Theodore Lumpkin
Tuskegee airman
Theodore Lumpkin Jr (December 30, 1919 – December 26, 2020) was an American military officer.
Early life and education
Lumpkin was born in Los Angeles and was educated at Jefferson High School. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1938 to 1940, graduating with an associate degree in mathematics and continued his studies at University of California Los Angeles. The Second World War had commenced, but the USA was formally neutral until the end of 1941.
Military career
Lumpkin was drafted in 1942. After basic training, he completed officer cadet school. He was made a second lieutenant and assigned to the 100th Fighter Squadron based at Tuskegee, Alabama. At the time, the US military was segregated by race and this was an all black unit. Due to his eyesight, he became an air combat intelligence officer and briefed pilots before missions. He served in Italy in 1944 where the squadron acted as escorts for bombers and was based at the Ramitelli Air Base as part of the 332nd Fighter Group.
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This entry incorporates text from “Theodore Lumpkin” 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.