La’Tonya Richardson’s Electronic News Gathering class at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff didn’t listen to a lecture or read from a textbook for Wednesday’s afternoon lesson. The lesson came to the students assembled in the Hathaway-Howard Fine Arts Center.
Milton Crenchaw, the last surviving supervising squadron commander flight instructor of the black Tuskegee Airmen of World War II fame, came at the invitation of Richardson, UAPB instructor, who attended church with Arkansas’ first African American aviator while growing up in Little Rock.
The 93-year-old Crenchaw, grandson of a former slave, passed on a number of life lessons: “Education is a great animal to have,” he said. “An education and obeying God will get you out of trouble.”
Crenchaw, who counted over 40 combined years of federal service in the Army Air Corps and the Air Force, said he felt as though he had been trained by God for “going through this world” before he commenced his instruction of just under 1,000 participants in the Tuskegee, Ala., bomber escort program.
Those airmen were among the first to break through the military color barriers, attended college before and after the war, and many returned to help lead the civil rights efforts. Crenchaw said the black fighter pilots and mechanics overcame the adversity of racism, segregation and discrimination during the war to fly their way into the history books.
The young men overcoming long-held negative images were central parts of “Red Tails,” the Tuskegee Airmen’s story now in theaters. Crenchaw knows how the movie ends.
Better communications
In recent days Pine Bluff Assistant Police Chief Ivan Whitfield alleged that Chief Brenda Davis-Jones placed him on administrative leave in retaliation after he refused to identify someone who provided information that reflected badly on her boyfriend.
Weeks earlier Pine Bluff School District Superintendent Jerry Payne was instructed to submit responses to a set of written directives from the Pine Bluff School Board. Some of the questions date back for months
We have a suggestion for the parties involved in the verbal donnybrooks: Learn to communicate plainly and simply.
A college instructor recently encouraged his communications students to follow three rules: No. 1, tell the truth. No. 2, tell the truth. No. 3, don’t lie.
The three rules should apply to anyone working for the public.
Serve warrants
More than 50 police officers from Pine Bluff, Jefferson County, state and federal agencies fanned out in the county Thursday on “Operation Bloodhound” to serve arrest warrants.
They made 21 arrests, including 19 of those on active warrants, and two others on individuals being sought on probable cause but for which no warrants had been issued.
“We’re going to be doing this on a regular basis, so if someone knows they have a warrant for their arrest, they need to contact us and let us serve the warrant or we will come and get them at their home or at their job,” said Maj. Lafayette Woods Jr., operations commander for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department.
That’s communicating a message that law abiding citizens like to hear.