101-year-old Aurora Tuskegee Airman James Harvey III opposes Trump’s diversity cuts

AURORA | With members of a trailblazing Black Air Force unit passing away at advanced ages, efforts to remain true to their memory carry on despite sometimes confusing orders from President Donald Trump as he purges federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Col. James H. Harvey III, 101, is among the last few airmen and support crew who proved that a Black unit — the 332nd Fighter Group of the Tuskegee Airmen — could fight as well as any other in World War II and the years after.

He went on to become the first Black jet fighter pilot in Korean airspace during the Korean War, and a decorated one after 126 missions. He was one of four Tuskegee Airmen who won the first U.S. Air Force Gunnery Meet in 1949, a forerunner of today’s U.S. Navy “Top Gun” school.

“They said we didn’t have any ability to operate aircraft or operate heavy machinery. We were inferior to the white man. We were nothing,” Harvey said. “So we showed them.”

Shortly after Trump’s January inauguration, the Air Force removed new recruit training courses that included videos of the Tuskegee Airmen.

The removal drew bipartisan outrage and the White House’s ire over what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as “malicious implementation” of Trump’s executive order.

The Air Force reversed course this week.

Announcing the reversal, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in a statement that the initial removal was because the service, like other agencies, had to move swiftly to comply with Trump’s executive order with “no equivocation, no slow-rolling, no foot-dragging.”

The videos were shown to troops as part of DEI courses taken during basic military training. Some photos of Tuskegee Airmen were also among tens of thousands of images in a Pentagon database flagged for removal.

“I thought there was progress in that area, but evidently there isn’t,” said Harvey, who blamed Trump for contributing to what he sees as worsening prejudice in the U.S.

“I’ll tell him to his face. No problem,” he said. “I’ll tell him, ‘You’re a racist,’ and see what he has to say about that. What can they do to me? Just kill me, that’s all.”

The Tuskegee Airmen unit was established in 1941 as the 99th Pursuit Squadron based at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The 99th became the 332nd Fighter Group, which by war’s end destroyed or damaged more than 400 enemy aircraft in North Africa and Europe during the war and sank a German destroyer in action.

Of the 992 Tuskegee Airmen trained as pilots starting in 1942, 335 were deployed, 66 were killed in action and 32 who were shot down became war prisoners.

In 1949, two months after the airmen’s gunnery meet victory in the propeller-driven class, the U.S. Air Force integrated Black and white troops and the Tuskegee Airmen were absorbed into other units.

It took the Air Force almost half a century to recognize 332nd’s last achievement: Its success in aerial bombing and shooting proficiency in the gunnery meet at what is now Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

For decades, the winners were listed as “unknown” and their trophy was missing.

“We won them all,” Harvey said. “We weren’t supposed to win anything because of the color of our skin.”

Harvey trained during World War II but was not deployed to combat before the war ended. In Korea, he flew the F-80 Shooting Star jet fighter and earned medals including the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1965 and received an honorary promotion to colonel in 2023.

Trump in 2020 promoted another of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, Charles McGee, to brigadier general. McGee died in 2022 at age 102.

Harvey still regards the Air Force Gunnery Meet as his biggest accomplishment, one the Air Force finally recognized in 1993.

Their missing trophy was found in a museum storeroom not long after.

“We were good, and they couldn’t take it away from us,” Harvey said. “We were good. And I’ll repeat it until I die.”

Aurora’s history with Tuskegee Airmen

Harvey isn’t the only Aurora link to the storied Tuskegee Airmen.

The proverbial trails blazed by Aurora’s John W. Mosley took on many forms: racially intolerant classrooms, football fields and the skies above war zones all became hallmarks of a life spent at the forefront of progress.

The Denver native was the first-ever Black player on what is now the Colorado State University football team, and he was one of the first Black men trained as a bomber pilot during the Second World War, serving with the famed Tuskegee Airmen before trading in his military service for a life of community leadership in Aurora.

Mosley died in 2015 at age 93. The Edna and John W Mosely P-8 School in Aurora is named in his honor and that of his wife, Edna, a former Aurora city council member.

Following congressional legislation passed in 2021, Aurora’s VA outpatient clinic on the Fitzsimons campus was dedicated to Tuskegee Airman and to Mosley.

Mosley was born June 21, 1921. In his teenage years, he attended Manual High School, where he was both a standout football player and as a student, becoming a National Merit Scholar.

But for all his high school accomplishments, college life was far from easy for Mosley. He enrolled at Colorado State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now Colorado State University) after graduating from Manual in 1939. As one of only nine Black students at the time, Mosley was barred from living in the campus residence halls and denied service at many Fort Collins restaurants.

Despite those obstacles, Mosley became the first Black player to join the college’s football team and earned all-conference honors as a wrestler for the Aggies. He also was elected class vice president in his junior and senior years at A&M, graduating in 1943.

With the Second World War well underway, Mosley took flying lessons with hopes of being drafted to joined the all-Black 99th Fighter Squadron, better known as the Tuskegee Airmen of Alabama. Instead, he was assigned to an artillery unit at Fort Sill, Okla., until a letter-writing campaign prompted his reassignment to Tuskegee, where he trained as a bomber pilot.

Mosley then traveled across the Atlantic to join the war effort, escorting other aircraft as they flew over enemy territory.

The Tuskegee Airmen flew 15,000 missions over North Africa and Europe during the Second World War. John also would serve as a pilot in the Berlin Airlift after the war, delivering loads of supplies to the Soviet-blockaded sectors of the city.

John later served — in a then-integrated Army Air Force — after being called up from his reserve unit during the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

After his service in Europe, Mosley received a master’s degree from the University of Denver and went to work as a youth coordinator in Kansas City, Mo., for the YMCA.

John and Edna, moved to Aurora in 1965 when he was transferred to Lowry Air Force Base. In those years, John worked at the regional office for the Department of Health and Human Services. Edna later became an Aurora city councilperson.

In later years, John and Edna worked to created a non-profit organization to provide scholarships to Black high school students to college.