Black Horizons; General James

On August 28, 1975, two very significant and historic events took place in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The first event was a ceremony in which General Daniel Chappie James became the first black man to become a four-star general in the history of the United States Armed Forces. This historic event was followed by another event of equal importance, Approximately one hour later, General L.D. Clay Jr., who has retired after 33 years of outstanding military service, turned over to General James the command of all the air and space attack warning forces for the United States and Canada. The official title for these combined military forces is the North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD. Thus, General Daniel James, a veteran of 32 years of service and a combat flyer in two wars,

has become the eighth commander-in-chief of NORAD since its establishment in 1957. 57. NORAD is based in beautiful Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Let's take a brief look at this fantastic military facility that has become the key to our country's military defense. The North American Air Defense Command, located near Colorado Springs, Colorado, is responsible for strategic warning of an attack on our continent and for limited defense against a missile or bomber attack. Central control of all aerospace defense activity is carried out from the Cheyenne Mountain Combat Operations Center. It is one of the most secure installations ever constructed by man and is located in a four and a half acre chamber under hundreds of feet of solid granite deep inside 100 million year old Cheyenne Mountain.

A major segment of the overall NORAD defense surveillance operation is the Space Defense Center. The men and women of this ultra sophisticated activity have the job of detecting and tracking all man-made objects in near-Earth orbit. First indication of a missile launch would probably come from one of NORAD's orbiting satellites. The warning would be passed to the Combat Operations Center by communications satellites. Data flowing from all over the world would feed into the computers in Cheyenne Mountain. The Ballistics Missile Warning System with sites in England, as well as Greenland and Alaska, would take this data and precisely track the rising missile. This new information would flow back to NORAD. Battle staff duty officers in the NORAD command post would study the computer data and direct the Space Defense Center to analyze the now-orbiting missile to determine its orbit around the Earth. This warning would be instantly analyzed and passed to the National Command Authorities in Canada and the United States from the Cheyenne Mountain Combat Operations Center, the underground headquarters of NORAD.

Good evening. I'm Bubba Jackson. The new commander of NORAD is my guest tonight, General Daniel Chappie James. General James, we'd like to welcome you to Black Horizons. One question I would like to ask you is where did you get the nickname Chappie? Well, there's really nothing newsworthy about it. It happened to be my brother's nickname, my brother Charles. At that time when I was growing up in northwest Florida, all Charles were Chappies like all Richard's Dick. and that and he happened to be an all-american football player tremendous football player the only reason he's not in the history books of the great professional teams is blacks weren't accepted in football can you imagine a guy could pass with either hand kick with either foot wait about 240 and do your hundred and about 10 seconds flat unless my big brother Charles Chappie James and I was Chappie James little brother and I was always being compared to my big brother when I came along and played football not as well as he of course. So that's where you got the nickname Champy. Yes. Okay, what I'd like to do is to go back to your early time in terms of getting into the military, your training at Tuskegee. Can you

just tell us a little bit about that? Well, Tuskegee became a natural place to to start out blacks in the Army Air Corps because at that time Tuskegee had a civilian government-sponsored program called Civilian Pilot Training Program, and ours was the largest. Several other black schools, predominantly black schools, had them, but Tuskegee had the largest program. We had both the primary, secondary, cross-country, and advanced. So you could go right up to flight instructor, and although the the airlines were not hiring blacks, and I know blacks were being admitted into the armed forces, many of us had gone through this course and had gotten up to the instructor reading so when the decision was made to allow blacks to come into the Army Air Corps and it was the first of the services to accept them the Navy didn't accept them until after the war then they put the program in at Tuskegee and they made it a segregated program all of the blacks went to Tuskegee went

to black to Tuskegee for pre-flight for a primary set of advanced and basic and advance and fight a transition. It was quite a quite a thing just to survive the traffic pattern because they wanted to keep us all in the same area. The whites went to one place for primary, one place for basic, then another place for advanced, Randolph and Kelly, and then the combat crew training centers. But they had had us very carefully segregated, very closely hand-picked. Most of the guys were either college graduates or had at least two years college. I don't know of anybody that was a that came through at the time that I was there that didn't have at least a couple of years of college and so it was a pretty select group highly motivated the majority of them they we underwent a lot of human indignities because there were some people naturally as could be expected in a case like that who who were trying to prove that we couldn't fly rather than to teach us to fly all of the instructors that the army had

then were white and many of them told us outright that they wanted to see the program fail. To those of us who were determined that it would succeed that only heightened our motivation and so it did succeed and that story has been documented very well I think. Do you feel that that the training that you guys received at Tuskegee because it was segregated did it help the black pilots more or did it hamper them? Dependent on the individual. I think some young men who would have been able to get through today's program without the hazing and the kind of dehumanizing things that happened down there and they washed out because they were declared attitude cases. They got disgusted and they lost their motivation and would say nothing is worth this. But the tough guys, I don't want to say the tough guys I want to say the guys who had determined before they ever got there like one good example is the late Hubert L Jones from this town

in Denver who was one of the guys that kept saying keep your eye on the mark man you know what we came down here to do that guy has got his wings we don't have ours and that's what we came I remember one night they had a very bad situation downtown where they had a big fight and a couple of the black enlisted men got shot down at a segregated theater and the the majority of the guys and on the base especially the enlisted men were saying let's go down here and take this town apart and I remember General Davis who was then a captain and saying now just a moment you know wait a minute now what we came down here to do was not to solve the social problems this this may be a byproduct of what we achieve later on if we're successful in this. But I think, I think we came down here to learn to fly. I think that was our objective when the first night. If I'm wrong, you guys tell me. But I want to suggest that we not get involved in this. We're not going to win any physical confrontation with those

people down there. Let's go on with what we're here to do. And there were numerous episodes like this that would crop up where we had to be reminded by some cool heads that would step up to some of the guys who were a little more volatile like myself and say, hey man, you know, now's not the time, later. Okay, in reference to now is not the time, later on you did do a few things and I believe one was in Kentucky that you participated in a sitting at that time. Can you just tell us just a little bit about that incident? Yes, you see, the plan that we had all along and that had been we had some pretty good advice incidentally because we had as highly educated guys as I told you like Hubert Jones but we had others who had been educated specifically in constitutional law and like William L Coleman who is now a member of the president's cabinet as secretary of transportation and we had we were getting advice from Thurgood Marshall who was then the general counsel of the NAACP and they had all

told us Truman Gibson of Chicago who was Joe Lewis's attorney later on and they would say listen don't go rushing out there right now breaking the regulations that are existing let's stay right inside the system here and let's try the system all the way before we move outside the system to try to get this thing soft let's challenge the system to do what it's supposed to do and that's what we did we went to the officers club we started out with public accommodations because they were the most visible and for some reason that seemed to get under bigot skin more than are you going to a classroom to sit down and learn a skill with him he didn't want you to sit at the bar and have a beer with him it's you know bigotry has always been unexplainably stupid but that was one of the things so we said okay let's kind of touch these guys where they're sensitive and we went to the clubs, we went to the theater, we refused to sit in the places that had been roped off for us and they warned us

a few times and then they arrested 101 of us. Thurgood Marshall came down and as the general counsel of the NAACP they sent him down to try the case. They took three of us and made a test case of it and those three were acquitted and the case was thrown out. Now I must explain right here that young people who have heard me speak in various auditoriums and college campuses where I'm urging young black people to work within the system say to me well Chappie you went outside the system then when you did that you know. Well actually we had tried the system all the way through and the system was not responsive at that time. The laws were on the books. They were the ones that were breaking the laws. We were not breaking the laws at all because there was a law on the books right then that they said there would be no segregated public accommodations on any military installations and so when President Truman has an outgrowth of all of this came out with his public law that said there will be no more

segregated facilities on any military establishments and cut out all the separate but equal all he was saying was obey the law man the law was there all along and what I'm telling the youngsters today is that you don't have to go to that length because the system is receptive now. It's not as receptive as it could be. I'm not saying everything is all right. Mark me well because I get misquoted on this. I'm saying that things are so much better and I'm trying to get the young people to assess the progress we've made from those early days at Tuskegee to my position now on Cheyenne Mountain. It's a long way from Tuskegee to Cheyenne Mountain but I can still see every painful step and I can see how less painful they got as I got towards the top with authority and that's what I'm trying to get that young black lad to do or any other minority to do is to hang in there with the system and get prepared to compete and to take advantage and to solidify the gains that we made everything's not all right we've still got another mile to run in this race for total equality but we got a better track surface to run it on now and I just

want these youngsters to stay in the race because the trophies out there at that finish line are much better now than they've ever been before quoting something you said in an article in every Ebony magazine you mentioned something about unity and you feel that this is one of the probably the best phenomena that has happened to the black experience in America and does does that feeling tie into what you're just saying yes it does but not just unity along racial lines I'm talking about total unity with all of the people of this country one of the things that I abhor more than anything else is polarization because that's limiting you see we have too many minorities there's too much reverse racism right now you know some of the best practicing bigots I see right now black you know and they had a lot of training because they got segregated against a lot and a lot of luck but I see a lot of people that are screaming about the back of the bus that never sat there well I did and I know how dehumanizing it it was and I'm not going back there I hear people talking about going back to Africa my answer is

heck I didn't come from there 1606 North Alconee Street Pensacola Florida that's me United States citizen my heritage is here my future is here I will contribute and I tell them don't get so busy practicing your right to dissent that you forget your responsibility to contribute and you'll prosper in proportion as you contribute to this country and you're in a position to demand when you have the talent to produce and you'll prosper in proportion as you exhibit that my mother talked about something called the power of excellence the power she said it's the only power on this earth it's worth your investing in my son is the power of your own individual excellence and you develop that and develop it well and you use that to spring forward your way to the top of your field whatever it is and you'll find that you can exert more influence from on top with authority to solve the ills that still beset your people under the bottom than you can with a brick or torch or sign so get up there and I heard her and she's right and it's possible here you can't stand there banging on that door of opportunity yelling let me in let me in

let me in and all of a sudden somebody snatches open the door and you say wait a minute I gotta go get my bag and you stand there armed with your bags of knowledge and your bags of intelligence your bags of desire and your bags of drive and when they crack that door you walk in and take charge it's possible here more than it is in any other country in the world they say they're going into the military when you go in and from the time you go in to the time you come out there's a change what would what would you tell black youth or the minority youth today about the opportunities or lack of opportunities depending on how one would like to look at it in the military today there is a change but from the time naturally that you go into anything because of the way you apply yourself or a different stimuli that comes just from being there and the military is no different there's so many learning situations that don't happen in the in the classroom and the fact that you mature if you stay in there for a 20-year tour or 30-year tour or whatever you decide to do now as you

apply yourself you it's just like any other highly competitive field like this or like United Steel you know if you decide that you want to be a branch manager you got to work to be a branch manager you don't just have to say listen we got to have a quota of 15 black branch branches and then when they started looking around for that 15 quarters they got the same old cop out that said I couldn't find one that's qualified you got to take that excuse away from them by getting more young blacks qualified and so that's how you change in the service you don't just make black generals you know one of the most insulting questions that gets asked to me sometimes is did they give you your fourth star just because it's a bicentennial year coming up and they wanted to say we got a black in one word one question this guy has wiped out all the blood and sweat and tears and preparation and effort that it took me to prepare myself to fill the squares to fight the wars to go to the schools to go to Airwood University and to study deep into the night to hone my skills as

a fighter pilot and to get out there over way north and skies much less friendly than those united and fight my way back home in the name of the foreign policy of my country. Now they didn't give me anything and they don't give away stars in my service. You've got to earn them. Generals are made, they're not born. And you'll find that in most any worthwhile endeavor that you find. And so I want young black people, young white people, young red people, everybody to turn loose the crutch that used to be there and when there were these inequities I want them to prepare themselves now to take advantages of all of the gains solidify the gains that we have made over the years and this is certainly possible in the military there's absolutely no comparison in the military of 20 years ago even to the military of today we've got a good example I can't name you all the black generals in the military yeah I used to be able to do that real easy because there wasn't but two of them the father

and son both of the name was Davis and I have people sometimes black people come up to me and say how you doing General Davis I'm pleased to meet you you know but this I can't name you all the black generals anymore because there's so many and the same way with Congress in civics class in high school I used to like for them I'd look all the way down the paper to find that question name the black congressman well the one with one his name was Dawson I find that question I knew I had that one but now I might miss that one because I can't sit here right off without thinking very hard and name you all of the black members of Congress because that's progress my mother used to say there's two Negroes we can do without that first one and that only the only one to do that I'm looking forward to the day when so many of us will be doing so many things noteworthy will no longer be newsworthy we've arrived in the military we are arriving that way in the Congress of the United States and other worthwhile endeavors the same way And I just want the kids to keep pressing and keep prepared and just keep moving far It sounds as though two comments you made in reference to your mother that she has a

Degree on on life in terms of how to live it in a way that you can benefit the most in the short time that we are You know here on this particular earth No doubt about it. She was the strongest single influence on my life. My father contributed a lot to my father was a a more, I don't want to say crude, but he was just a no-nonsense guy. He was bringing in the bread all the time. And we were a tight family, and he stayed right with my mother until he died, and she never married again. You come from a large family. A large family. I'm number 17 with 17 kids. And they used to say, stick in there. My mother taught all of us that grew to be that age through the 8th grade because she didn't like the segregated school systems of Pensacola, Florida. And she established her own little private school, and that's where I went to school through the 8th grade. my mother and she was a philosopher of sorts she taught us all of these things about uh you know contributing excel perform perform excel excel contribute contribute you know uh and very great patriot and she was the one that said don't you abdicate your citizenship in this country

this is your country right here and you prepare yourself to reap the rewards that are yours here as an American citizen. Don't you abdicate that citizenship to anybody. And she said, don't you along the way while you're preparing yourself. Don't you ever turn your back on your God or your country or that flag. She's yours and you make it better by having been here. And she believed that. And again, I heard her. And she was right. Things, assess the progress. That's what we want to get the young people to do today. Assess the progress. When I'm talking about that unity again, I'm talking about all of us, of all colors, races, and creeds. Now, we're not going to ever reach that Valhalla in your time or mine that the practicing bigot isn't going to get his oar in. They're still around, and they're still making progress. Some of the hate groups are still stronger now in some places than they've been before. But so many of them have died out. And they'll continue to die out because the thing that defeats that more than anything else is knowledge and understanding and communications.

And it's got to cross racial lines. that polarization and separatism never only together you know you talk about security that's one that's one of the biggest things that will contribute to my not having to practice my skills as a warrior again a lot of people think that that warriors like war that's a very popular misconception nobody dislikes war worse than warriors because we're the ones that have to fight and get shot at but we will not accept peace at any cost and when you're going around shouting freedom now first of all you got to have a place to be free and well this is mine right here united states of america and the thing that preserves that unity and that peace more than anything else the thing that deserves that peace more than anything else and that will preserve is unity within the people no would be world conqueror is willing to jump on any nation that's not divided within itself it makes it easy for him when we start squabbling among ourselves about whose side of the street is this you see but as we band together and as

we try to understand each other better as we break down the old cliches and as we eliminate one by one people's excuses for hating each other and stop finding so many ways to hate each other because of race creed religion social strata section of the block political party fawning on somebody else's scandal my goodness gracious life forget Watergate press ahead that's the only way to go is fired and that's what we need in this country and that's what scares the pants off of any enemy on the other side and that's the only way to fly there's uh in terms of what you were just saying there's a um i believe well i guess you would call him a singer his name is john cassandra and he has a record out called color me human one of the things he says in the record is we as human beings ought to stop working with what's wrong and begins to work with what's right to to deal with with life itself in terms of solving some of our problems you were talking a minute ago about warriors and you picked up another name a nickname which was the original black panther can you tell us where that came from well

that black panther is a different breed of cat he's the one that's popularly known today it had nothing to do with the black panther party I was in the Philippines was the first integrated outfit that I went to when they broke down the segregated outfits in 1949 and the first guy that walked out and stuck his hand out to me was a southern white lad from Louisiana named Spud Taylor and he was a musician and I'm a musician of sorts I like music and you play drums brushed the little drums and sang a little bit and for our own amusement we did. And old Spud, he came over and stuck out his hand and said, what do you say? My name's Spud, tell her what's yours. And from then on, we had a real tight relationship. So we were putting different symbols on our helmets, you know, and things like that. And he said, boy, I got just the one for you because you're a swinging black cat. I'm going to draw a black cat on your helmet visor. And he did. He drew a leaping Black Panther. And so I wore that helmet all through the Korean war days and a Chinese reporter came in and wrote a story the first story that

came out they referred to me as the Black Panther of the Korean War and they thought it was no newsworthy at that time because I was a flight leader and all the other members of my flight were white Spud Taylor was killed incidentally in that war and my youngest son is named for him Claude Taylor the third and his name was Claude Taylor the third and mine is Claude Taylor James and then everybody calls him Spud and he's a swinging Cadillac old Claude Taylor was. What about some of the the other tours that you've had? You had what 78 missions over at Vietnam? That was north in Vietnam. We counted the ones only the ones that you went north of the Red River is north. Now you are now the commander of NORAD and how do you see this role right now as a four-star general well it's a very it's so much responsibility involved here that it's frightening I wouldn't like to use the term frightening it's only to realize

that you are trusted with this kind of responsibility and that the chief of staff of my service feels that I can hack this job and the president of the United States concurs you start from there and you start with a lot of pride and this is another thing that my mother taught me. She said, always maintain your pride because sometimes that might be the only thing you've got left and I start from there with a lot of pride in the fact that I was chosen for this job and a lot of a confidence in my ability to do the job. I love my country fiercely so it follows that it's fitting that I should be given the job to defend her if the time ever comes and to put up such a great possibility of defense that can be perceived by any would-be enemy that it will deter him from trying to attack us and so I've got the job of early warning and surveillance and I've got the job of a limited air defense capability and so I feel like I can do both I have a very good rapport with my people we have a mutual respect I have

led people before and we relate to each other I believe in getting the job done and having as much fun as we can while we're doing it and so far i've been able to do both general james we would like to say thank you for coming here and sharing your views uh here on our show tonight we really really appreciate it it has been very enlightening well thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here. This is Bubba Jackson. Good night. Thank you.

We'll be right back.