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Indiana State University announces scholarship in honor of Tuskegee Airman alum

By Mitch Legan

Posted February 23, 2022

Tuskegee Airman Quentin P. Smith

Quentin P. Smith, Sr. received the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor in 2007 for his actions at Freeman Field. (Indiana State University)

Indiana State University and trustee Cynthia Powers want the world to learn more about one of the university’s most impactful yet uncelebrated alumni, former Tuskegee Airman Quentin P. Smith, Sr. 

Powers donated $150,000 to start the Quentin P. Smith, Sr. Endowed Aviation Scholarship, which aims to increase aviation opportunities for minority students at Indiana State. The school is also renaming the observation deck at its Flight Academy in honor of Smith. 

“What a legacy Mr. Quinton Smith really made in Terre Haute, in Chicago, in Gary,” Powers said. “We've just got to remember that.” 

Smith was a First Lieutenant in the Army Air Forces during World War II, when he was briefly stationed at Freeman Field in Seymour. There, he was one of 101 Tuskegee Airmen who were arrested for refusing to acknowledge the base’s segregated officers’ clubs for Black and white officers. 

READ MORE: Black History in southern Indiana: The Freeman Field Mutiny 

The “Freeman Field Mutiny,” as it became known, was one of the first instances of Black Americans using civil disobedience to secure civil rights. It’s also credited with being a major factor in President Harry Truman’s decision to desegregate the military in 1948. 

Smith graduated from Indiana State University in 1940 with a degree in social studies education. After World War II, he returned to Gary, where he served on the city council, Gary/Chicago International Airport Authority Board and spent 50 years in the Gary Community School Corporation. 

Powers said although Smith was a larger-than-life figure to many in Gary, few people knew about his time with the Airmen and the impact he made at Freeman Field.  

“I told (my sister) that we were actually going to endow a scholarship for her principal and (I) let her read about him,” Powers said. “(She’s) like, ‘Why didn't they tell us? He had gone through all of that? He would have been a good example of Black history when we were in high school.’” 

Powers said the scholarship’s purpose was twofold: to encourage more minority participation in the field of aviation and aviation technology and to make the story of Smith and the Freeman Field Mutiny more widely known in Indiana. 

“Hopefully we can honor a man that always paid it forward,” Powers said. “So we can get more and more students to want to become pilots and encourage others to become pilots.”

Smith received Indiana State University's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012. He died in 2013 at the age of 94. 

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