I attended Howe High School on the Indianapolis east side, and like most large city high schools the spacious corridors would rapidly fill up with a wall-to-wall flood of students and teachers when the passing bell rang. Often during this time I would see a black face — not of the rare African-American students — gliding effortlessly through the jumbled mass. That face belonged to Mr. DeBow, an English teacher and the only African-American member of the school’s faculty. I regret that I wasn’t assigned to one of Mr. DeBow’s classes, but the memory of his smiling, calm countenance as we passed in the hallways has remained with me through the years.
Mr. DeBow was one of five new faculty members when he came to Howe in September 1955. Along with photos of the new teachers, the school newspaper included a brief bio of their academic accomplishments and noted that Mr. DeBow was “an Air Force veteran of 52 combat missions.” The following May, the paper recognized the military service of Howe teachers and provided a little more information about Mr. DeBow — “U.S. Army Air Forces, Captain with Fifteenth Air Force, 332d Fighter Group, 301st Fighter Squadron; long range escort — dive bombing and strafing. Was at army hospital, Camp Atterbury, Indiana.” Yes, Mr. DeBow was all of this, but Charles DeBow was more — he was a Tuskegee airman.
Charles Henry Debow, Jr was a dreamer. He was born in Indianapolis on February 13, 1918 into very modest circumstances; his father was a porter in a white barber shop and his mother was a maid in a department store. Raised in the neighborhoods around Indiana Avenue, DeBow and his family moved ten times before he entered high school. Growing up in a segregated city, his sights were drawn to the sky where daily he saw airplanes moving effortlessly across unrestricted space and he began to imagine himself piloting a plane and freely soaring among the clouds; liberated from the constraints of his earthly surroundings. It was a dream, at the time “there was no room in the air for Negro pilots.”
After attending Crispus Attucks High School where he was commander of the R.O.T.C. unit and president of the student council, DeBow entered a pre-med program at Indiana University. Two years into his studies, Debow decided he “wasn’t cut out for the medical profession” and he wanted to go to a school “where no doors would be closed” to him. Transferring to Hampton Institute (Hampton University), an historically black college in Hampton, Virginia, DeBow enrolled in a business course, but he soon had the opportunity to accomplish his dream of flying.
The federal Civilian Aviation Authority (CAA) started a unit at Hampton “to teach 20 Negroes to fly.” Three hundred applied, some failed the physical, some failed to get their parents’ permission; Charles DeBow, with grit, determination, and luck, was among the fortunate and was well on his way to achieving his dream. At the end of his training, he was credited with 35 hours of solo flying for a private pilot’s license. No more school; he had picked up “the flying bug” and was determined to figure out how to pay for additional flying time to keep his “precious license.” He took a bookkeeping job “for a chain of colored drugstores,” in order to pay for flight time, but while there were planes to rent in Indianapolis there were no planes for black pilots.
DeBow moved to Chicago where he found plenty of airfields that would rent planes to him, and took a job as an oven operator at a steel mill to pay his expenses. Every weekend he scraped together seven bucks to buy those flying hours to keep his license. In January 1941, DeBow completed an application to be a pilot in the United State Army Air Corps (even though black pilots were exclude from the service at time), and through a lawyer friend had the application submitted to Judge William Hastie, a black civilian aide to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. A month later the War Department announced that “Negro applications would be accepted for the Air Force.”
Returning to Indianapolis, DeBow became the first black Hoosier, along with five out of twenty-one white youths, to pass a rigorous flying cadet physical examination to become eligible for a commission in the United States Army Air Corps. In July 1941, DeBow entered the first class of thirteen black aviation cadets at Tuskegee Army Air Field, Alabama training on Boeing-Stearman PT-13 Kaydets. For those who didn’t wash out, training continued on Vultee BT-13 Valiants and North American AT-6A Texans. The following March, Charles DeBow was one of five to successfully complete the training and receive their wings. He had been the highest-ranking cadet in his class, and after being commissioned a second lieutenant, he became an instructor at Tuskegee’s advanced flying school, training other pilots for the 99th and 100th Fighter Squadrons.
In August 1943 Lieutenant DeBow was assigned to the European Theater and attached to the 15th Army Air Force, 332nd Fighter Group, 99th Fighter Squadron, the first all-black air fighter group in Italy under the command of his Tuskegee classmate Lt. Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. Known as the “Red Tails,” the squadron flew 307 missions with more than 4,000 individual sorties in their P-51 Mustangs. Promoted to captain, DeBow flew 52 combat missions over Italy, Germany and France and commanded the 301st Fighter Squadron before returning to the United States with a career-ending injury. He was released from active duty in August 1945, and remained in the Air Force Reserve, ultimately retiring as a lieutenant colonel.
The post-war years found DeBow completing his education with Masters degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. He began his teaching career at Hope School, and then became the first black teacher at Indianapolis’ Thomas Carr Howe High School where he taught English for a decade. In 1959 he taught a summer class at the United States Air Force Academy. Charles DeBow was an associate lecturer at Indiana University-Purdue University (IUPUI) in the years proceeding his death on April 4, 1986.
Thank you for your service, Mr. DeBow.
