Our Stories

Lieutenant, 681th Bomb Squadron, 477th Bomb Group, Tuskegee Airman, USAAF

I was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. on September 2, 1925. I am the youngest boy in a family of five children, two boys and three girls. I am the middle child, with one girl and one boy older than me and two girls younger. My brother is three years older than me and my sister is two years older, my next younger sister is six years my junior, and the baby of the family is eight years younger than me.

Our parents were Jesse E. Bolden Sr. and Laulie Alma Sullivan Bolden. Both of my parents are graduates of Tuskegee. My brother and sisters are also graduates of Tuskegee.

I attended Tuskegee when I was in the Army Air Forces. I had the opportunity to serve in the segregated Army Air Corps during 1943 to 1946. I will relate my experiences when I served in the Army.

I took an early interest in flying. Charles Lindberg crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. I was a toddler of two years old at that time. He was acclaimed a national hero for his feat. When I grew up, every time I saw an airplane, I would say it was Lindberg. When I became a teen, I, like many of my friends built model airplanes, not the  plastic ones of today but ones made of balsa wood and tissue paper. When I reached my sophomore year in high school, the school counselor asked me to select my high school courses. I told her that I was interested in becoming an Army pilot and an engineer. She did not want me to pursue these fields.  The Army did not take blacks for pilot training and all the black engineers that she knew were not practicing engineering but were working in the post offices as clerks or mail carriers. I insisted that I wanted to enter these two fields. When we could not agree on a suitable course, she requested that I bring my father to school to discuss my options. I brought my father to school the next day and he requested that she allow me to follow my plans. This called for me to take a college preparatory course of study in high school. 

I succeeded in my goal to become both an Army Air Force Pilot and Engineer. During the second World War, the Army reluctantly allowed blacks to be trained as pilots, bombardiers, and navigators. The reluctance of the Army to train blacks was because of a War Department report generated in 1925 at Maxwell Field in Alabama. The war college report stated that blacks did not make good soldiers. It was reported that they would show cowardice under battle conditions. Blacks did not have the ability to fly airplanes because they lacked the needed intelligence and physical dexterity. This report was made even though blacks have fought in every was the United States has been involved in. In World War I, black troops did not fight under American Commands  because the American officers used them only for Quartermaster duty or labor battalions. The black troops that were used in battle were under the command of the French, who had black troops of their own. The French used Senegalese troops who they considered to be top troops.

Due to pressure from the black press and other black civil rights organizations the Army, established a flying school to train

Police Officer Richard Thomas was shot and killed from ambush while walking his beat near the intersection of Forrest Avenue and Highland Avenue.

Officer Thomas was leaving a store and was walking down the stairs from the front porch when he was shot without warning by a man on the sidewalk. He was struck in the face and killed instantly.

The subject who shot him was a criminal who was well known to police officers in the area, and he was married to Officer Thomas' niece. He fled the scene and remained at large for 10 years until turning himself in to the Baltimore Police Department, Maryland, in 1932. He was returned to Pennsylvania where he pleaded guilty to second degree murder and sentenced to nine to 18 years in prison.

Officer Thomas had served with the Washington City Police Department for only a few months. He was survived by his wife and 10 children.