Tuskegee exhibit at Robins AFB wins top honors

Raquel Enero

The hard work of historians and museum curators at Robins AFB's Museum of Aviation is paying off. The museum is being recognized for conveying history and heroism in its "Tuskegee Airmen: A Proud Heritage," exhibit, which recently won the 2012 Air Force Heritage Award.

"It's a great honor for our Museum Exhibit Team to be recognized at the Air Force level," said Dudley Bluhm, museum deputy director. "This exhibit is about heroes, American heroes that kids and adults so desperately seek today. It's been our honor to portray the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen, black Americans who not only fought on the battlefield, but endured the prejudices of the day in order to keep all Americans free."

Robins is not the only base to honor the Tuskegee Airmen, who were part of the first all-African American Air Force unit to serve in the military when segregation was still legal and practiced in the Armed Forces. At Wright Patterson AFB, Ron Spriggs, an eight-year Air Force veteran, noticed the lack of a Tuskegee exhibit when he visited that base's museum, and set out to create it himself, the Bowling Green Daily News reports.

"I didn't want my children and grandchildren to be as ignorant as I was about African-American airmen," the Kentucky resident told the news outlet.

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