George S. ‘Spanky’ Roberts

George Spencer "Spanky" Roberts was born on the twenty-fourth of September 1918 in London, Kanawha County, West Virginia. The son of a Black family in the Mountain State's coal country, he was raised in Fairmont, West Virginia, where he graduated from Dunbar High School in 1934. From those hills he set his sights higher than any Black West Virginian had yet been permitted to fly, enrolling in the Civilian Pilot Training Program before the nation's armed forces would open their cockpits to men of his color.

In July 1941 Roberts became the first cadet accepted into the U.S. Army Air Corps' aviation cadet training program at Tuskegee Army Air Field, the opening name on the roll of the airmen who would become legend. On the sixth of March 1942 he graduated with Class 42-C-SE, one of only five to complete that first class, alongside Benjamin O. Davis Jr. He was the first African American military pilot from West Virginia to earn his wings.

On the first of June 1942 Roberts became the first African American commander of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, later the 99th Fighter Squadron, which he helped lead through combat over North Africa and Italy. Flying more than one hundred missions, he later commanded the 332nd Fighter Group and, in 1950 at Langley Air Force Base, became the first African American officer to command a racially integrated unit in the U.S. Air Force.

He retired as a colonel in 1968 after service through the Korean War, then built a second career in banking in Sacramento, California, where he died on the eighth of March 1984. May the trailblazer who was first to answer the call, and first to lead, be honored for the skies he opened to all who followed.