HATTIESBURG, Miss.
The history of the Tuskegee Airmen will forever have a place in the halls of some the nation’s most prestigious military museums, thanks to a McComb, Miss., native who now calls Hattiesburg home.
Clint Martin, 68, learned during the summer that his original artworks will be displayed in the Pentagon, the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and the Mississippi Museum of Art.
He also is applying to have them displayed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans.
“It’s a real honor to be in some of the most prestigious museums in the country,” Martin said as he worked on a pastel drawing depicting the 99th Pursuit Squadron airplanes flown by Lt. Col. Clarence Jamison and Lt. Col. Charles Dryden.
“It’s been a heck of a ride. I never would have thought my artwork would have sent me to the top like this,” the artist and Korean War era Air Force veteran said.
The Tuskegee Airmen were the nation’s premier black combat aviators who flew largely in North Africa and Italy during World War II. While just under 1,000 graduated from flight training school and 450 went overseas for combat, only about 130 survive today, Martin said.
