Overview:
Tuskegee Airman James Harvey reflects on a career marked by barriers, a forgotten victory and a lasting legacy.
Middle and high school students from across the Denver metro area gathered March 7 at Metropolitan State University of Denver for the Mile High Flight Program, an event designed to connect young people with careers in aviation. Inside the university’s Aviation, Aerospace and Cybersecurity Department, students rotated between flight simulators, virtual reality headsets and conversations with professional pilots.
The most memorable moment, however, came from a different type of cockpit experience with a historical context. Sitting in a wheelchair at the front of the room was Colonel James H. Harvey III, one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen.
“There isn’t anything you cannot do regardless of what the man says; there’s proof,” Harvey told Bucket List at the MSU event.
His resolve is matched by a remarkable record: a decorated fighter pilot and member of the team that won the 1949 U.S. Air Force Gunnery Meet — a competition often described as a precursor to today’s “Top Gun.” Yet despite a 22-year military career before retiring in 1965, many of those accomplishments went unrecognized for decades.
Harvey served with the 332nd Fighter Group, the famed Tuskegee unit that escorted bombers during World War II. According to Ron Green, Harvey’s son-in-law, the program recruited top students from across the country.
“They went to all the colleges and high schools and got the best and brightest Black people in the deepest part of the south” he said. “But they made a mistake. They (the men) never knew how to say no and never knew how to quit.”
Harvey’s path to the cockpit was not immediate.
“When he first joined, he joined as a construction worker,” Green said. “They had him driving bulldozers and stuff,” but Harvey quickly realized that wasn’t his role he wanted for himself.
Harvey himself noted, “I didn’t know what I was becoming. Everyone in my class signed up and I signed up, too. Here I am.”
Training was rigorous, and opportunities were limited by discrimination. Black pilots were often held to stricter standards than their white counterparts, where even minor uniform issues could be used to disqualify candidates.
Green later recalls Harvey saying, “We washed out better than they put out,” suggesting that the pressure only sharpened their performance. Harvey’s own encounters with racism often came during travel, including being forced to move to the back of train cars.
Still, he never expressed bitterness. When asked about those experiences, he’s known to say, “No, that’s their fault; that’s their problem, not mine.”
In 1949, Harvey competed in the U.S. Air Force Gunnery Meet, where his team excelled in aerial gunnery, bombing and overall flight performance. They won the competition, but their victory was largely overlooked at the time.
The Air Force later discontinued the competition before reviving it under a different name, and the 1949 winners were effectively erased from official records.
“For years the almanacs would list the winners,” Green said. “For 1949, it would say ‘Unknown.'”
Decades later, historian Zellie Rainey Orr helped uncover the truth, locating the long-missing trophy in storage at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
“She found it in three days,” Green said. “It took the United States 72 years to recognize who actually won it.”
When finally reunited with the trophy at a ceremony in 2022, Harvey kept his sense of humor. “I ain’t seen this thing in 72 years,” he said, drawing laughter and applause.
After retiring from the military, Harvey faced new barriers in civilian aviation.
“They told him they couldn’t hire Black pilots,” Green said. “They said, ‘How do you think white people are going to feel when they look into the cockpit and see a Black man flying the airplane?’”
Harvey went on to build a career outside aviation, eventually becoming one of the first Black executives at Oscar Mayer. In later years, recognition for his military service grew. He has been honored by the U.S. Air Force Academy and, in 2023, was named an honorary colonel at age 100.
Harvery now lives in a senior home near the Golden VA Clinic, and his family has preserved much of Harvey’s legacy. His daughter, Alysyn Harvey-Green, and her husband, Ron Green, live nearby, and their home is filled with photographs, medals and memorabilia that serve as an informal archive of his life and career.
“When I say I’ve got pictures, I’ve got pictures everywhere,” Ron said as he gave Bucket List a tour of their home.
For Alysyn, understanding her father’s legacy took time.
“I really didn’t understand the significance of it that way until I got out of high school and found out there was a group,” she said.
Growing up, Harvey rarely spoke about his experiences. Only later did his family begin to grasp the historical weight of his story.
“They didn’t talk about it,” Alysyn said. “My kids now know who Grandpa is. They know about Black inventors.”
Today, that legacy is being carried forward through community programs and education efforts. Organizations like the Denver Tuskegee Airmen chapter and youth initiatives such as Fly Girls and Fly Boys introduce new generations to that history.
For Alysyn, that work remains essential.
“We have to keep that history alive,” she said. “So when they have these events, or when I find out things that we’ve done, I think it’s very empowering and it’s something that I like to find out more about.”
