“I went straight to the recruitment office and said, ‘I want to fly.’”īut in recent years, Dwight is finally being celebrated. “I said, ‘Oh my God, they’re letting Black people fly,’” Dwight says.
But while in college, he saw in a newspaper, above the fold, an image of a downed Black pilot in Korea. “It was the white man’s domain,” he says. It would be years before Dwight entertained the idea of himself becoming a pilot. “There were no streets or stop signs up there.
“My first flight was the most exhilarating thing in the world,” says Dwight, smiling. But when he was 8 or 9, Dwight asked for more than a dime.
“They’d say to me, ‘Hey kid, would you clean my airplane? I’ll give you a dime,’” Dwight, 90, recalls. Most were flying back from hunting trips and their cabins were messy with blood and empty beers cans on the floor. An airfield was within walking distance, and, as a boy, he’d often go to marvel at the planes and gawk at the pilots. NEW YORK (AP) - Ed Dwight grew up in segregated 1930s Kansas on a farm on the edge of town.