The Smithsonian Institution exhibit about pioneering black aviators and astronauts soon leaves the continental U.S. for good, but people can still see it until Oct. 4th at the Air Zoo in Portage. WMUK's EarleneMcMichael finds out why the exhibit was created and what's in it from a Smithsonian official and Air Zoo CEO Troy Thrash.
For four years, the"Black Wings" exhibition has toured the country. Once it departs the Air Zoo, it’ll be on display one last time -- in Jacksonville, Fla. After that, it will be donated to an aviation museum in Hawaii, according to Marquette Foley of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in Washington, D.C., where she is project director for the 3,000-square-foot “Black Wings: American Dreams of Flight” exhibit.
The Smithsonian had an earlier exhibit in the 1980s based on a book called “Black Wings” by Von Hardesty, who worked at the national organization’s space museum.
“Von Hardesty is now retired," Foley says, "but he’s (still) a curator at the National Air and Space Museum, again a very forward-thinking scholar who really wanted to make sure that the whole American story was told. And one of the stories that was missing was the story of black aviators.”
Hardesty’s book was re-issued in 2008 with the inclusion of more ground-breakers, facts and photos. Foley says that presented an opportunity to update the exhibit and put it on tour. It is made up of panel upon panel of photographs, anecdotes and history, along with glass-enclosed artifacts.
"It is just simply a fresher, more informed -- because of the research -- view of a very important story that was the core of Von Hardesty’s first book and exhibition. And it’s just time," Foley says. "It’s time to remind ourselves of our extraordinariness, our braveness."
Foley credits Hardesty’s book and first exhibit with helping Americans to get to a place where they at least knew one group of aviators of color – the Tuskegee Airmen. The Tuskegee Airmen were the military’s first black pilots during World War II in the 1940s. She says that the strength of this second and newest “Black Wings” exhibit is that it goes far beyond the Tuskegee Airmen to inform its visitors about other trail-blazers, some of whom, though lesser known, made huge contributions in aviation and aerospace.
In fact, Foley says blacks had been piloting planes since not long after the Wright Brothers’ first successful powered airplane flight in 1903, well before the formation of the Tuskegee Airmen.
The “Black Wings” exhibit runs through Oct. 4 at the Air Zoo, at 6151 Portage Road, Portage. Entry to the exhibition is part of the museum's general admission price.
This story on the WestSouthwest public affairs show aired at 9:30 a.m. today (8/20), with a re-broadcast at 3:30 p.m.
Correction: The on-air version of the story should have stated that the first exhibit was in the 1980s.
