Tuskegee Experiment: The Tuskegee Airmen Toolbook (Update)

摘要

Effective leadership is critical to the military; it promotes unit cohesion and teamwork--key factors to unit success. This daunting task of leading a 'fighting unit' is exacerbated when forces internal and external to the military place obstacles in one's path. Certainly, one of the challenges of a leader is to overcome obstacles or adverse situations in accomplishing its assigned mission and thus meet the security need of the country. The Tuskegee Experiment is an example of effective leadership in the face of adversity. The experiment is a testimony of moral courage, where young black airmen served their country extremely well despite the 'second class' treatment they received. The Tuskegee Airmen proved that the measure of merit is performance. Their leaders demonstrated several leadership characteristics that will forever stand the test of time. In the past, U. S. political leaders have used the military as a test for controversial social experiments because the military reflected a large group of individuals under the politicians direct control. Lessons learned from these experiments were later expanded to the rest of the general public. Segregation as well as integration of blacks were examples of experiments first conducted within the military. Other experiments included women's rights issues, and more recently, the campaign for a smoke-free work environment. For each of these examples, the ideas were first experimented within the military before expansion to the rest of society.