Oscar Holmes
American pilot, chemist and lawyer (1916-2001)
Oscar Wayman Holmes (31 January 1916 – 5 November 2001) was an American Naval Aviator in World War II and civilian flight controller, the first African-American in each position.
Biography
Holmes graduated from Garnet High School in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1932, West Virginia State College in 1936 with a B.S. and Ohio State University the following year with a master's degree in chemistry. He taught chemistry (a subject he did not like) for three years at Claflin College, a historically black school in Orangeburg, South Carolina. In 1940, he went to work for the Erie Lighting Company in Erie, Pennsylvania, as a chemical analyst.
Wanting to become a pilot, he won a scholarship and enrolled in the US government's Civilian Pilot Training Program. He obtained his private pilot's license by 1941.
Later that year, he applied to become an air traffic controller for the Civil Aeronautics Administration, a position that required a pilot's license and a college degree. The application and his acceptance were both handled by telegram. After training, he was assigned to the New York traffic control center, becoming the first African-American air traffic controller. He was very light skinned, and his superiors were unaware of his African-American heritage until he had to fill out a questionnaire.
“Oscar Holmes” enters the record as american pilot, chemist and lawyer (1916-2001). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Oscar, Holmes and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q104188821. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916, 2001, 1932 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oscar Holmes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.