A Piper J-3 Cub model similar to the plane that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt asked Chief Flight Instructor Charles “Chief” Anderson to give her a rode in back in April of 1941. The First lady was visiting Tuskegee and asked Chief Anderson about the popularly held belief that black people could not fly. In response, Anderson promptly invited her to take a flight with him over the Tuskegee campus. This 40-minute trip proved to be an enormous boom for black aviation at Tuskegee and in America. If you look closer, you’ll notice Mrs. Roosevelt in the backseat of the plane and Anderson in the front seat.

Details

The plane is part of my H.E.R.O.E.S. (Honoring Excellence Regardless of Ethnic Stigmas) mobile exhibit to the Tuskegee Airmen. It is housed here in Oxnard, California. The plane is made by Hobby Craft and is a 1/48th scale Piper J-3 Cub. The figures of Chief Anderson and Eleanor Roosevelt are 1/50th scale (so that they fit in the cockpit), while the attendant is 1/48th scale.

Learn more about Charles “Chief” Anderson in TUSKEGEE AIRMEN PROFILES!