Charles decided to apply. In April of 1942, he was sent to northern Indiana to take the written and physical exams. The screening was unique to Charles and having a black applicant was apparently unique to the recruitment officers, as well.
"There was a guy there who had never dealt with any blacks and he kept filling in the blanks wrong because he was writing (I was) white."
Charles wanted to fly. The decision was not hard. Even with the application submitted, the road to Tuskegee proved to be formidable. The next big hurdle was escaping the long arm of the draft. It took months for applications to move through channels and while the draft could be manipulated for a well-connected few, it was a good bet no favors were granted the ordinary man. Like so many institutions, the draft was political, and it was highly unlikely for a poor black boy to pull strings necessary to delay his call, especially while awaiting orders to a little known "Tuskegee Experiment." In fact, during the anxious months of hoping and waiting to hear their fate, several aspirants were drafted and had to board the troop trains and report to boot camp. Some of these draftees pleaded for consideration.
“I've applied for air training. What can be done?"
The response was, "Well, you're in the infantry now, boy."
Few who were drafted transferred to flying.
In late spring of '42, Charles learned he had passed the test and was accepted in the program. Now it was a question of which call to duty would come first.
After the semester, he went back to the mills, but unlike the preceding summer, he spent hard earned money to make the trip to Champaign whenever he could. Mrs. Foster, one of Momma Nellie's boarders, frequently sat on the screened front porch and often was the first to announce his arrival.
"Frances, that ‘ole square headed boy is here to see you."
The affection they all felt toward Charles was not veiled by the teasing and banter exchanged.
On those visits, he walked downtown with Frances and her mother, carrying the sacks from their shopping excursions. There were evening strolls hand in hand at the county fair. Long talks began to guardedly explore plans for their future after the war.
On those summer evenings Charles and Frances sat on the porch of the house on Hickory Street. They escaped there to have some time alone, for it was hard to make even the most innocent contact under Momma Nellie's watchful eye.
In addition to a kiss, on one night Charles gave his love an engagement ring. With her consent to marry him, they embarked on a lifelong adventure. The night of their engagement was no exception to the vigil kept by Nellie. Shortly after ten o'clock, the lights on the porch flashed, signaling their fleeting time together was ending.
Charles' future was tied to the draft. As it happened he was never called. A member of Lewis Sr.'s AME church who was also a member of the local draft board knew of his acceptance to the Tuskegee flight school. Charles didn’t know it at the time, but this benefactor arranged for his position in the lottery to be "suspended" until he received his orders to report to the special program.
"Years later, on a visit back to Gary, she told me she would just slide my card out of the bunch so they'd pass over it until I got called."
Returning to school in September, 1942, Frances and Charles faced two big decisions. Frances had graduated cum laude from U. of I. and worked for a professor; Charles had two more years. Considering the options, they agreed he would not enroll for the semester as money was too hard to come by to be spent on a semester which in all probability would not be completed. In the face of so much uncertainty, the two knew the main thing they wanted was to spend whatever time they had together.
"We had to make another decision. If I was drafted or called up to Tuskegee where would that leave us? We finally decided to get married."
They set the date, completed hurried arrangements while Charles worked on in the mills, and married on Saturday, October 17. Lewis Sr. came to officiate at his son's wedding. The ceremony took place in Frances' Hickory Street home which had been gaily decorated for the occasion with fall foliage. Momma Nellie and Grandmother Gay were present. A fraternity brother, Nathaniel "Nate" Green, from Chicago served as best man. Stella, Frances' sister-in-law, was the matron of honor. Frances' brother Leonard, like Lewis Jr. and Cecil, was already in the service and unable to attend.
The traditional honeymoon was not in their plans. The morning after the wedding, Charles and Frances headed to Gary to begin their life together. Living with a friend, they had a room to themselves and the bonus, a shelf in the ice box.
I imagine it could not have seemed closer to perfect.
Forgetting the mounting turmoil around them, their world was fresh and new and ever so briefly, time stood still.
On Monday, October 19, 1942, the mail brought Charles' orders. On October 26, he was sworn into the enlisted reserves in preparation for entering Army Air Corps aviation cadet training.
III: The Tuskegee Experience
1942-1943
• The first successful nuclear chain reaction ushered in the atomic age.
• After numerous delays, the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron left Tuskegee to join the war in Northern Africa in April, 1943.
• Racial violence erupted on the home front in Detroit and Harlem during the summer of 1943.
•The Allies invaded Sicily in July, 1943; Italy surrendered unconditionally in September and in October joined Allied forces against German troops still fighting on Italian soil.
•Allied leaders Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin held a summit in Tehran, Iran, to plan war strategies.
Charles reported to Tuskegee Air Field Field on November 24, 1942. He and Frances only had a few weeks to pack their belongings, which was more than ample given the few items they had accumulated. The newlyweds had no intentions of being so quickly separated and together they made the trip to Tuskegee, Alabama, 47 miles east of Montgomery. Frances planned to find a job and room close to Tuskegee Air Field, where Charles would be occupied with training six or seven days a week.
In 1942, the trip south was more than a notion for the young black couple accustomed to life north of the Mason-Dixon line. Patterns of discrimination in the North were more subtle, but in the South of the 1940s, rigid Jim Crow laws of segregation were the way of life. The Air Corps had no intention of disrupting these established practices. To the contrary, they were as deeply ingrained in the culture of the Corps as in the wider society.
For cadets making the trip south on troop trains, the transition was immediately apparent. At the last stop in the north, they had to move from their coach seats, occupied at the beginning of the trip, to those directly behind the engine and coal cars. There, recruits contended with cinder filled smoke and fumes from the train's engines and for the remainder of the trip were denied entry to the dining car. Stations along the way prominently displayed "colored" and "white" signs separating drinking fountains and rest rooms. This was standard treatment for black soldiers preparing to fight and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
Rolling along the Illinois Central railway, Charles’ thoughts were full of the excitement of taking on a new challenge and worry about how he and Frances would be treated in the south. They did not miss the first appearance of "White Only" signs in southern Illinois, directing Negroes who needed food or rest to out of the way locations and substandard facilities. Charles' days in the south in Florida were a faded memory and Frances was sheltered from the cruel realities of racial hatred during childhood visits to Momma Nellie's family in Moss Point, Mississippi. There had not been much to prepare them for Tuskegee, Alabama, but strictly enforced segregation introduced during their travel began to acclimate them even before they arrived.
Tuskegee Army Air Field (TAAF) was in Macon County, Alabama, near the towns of Tuskegee and Tuskegee Institute. The school, founded by Dr. Booker T. Washington in 1881, was a private Negro college with technical and professional emphases and a