Free movie program in Canal Museum

By Dra Lourdes Quijada

If you are a film goer you’re going to love this one. The US Embassy is starting a free Film Series in the Canal Museum.

The first screening on Thursday at 7 pm,  “The Tuskegee Airmen”  is a true story about the first US African American pilots in WWII.

In English, with Spanish  subtitles, it’s a timely theme as January was the month to celebrate Martin Luther King, and civil rights, and February is African American month.

 The Tuskegee Airmen is the popular name of a group of African American pilots who fought in World War II. Formally, they were the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American military aviators in the United States armed forces when African Americans in many U.S. states still were subject to the Jim Crow laws and the US military was racially segregated, along with much  of the federal government..

The Tuskegee 332nd Fighter Group was sent overseas as part of Operation Torch, and saw action in Sicily and Italy, They were later deployed as bomber escorts in Europe where they were particularly successful in virtually all their missions.

In July 1944  the group was eaquipped, the P-51 Mustang and painted the tails of their planes red, and got the nickname "Red Tails" or to bomber crews “Red Tailed Angels.”