Retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Lee A. Archer, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen who is considered to be the only black ace pilot, died Wednesday at the age of 90.
Like his fellow Tuskegee Airman, activist and entrepreneur Percy Sutton, you can file Archer's life under the "well-lived" category.
Not only did Archer overcome racial barriers by becoming a pilot during a time when the vein of thinking in the U.S. military was that blacks weren't smart enough to do so, he attained ace status by shooting down five planes.
"It is generally conceded that Lee Archer was the first and only black ace pilot," credited with shooting down five enemy planes, Dr. Roscoe Brown Jr., a fellow Tuskegee Airman and friend, said in a telephone interview Thursday with the Associated Press. "A War Department study in 1925 expressly stated that Negroes didn't have the intelligence, or the character, or the leadership to be in combat units, and particularly, they didn't have the ability to be Air Force pilots."
After being a double trailblazer in the military, Archer went on to become a trailblazer in the business world by becoming one of a few top black executives at the time, financing important deals for other key black-owned corporations and opening his own venture capital firm.
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Like his fellow Tuskegee Airman, activist and entrepreneur Percy Sutton, you can file Archer's life under the "well-lived" category.
Not only did Archer overcome racial barriers by becoming a pilot during a time when the vein of thinking in the U.S. military was that blacks weren't smart enough to do so, he attained ace status by shooting down five planes.
"It is generally conceded that Lee Archer was the first and only black ace pilot," credited with shooting down five enemy planes, Dr. Roscoe Brown Jr., a fellow Tuskegee Airman and friend, said in a telephone interview Thursday with the Associated Press. "A War Department study in 1925 expressly stated that Negroes didn't have the intelligence, or the character, or the leadership to be in combat units, and particularly, they didn't have the ability to be Air Force pilots."
After being a double trailblazer in the military, Archer went on to become a trailblazer in the business world by becoming one of a few top black executives at the time, financing important deals for other key black-owned corporations and opening his own venture capital firm.
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