they could be heading ? They are shown riding into Macon , Georgia , but instead of staying , they go through town , all the way to Tuskegee Air Field , where older brother is training with the 99th Pursuit Squadron of the Army Air Forces . 7 The 99th Pursuit Squadron ( later , 99th Fighter Squadron ) was the first black flying squadron , and the first to deploy overseas ( to North Africa in April 1943 , and later to Sicily and Italy ). The family watches as the black pilot puts on his gear , climbs into his T-6 Texan training plane , and then they watch as a formation of three planes flies by . 8 Henry Browne , Farmer was nominated for a Best
Documentary Oscar in 1943 . The film shows both a farmer doing ordinary work , and his older son serving as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen . The clinching line at the end of the film is , “ Every American has an important job to do .” Not once does the film mention Farmer Browne ’ s skin color , or his rural southern poverty . Workers and farmers doing ordinary work support the war , but there are reasons for extraordinary sacrifice in dangerous military service . 7
Although the film ’ s narration clearly locates Henry Browne ’ s farm near Macon , Georgia , the Tuskegee Air Field was located in Macon County , Alabama . Either the filmmakers compressed the amount of time it took the Browne family to travel by muledrawn wagon from one location to another or otherwise manipulated facts to serve dramatic and propaganda purposes . This of course raises the question of whether or not the airman shown in the film is really the “ older brother ” of “ Young Henry ” and “ Sister .” If 38-year-old Henry Sr .’ s oldest child was indeed the airman , the Brownes had obviously become first-time parents while still in their teens — a common phenomenon among rural African Americans in the early twentieth-century South . 8 The 2012 feature film , “ Red Tails ,” dramatizes this story of the first African American fighter squadron ( director Anthony Hemingway ). For further discussion of the Tuskegee Airmen and other breakthroughs for African Americans in the World War II military , see Marvin Fletcher , America ’ s First Black General , Benjamin O . Davis , Sr ., 1880-1970 ( Lawrence : University Press of Kansas , 1989 ).
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