As manager of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Tuskegee, Ala., Deanna Mitchell said she couldn't miss this year's Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena.
West Covina's entry in the New Year's Day parade was a float honoring the Tuskegee Airmen that featured a bald eagle, two fighter planes and 16 members of the famous fighting group, including Riverside's Harlan Leonard.
Mitchell said she also didn't want to return home without visiting the Tuskegee archives at the UC Riverside library. On Monday, she spent several hours with Tomas Rivera Library's Director Ruth Jackson, surveying material from the archive and discussing possible cooperative efforts between her National Park Service museum and the university.
More than 1,000 black pilots were produced by the training program at Moton Field and Tuskegee University during World War II. The segregated program and the men's contributions while fighting for the United States went largely unrecognized for many years after the war.
Mitchell said although her visit was unofficial, she hopes ties might eventually be established between the UCR archives and the historic site.
"This is a great opportunity for us to connect," Mitchell said. "I'm very impressed with what I've seen."
The Riverside collection was started in 2004, originally as an effort to document the history of the Tuskegee veterans living on the West Coast. Now, Jackson said, the archive takes material from all over. The collection has military records, letters, documents and artifacts, including many items not stored at the national site.
"Some of the items like goggles and hats and flight jackets, we don't have," Mitchell said.
"I'm very excited about some of these new items," she added, thumbing through the pages of a booklet titled "The Tuskegee Airmen Story" for the first time. "They have kind of hit me in the face."
The UC Riverside archive is one of several, including collections at Maxwell Air Force Base, near Montgomery, Ala., and the National Archives.
"It stands side by side with the others," Mitchell said of the Riverside collection. "They've done an excellent job."
Jackson said most of the archival material has been gathered from the pilots, support personnel and their families. Because most of the veterans are in their 80s or older, time is critical.
"You have a special moment in time to get the archive," she said. "And when that moment is lost, the archive could be lost."
Gathering such material should be a cooperative effort, Mitchell said. She plans to speak to the people she works with about the need for collaboration.
"The more information we can collect," she said, "the easier it will be to reconstruct the history."
Visit library.ucr.edu/?view=tuskegee for more information on the UC Riverside Tuskegee Airmen archive.
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