How One 1939 Flight Helped Advocate for Black Military Pilots

Chauncey Spencer and Dale White were charged with flying to Washington, DC to advocate for opportunities for Black pilots in the military.  

The mission was simple to explain, much harder to do.

The Plan

In 1939, World War II loomed. Pilots were badly needed, but Black pilots were barred from joining the Army by racist policies.  

The National Airmen’s Association of America (NAAA), an organization of Black pilots, and the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper, funded a “Goodwill Flight.” Pilots would fly a single plane from Chicago to Washington, DC to urge lawmakers to create equal access to flying for the military. Along the way, the pilots would stop in ten cities, advocating for Black pilots and encouraging the African American pilots they met to attend the NAAA’s upcoming air meet. 

The Pilots

Chauncey Spencer and Dale White were selected as the pilots for the Goodwill Flight.  

Like many other pilots, Spencer was captivated by flight as a child after taking a joyride with a visiting pilot. However, unlike his white counterparts no one in his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia would train a Black pilot. Ultimately, he moved to Chicago to train.  

The move was a successful one. Spencer worked in a kitchen, using his wages to fund flying lessons. By 1934, he’d help found the NAAA. He was known for captivating spectators with his stunts as a barnstorming pilot. He would parachute from a plane, unharnessing himself from one parachute, letting it fly away, before releasing a secret second one when he was closer to the ground.

Dale White also moved to Chicago after growing up in the American South. He received his pilot’s license in June 1936 and was active in flying circles like the Challenger Air Pilots Association. 

By 1939, they were selected as the men to fly to Washington, and represent Black pilots there.

A Turbulent Takeoff

Spencer and White took off from Chicago on May 8, 1939. However, White recorded in his logbook, hey soon were “forced down … for six hours, broken gas lines.” Gas lines fixed, they were airborne again. Later that day, they were forced down again with a broken crank shaft and nose plate. This time they crash landed on a farm of a white family in Sherwood, Ohio.  

A crash landing for any aviator could be dangerous, but for a Black aviator in the 1930s—it could be deadly. Segregation was law and racial violence was on the rise. One can only imagine what the men felt emerging from their airplane to see the white family they had literally dropped in on.  

However, the family who owned the farm, the Millers, were kind to the aviators. Anne Ebersole (nee Miller) remembered it as “the most wonderous thing that had happened to me in my whole life.” Anne’s father greeted the men, drove them into town for lunch, where they wired back to Chicago for help.  

The NAA raised $54 (equivalent to over $1,000 today) for the new crankshaft in just two days and pioneering aviator Cornelius Coffey himself drove the part to Ohio.  

Spencer and White resumed their trip three days later. Chauncey Spencer described their reception at their other stops as “swell … we’re so unusual they think we’re little gods.” However, this wasn’t true for all the stops.  

A Dangerous Diversion

Morgantown, WV was one of the planned stops for the Goodwill Flight. However, when the pilots landed, the men were “refused storage” at the airport and directed to Pittsburgh.  

“There’s no dusk in that town. When the sun sets, it does just that. It drops behind the most inconvenient mountain and light suddenly goes out,” White recalled. This was a problem for the small aircraft with no lights, whose red markings were blending in with the dark sky. “We didn’t know what plane, unable to see us, might crash into us,” White later told reporters.

Ultimately, the pilots saw the light of a county airport and followed a commercial plane in, using the other plane’s lights to land. It was a risky maneuver, and the men were grounded by the Civil Aeronautics Authority.  

The grounding could have completely derailed the Goodwill Flight. However, a prominent Black journalist in Pittsburgh intervened and men were soon free to go.  

Welcome to Washington

Finally, White and Spencer finally arrived in D.C. While they executed a perfect landing, this was arguably their most challenging stop yet.  

In Congress, representatives were debating whether to allocate funds for training Black pilots as part of the preparation for World War II. Edgar G. Brown, a member of Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet, escorted the pilots to meet with lawmakers. Spencer recalled the initial visits with Congressmen as a letdown, stating “Those guys … were interested in themselves.”

However, according to Spencer, their luck turned when they met then Senator Harry S. Truman in a stairwell. Spencer recounted that the pilots arranged to meet again with Truman, this time at the airfield in Virginia with their rented plane. Recounting that second meeting, Spencer quotes Truman saying “If you had guts enough to fly that thing I see there … I got guts to fight to get you into the Air Corps.” 

Did Spencer and White’s Goodwill Flight Achieve Its Goal?

The trip didn’t result in immediate action. In fact, that summer the House of Representatives voted 207 to 43 against earmarking money to train Black military pilots. However, that would soon change. As a result of the advocacy efforts of many Black pilots and supporters, Black pilots were admitted in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP). The CPTP in turn paved the way for the Tuskegee Airmen.  

By 1941, White was too old to apply for pilot training, which was capped at 37 years. Spencer, however, was seven years younger. He joined the Army in 1940, then served in the Army Air Forces briefly before ultimately being discharged due to his age.   

What Did Spencer and White Do After Their Goodwill Flight?

White and Spencer moved to Ohio, where they briefly sharing an apartment along with their wives. Both found work at Patterson Field (later known as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base).  

White worked at there as a mechanic for 30 years. Spencer was tasked with implementing executive orders to integrate the military. In 1948, he received the Exceptional Civilian Service Medal for his work.  

Both men lived to see their efforts pay dividends. White died in 1977, the year Tuskegee Airmen Daniel James Jr. became the first African American to reach the rank of four star general. At the time of Spencer’s death in 2006, over 50,000 Air Force personnel were Black. However, as a quick Google search would reveal, the work of advocating for Black military pilots continues today.