Roger Terry | Tuskegee airman, 87
Roger Terry, 87, whose conviction for "jostling" a superior was reversed 50 years after he and other Tuskegee airmen attempted to enter a whites-only officers' club, died of heart failure Thursday in a Los Angeles hospital.
Roger Terry, 87, whose conviction for "jostling" a superior was reversed 50 years after he and other Tuskegee airmen attempted to enter a whites-only officers' club, died of heart failure Thursday in a Los Angeles hospital.
An Army lieutenant and bomber pilot, Mr. Terry was arrested along with more than 100 other black officers in April 1945 for refusing a general's demand they sign papers admitting they were wrong for protesting the segregated club at Freeman Field, a military airfield near Seymour, Ind.
Mr. Terry was court-martialed, convicted of "jostling" a white officer, and dishonorably discharged.
In 1995, the U.S. military exonerated Terry. He was among 300 Tuskegee airmen who received the congressional Gold Medal in 1997. - AP