Muskogee Hosts Memorial Service to Honor Local Tuskegee Airman Graves

MUSKOGEE, Okla. –

Veterans groups in Muskogee gathered on Saturday for a memorial service at Booker T Washington cemetery to remember the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African-American pilots who overcame adversity to help fight in World War 2.

In 2017, a group of volunteers helped clean up the overgrown cemetery and put flags on their graves for Veterans Day.

That’s when they found the graves of some of the airmen.

Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. joined the city for the service, along with a showing of the 1995 film “The Tuskegee Airmen” and a tour of the plcaes in Muskogee that it was filmed.

Gooding Jr. says events like this are needed to showcase the heroism of the pilots and finding solutions to today’s issues.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is now working to help get local groups involved in maintaining the cemetery and its veterans.