LOS ANGELES – One of the famed Tuskegee Airmen — the first Black pilots in the segregated U.S. military and among the most respected fighter pilots of World War II — has died from complications of the coronavirus, it was announced Friday.Theodore Lumpkin Jr.
was just days short of his 101st birthday.Lumpkin, a Los Angeles native, died Dec. 26, according to a statement from Los Angeles City College, which he attended from 1938 to 1940.Lumpkin was drafted in 1942 and assigned to the 100th Fighter Squadron in Tuskegee, Alabama.
The Tuskegee Airmen escorted bombers in Europe. Lumpkin wasn't a pilot because his eyesight wasn't good enough, but he served as an intelligence officer who briefed pilots on missions, according to the Los Angeles.