A Birmingham museum is honoring Black History Month with tours and programs surrounding African American astronauts and pilots. The Southern Museum of Flight’s self-guided tours focus on the so-called Black Aviation Pioneers. This includes pilots, engineers, physicists and astronauts connected to Alabama who advanced air and space exploration. The centerpiece of these events is a new documentary film by National Geographic called The Space Race.
Randy Law is the curator for the Southern Museum of Flight. He explained The Space Race will be paired with the tours. The film is broken into two parts.
“The first part of the film is really about the struggles to overcome segregation within the space program, racial prejudice within the space program, not just in the broader society, and the casualties associated with that,” Law explained.
He said the second half of the documentary is exciting and inspiration because it discusses the achievements of several aviators and workers within the Space Shuttle program.
Law said the museum’s goal with these events is to inform attendees, then guide them through the galleries where they can discuss aviation pioneers like James Banning and Bessie Coleman. Visitors will also explore each section of the museum; this includes the south wing where the Tuskegee Airmen exhibit is on display.
“We have a very large, very substantial exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen. We have three trainers that the Tuskegee Airmen would have trained on during World War II, and for us, the most exciting piece and something that's unique is a B-25 that we are refurbishing that Tuskegee Airmen were training on up in Indiana and Kentucky,” said Law. “When people think of the Tuskegee Airmen, they [of] the Red Tails, they think the 51 Mustangs and so on and so forth. But there was actually a squadron that were between five pilots that finished training during the summer of 1945. And so, they did deploy, but it's a particularly special aircraft. It's a really exciting element of the display,” Law continued.
Each tour will have one or more guest speakers. Law said the museum has a range of individuals ready to speak with several of them coming from the 117 Alabama Air National Guard Unit. These special guests will discuss their own experiences in hopes of exciting and inspiring students.
Anyone visiting the museum can see these exhibits. Law said any school tour that comes through this year can see these parts, as well. The purpose of this promotion is to celebrate Black History Month and to highlight the progress that America has made in aviation and in society with these exhibits.
More information on the exhibitions on display at the Southern Museum of Flight can be found here.
