Crazy About Airplanes: The Character of Charles Dryden, a Tuskegee Airman

Model airplanes dancing from strings. All types of planes adorning the ceiling of a young boy’s room. A boy crazy about flying growing up to become one of the first Tuskegee Airmen. “We knew he was going to do something with airplanes,” says Charles Dryden’s sister Pauline. “He was crazy about airplanes!”

And yet, during the years following his birth in 1920, barriers for Black people abounded. Segregation and discrimination were rampant. Jim Crow laws and customs permeated southern life, codifying segregation, and establishing separate railway cars, drinking fountains, and theatre seats. Klu Klux Klan membership was on the rise. Blacks couldn’t vote. Lynchings were legal and were often celebrated by Whites with partying. Blacks fled the south by the millions for Northern cities during the Great Migration, and then found themselves segregated into dangerous black ghettos, where they faced overpriced housing, exploitative landlords, and the practice of “last hired, first fired.” They fought back in riots that erupted around the country. How, in this discriminatory and tumultuous environment was Charles going to be able to make his dreams to fly a reality?

And yet he did. In fact, just before he died, President George Bush said, when honoring Charles and other Tuskegee Airmen with the Congressional Gold Medal, “The Tuskegee Airmen helped win a war and helped change our nation for the better. [Theirs] is the story of the human spirit, and it ends like all great stories do – with wisdom and lessons and hope for tomorrow.” Shirley Franklin, as Mayor of the City of Atlanta said they “helped pave the way for equality among African-American fighter pilots.” Charles and the rest of the Tuskegee Airmen played a major role in proving that African-Americans were not inferior to Whites in any way. They helped advance the cause of African-American successes and leadership in all areas of American life.

So, what was it that enabled this man to be accepted into the 2^nd class of the Tuskegee Army Flying School and to become a member of the 99^th Pursuit Squadron, the squadron that, during WWII, escorted bombers to their target locations and never lost a bomber to enemy fighters? What was it that enabled him to succeed in a segregated Army, to be part of a group whose success challenged segregation in the military and won desegregation in 1948, and to become a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force? What was it that enabled him to succeed so exuberantly that he received the Congressional Gold Medal and was welcomed to address the New York State Legislature?

I asked his sister, Pauline, her thoughts about how her brother succeeded when so many other Black men were over-challenged by racism and failure. In her answer, she told the story of her parents emigrating to the United States from Jamaica as young adults. In Jamaica, she said, education and talent were rewarded, regardless of color of skin. And so her parents hadn’t been molded by a culture in which hundreds of years of slavery and oppression had demoralized an entire race, limiting their possibilities and laying waste to their self-esteem. In fact, Charles and Pauline and brother Denis hadn’t inherited the sense that they were “less than,” that they couldn’t achieve, or that their future was automatically limited by their skin color.

Charles said that his father, Charles Levy Tucker Dryden, and his mother, Violet Adina Dryden, held an “abiding faith in God and a dedication to educating their three children” that set him on the road to achieving his childhood dreams of becoming a pilot. The Drydens’ spirituality was clearly in evidence. Mom would have became a nun had Dad not returned in time from WWI to persuade her otherwise. And as family, they attended the Presbyterian Church. Pauline tells the story of a loving family who set their children up to succeed, telling them to “go for it” and follow their dreams. They faced difficulties with the mottos, “Nothing beats a trial but a failure” and “Not to worry, press on regardless.”

Both parents had also been educators and their close extended family – mom had five sisters living nearby on Sugar Hill in New York City -- set good examples for educational achievement. Indeed, the Dryden children excelled in school, were able to gain entrance to exclusive White schools, and pursued higher education. Pauline became a social worker after attending Hunter College and then pursued graduate school at Columbia University. Charles attended the Civilian Pilot Training Program at the City College of New York to obtain his pilot’s lesson. He spent the rest of this life pursuing educational opportunities and excellence, inside and outside of the military, earning degrees in political science from Hofstra University and public law from Columbia University. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Hoftstra.

And yet, despite these auspicious beginnings and ongoing accomplishments, Charles often found himself bitter about the racism that challenged his pursuits in the military. He and his colleagues were risking their lives for their country, succeeding in ways that White pilots had not succeeded, and yet, Black pilots were forced to live and eat and recreate in substandard facilities separate from those available to White servicemen. At one point he even faced court martial and dishonorable discharge. He had expected the military to be different from the rest of society, and it simply wasn’t. Even the Germans, during WWII, wondered why Blacks fought for a country that treated them so badly.

Charles overlooked his own pain at such humiliating treatment in order to be able to fly. And he excelled. But he didn’t stop there. He extended a hand to other Black men, demonstrating tremendous leadership, and inspiring others to succeed as he had. He served as a professor of air science at Howard University, leading the ROTC, and encouraging other young Black men who wanted to fly.

His is a story of overcoming massive obstacles to achieve incredible success, a success powered by faith in God, family encouragement, pursuit of education, determination, and love of flying. His is a story of sacrifice and risk that saved the lives of other American fighters and led many African American youth to success in their military careers. His story is not absent fear and failure and loss. And yet he overcame and led others to do the same. As he frequently recited from the poem High Flight by Pilot Officer Gillespie McGee, “I have slipped the surly bonds of earth. . . and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of. . . I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space; put out my hand and touched the face of God.”