Lucy Addison High School

of

Roanoke, Virginia

 

Class of 1936

                  Tuskegee Airman                                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

United States Army Air Corps

 

2nd Lieutenant LeRoi S. Williams

332 Fighter Group

LAHS Class of 1936

 

July 30, 1919 - Nov. 1, 1943
 

Photo courtesy of Angela Twitty Adams

 


 

 

 

* Reprinted from The Roanoke Valley War Memorial

 

 

Leroi S. Williams
July 30, 1919 - Nov. 1, 1943


From Roanoke. Graduated from Hampton Institute before the war. Served in the Army Air Forces. Killed at age 24 in a midair collision with another plane over Selfridge, Mich. Survived by his mother, Cordelia Williams; sisters, Virginia W. Kent and Geraldine W. Twitty; brothers, Harold and James. Buried at Williams Memorial Park in Roanoke. His younger brother, Eugene Williams, pledged to follow his brother into the military and "complete his mission." Eugene Williams later died in a plane crash in 1949 during the Berlin Airlift.
 

-- Submitted by a friend of the family, Sallye Coleman of Roanoke

Lt. Williams received his air wings in Class 43-G-SE at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama on July 28, 1943. He was killed later that year in a mid-air collision with another Tuskegee Airman, Lt. William Walker of Suffolk, Virginia while training at Selfridge Field in  Michigan.  The date was November 1, 1943, the day before I was born. 

 

Exhibit A:  The pictures below, like the one above of Leroi in his flight gear, were graciously provided by the Williams family.

 

               

                                  Photo courtesy of the Williams family                                       Photo courtesy of the Williams family                                        

 

Photo courtesy of the Williams family 

Exhibit B:  Shown below is the one-line obituary of Lt. Williams as published in either The Roanoke Times or The Roanoke World-News shortly after he was killed.  If you look at the partial articles for two whites above and to the right, much more detail is given. This was the norm for both newspapers for many years.  Although more information about "Negroes" was typically available to both  newspapers,  incomplete one-liners was the standard. Though not done here, black death notices were typically placed in obscure locations apart from white obituaries. These are just some of the ways white America insisted on "branding" African-American as second-class citizens.

 

 

Exhibit C:  Partial listing  of Tuskegee Honor Roll names  in The Tuskegee Airmen: The Men Who Changed America  by Charles E. Francis includes Airman Leroy (sic) Williams of Roanoke, Virginia,

 

 

 

 

v

References

 

If anyone has memorabilia of any kind - photos, news clippings, obituaries, or other artifacts, please press the button below to send me an email with the details or contact me directly.

 

Thomas R. Dudley

Class of 1961

 

 

9112 Tree Haven Drive

Charlotte, NC 28270

Home: 704.847.2569

   Cell: 704.641.4575

 

 

 

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