Charles Anderson's Lifetime of Advocating For Black Pilots and History-Making Firsts

On a cold March day in 2014, seven former Tuskegee Airmen gathered in a small town in Pennsylvania to see a stamp dedicated to their former mentor. The U.S. Postal Service called him “the Father of Black Aviation.” The Tuskegee Airmen knew him as “Chief.”  

His name: Charles Alfred Anderson.  

Anderson was born over 100 years earlier in that same Pennsylvania town in 1907. He would go on to be one of the most accomplished aviators in the country and a ground-breaking advocate for Black pilots. Anderson made history with firsts, again and again.  

First African American to Earn a Transport Pilot’s License  

“Local Birdman is Only U.S. Nego Licensed: C. Alfred Anderson Fought His Way Up” proclaimed the Philadelphia Tribune. Anderson made news when he became the first Black American to earn a transport pilot’s license in 1932.  

A transport license is different than a private pilot’s license, which allows you to fly. (Anderson earned his private pilot’s license in 1929. Bessie Coleman was one of the first African Americans to earn a pilot’s license in 1921). A transport license allows pilots to transport passengers for hire. 

As one can imagine, earning a transport license as a Black man in deeply segregated America wasn’t an easy feat. The author of the Tribune article remembered: 

When I first began beating the street for this paper, nearly four years ago ‘Al’ was a hustling young chauffeur … He talked and walked and ate aviation … He ran into those handicaps that face young Negroes everywhere when they try to get ahead. 

To earn a transport license in 1932, you needed 200 solo flying hours (which required 200 hours of access to a plane). This cost about $4,255 (equivalent to over $98,000 today), including the cost of training and renting or owning a plane. How did a chauffeur afford this? With the support of Black leaders and organizations in Philadelphia. The “Quaker City Lodge of Elks … backed the young pilot with it influence and money,” reported the Tribune, and “The necessary flying experience was made possible by the Flying Dutchman Air Service,” run by a German immigrant.  

After earning his transport license, Anderson opened his own air service that boasted “When you ride with C. Alfred Anderson, you ride with one of the best flyers in the land.”  

Anderson paved the way for the first Black commercial pilots, Marlon Green, Perry Young, and August Martin.

First Black Pilots to Fly Round-Trip Cross-Country, and More

Anderson wasn’t done making history—not by a longshot. He teamed up with Albert E. Forsythe, a physician/aviator, from Atlantic City, New Jersey. With Anderson’s skills as a pilot and Forsythe’s financial backing, they soon made a name for themselves flying long-distance flights.

Anderson and Forsythe gained fame in 1933 when they completed the first roundtrip transcontinental flight by Black aviators.

Anderson and Forsythe’s flight wasn’t the first transcontinental flight: 

• In 1911, Calbraith Perry Jones made the first cross-country flight. It took over 42 days, with 82 total flying hours.  
• In 1923, U.S. Army Air Service pilots Lt. John A. Macready and Lt. Oakley G. Kelly completed the first non-stop flight across America in just under 27 hours.  
• In 1929, Nick Mamer and Art Walker made the first non-stop transcontinental round trip in about 120 hours.  
• In 1932, James Banning and Thomas Cox Allen were the first African Americans pilots to complete a one-way transcontinental flight. Banning and Allen’s flight was not nonstop—it took 21 days, with 41 hours in the air.  

Forsythe and Anderson beat the record setting flights that came before them by flying from Atlantic City, NJ to Los Angeles, CA and back in 65 hours—almost half the time of the first non-stop roundtrip flight that took place 4 years earlier.  

Forsythe and Anderson continued to set records with their long-distance flying. On a flight to Canada, they became the first Black pilots to fly across an international border.  

In 1934, the men planed an even more ambitions “Goodwill Flight”—a trek from the United States to the Caribbean and South America to show the skill of Black aviators. The tour included a stop in the Bahamas, where Forsythe was born. The Bahamas did not have an airport for land planes, so the pilots made a daring landing at night on a dirt road lit by car headlights.  

The similarities to Charles Lindbergh’s history-making flights didn’t go unnoticed. Anderson was dubbed the “Charles Lindbergh of Black Aviation.”  

In 1935, Forsythe stopped flying and returned to his medical practice. However, Anderson’s aviation career was far from over.  

Training the Army’s First Squadron of Black Pilots: the Tuskegee Airmen 

Fast forward to 1940. World War II was already sweeping across Europe. America was preparing to join the fighting. Military aviation would be an important part of World War II. 

To prepare, the Army started the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP). The CPTP would operate out of 1,132 colleges and universities and 1,460 flight schools. One of the most famous of these was the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.  

Anderson was hired by the Tuskegee Institute to be the Chief Civilian Flight Instructor of their CPTP chapter. There he’d earn the nickname “Chief,” which he’d keep for the rest of his life.  

When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Tuskegee in April 1941, she asked for a flight despite concerns from her Secret Service detail. Anderson was her pilot. She wrote about the experience in her column, saying:  

They have advanced training here, and some of the students went up and did acrobatic flying for us. These boys are good pilots. I had the fun of going up in one of the tiny training planes with the head instructor, and seeing this interesting countryside from the air. 

Roosevelt words helped fight the prejudice against Black pilots. The First Lady advocated for the program in other ways as well, like helping secure funding to build an airfield in Tuskegee.  

Just two months after the First Lady’s visit, the Army began accepting Black pilots into the Army Air Corps in racially segregated units. The Army selected Anderson as Tuskegee’s Ground Commander and Chief Instructor. Over 1,000 Black pilots were trained at Tuskegee during World War II under Anderson’s command.  

After the war, “Chief” Anderson continued training both Black and white pilots in Tuskegee, Alabama … for decades. He only stopped at the age of 82 in 1989, just seven years before his death.