that went to college in Alabama, who lived in Alabama, during a time when no such definition of black people would have been tolerated. How could a Alabama historian of his age be unfamiliar with Alabama’s state laws?:The Alabama legislature reinforced this statute in new penal codes that were enacted in 1867 (§ 3602), 1876 (§ 4189), 1886 (§ 4018), and 1896 (§ 5096). In 1901, Alabama drafted a new state constitution, wherein the anti-miscegenation statute was made a part of the state constitution: “The legislature shall never pass any law to authorize or legalize any marriage between any white person and a negro, or descendant of a negro.” The final revisions to Alabama’s anti-miscegenation law were adopted in the Code of Alabama of 1940, which stated: “If any white person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro intermarry, or live in adultery or fornication with each other, each of them shall, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary for not less than two nor more than seven years. (Richter, 2015)”As a black man I remember my mother telling me that she grew up under the saying ‘one drop of n*****…made you n*****…all over.” I actually found that this saying wasn’t just something passed down through black folklore but actual legislation that would have existed long after the Tuskegee Airmen served:Until the Supreme Court intervened in 1967, laws enforced by many states barred interracial marriage and thus discouraged marriages that might result in mixed race children…Part I outlines the history of the anti-miscegenation laws, which sought to limit interracial marriages between Blacks and Whites and thus mixed race offspring. Extralegal means, namely, “lynch law” and this nation’s sordid history of lynching African American men accused (often wrongly) of crossing the color line, powerfully buttressed the legal prohibition. The readings document the slow demise of the anti-miscegenation laws in the courts. Part II considers racial formation and mixed race identity and outlines the legal definition of African American identity - the “one drop” rule, that is, the legal rule that “one drop” of African American blood made a person African American. By operation of this rule of law, many mixed race people were deemed to be African American (Johnson, 2002).As an Alabama historian I find it nearly impossible for Dr. Haulman not to know of the “one drop” rule or the fact that “wrongly crossing the color line” was a crime punishable by death. If there were Tuskegee Airmen who were not truly black as Dr. Haulman asserts, and were fair enough to try to pass themselves off as white, it would have been at risk of death in the 1940s. It is a cruel thing for Dr. Haulman to imply and sullies the entire body of his work.Just as I was astonished that at the characterization of the black man in the 1925 Army War College report, I am equally astonished and saddened that this type of material can be found on the Air Force Historical Research Office’s official site with a publication date of October 2015. It’s appalling and inexcusable. The sentiments, however subtle, expressed on an official United States Air Force website, are the type of poison that help the negative stereotypes about black pilots to continue to live. If we are to see these negative stereotypes eradicated in the minds of black and white Air Force members and society a-large, we must all vigorously oppose subtle characterizations, such as Dr. Haulman’s, that imply that even the greatest black pilots that ever lived weren’t even all that great.I find it interesting also that Dr. Haulman makes scant mention of the fact that the Tuskegee Airmen were the only unit that had to fight two wars at once: the war against the Axis powers and the war against its own Army Air Corps leadership and even the War Department, over the unit’s existence (Haulman, “A Short History of the Tuskegee Airmen, 2015). The Tuskegee Airmen’s famed leader, Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., had to divide time between defending his units’ existence, fighting for the right to fight, fighting for comparable equipment and leading his unit to success in combat. No other flying commander in history can make such a claim. How great could the Tuskegee Airmen have been if they were left alone to fly, fight and win as their white counterparts were? This story of resilience is one of the greatest accomplishments of the Tuskegee Airmen and must be relayed as such if the stereotypes about black fighter pilots are to be destroyed.
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