On Feb.1, pioneering African American aviator Mildred Hemmons Carter will be saluted with a program honoring the 70th anniversary of the day she received her pilot’s license. The program will be held at 2 p.m. at the Tuskegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center in Tuskegee, Ala.
Carter earned her ticket in 1941 from the Tuskegee Civilian Pilot Training Program, the same year she graduated with a B.S. in Business from Tuskegee Institute at age 19. When she received her pilot’s license on Feb. 1, 1941, she became the first African American woman in Alabama to do so, and quite possibly the first in the American South to achieve this distinction, according to officials with the center.
She later applied for an advanced program, but was denied on the basis that female private pilots were not being accepted into the secondary program. Later, Carter applied for and was denied acceptance into WASP (Women’s Air Service Program), which was not accepting Negro women. In 1942, Mildred Hemmons married Herbert Carter, a Tuskegee Airman. They continue to live in Tuskegee, Alabama.
For more information: TuskegeeCenter.org
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