Katherine Sharp Landdeck
Historian, author of The Women with Silver Wings, and professor of history at Texas Woman's University, director of the Pioneers Oral History Project.
2
APPEARANCES
1
PODCASTS
May 26, 2025
22:10
And, you know, the Black women wanted to serve their country as much as any other group of women, right? And the opportunities were even more limited because of their race.
22:23
You know, you have a number of women, Black women, who applied to be the women pilots.
22:38
And they were quite often, Jacqueline Cochrane was the leader and said, Look, we're, we're fighting to get women to fly these airplanes, a desegregated group is going to be next to impossible, and sent them, you know, and said, Thank you for wanting to serve your country.
23:25
yeah exactly and you know the black women wanted to serve their country as much as any other group of women right and uh the opportunities were even more limited because of their because of their race you know you have a number of women black women who applied to be the women pilots they were qualified they'd had the training and and were pilots and they were turned down because they were black and they were quite often, Jacqueline Cochrane was the leader and said, look, we're fighting to get women to fly these airplanes.
24:03
A desegregated group is going to be next to impossible and sent them and said, thank you for wanting to serve your country and the Women's Army Corps is taking women.
24:17
And, you know, it's one of those pieces that opportunities missed for sure.
24:23
But yeah, you know, the Women's Army Corps had 145,000 women total, and over 6,500 of those women were Black women.
24:28
But It's one of those things where the structure of the military was set up to discriminate.