Life
Tuskegee Airmen Honored At ‘Red Tails’ Screening In Los Angeles
The Tuskegee Airmen. PHOTO/File
This week’s most noteworthy film screening didn’t take place in Hollywood or Beverly Hills. Instead of starlets gliding past photographers on a red carpet, elderly men in wheelchairs, using canes or leaning on family for support were escorted by cadets up the steps of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza theater.
These men constituted most of the remaining Los Angeles-area members of the original Tuskegee Airmen group, and they were there on Wednesday for a special showing of “Red Tails,” George Lucas’ multimillion-dollar portrayal of the first African-American air corps in the United States.
The sold-out screening packed in about 400 people, all of whom burst into tremendous applause when the World War II veterans stood at their seats. As some audience members snapped photographs, others took a moment to explain to their children “how big of a deal this is!”
