Like so many others in the late 1930s, the young black Americans who would become known as the Tuskegee Airmen were eager for military service as the war in Europe and Asia intensified. What set them apart was that they wanted to fight as pilots, something that black people had never been allowed to do. Many applied to U.S. Army Air Corps’ training program, but all initially were rejected. Carol Anderson, associate professor of African American studies and history at Emory University, recounts their experience as part of a discussion on civil rights and World War II. The presentation closes the series War Stories: World War II Remembered, which is co-presented by the Truman Library Institute and made possible by funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.