A recent event was held at Earlsheaton Technology College to launch the Festival of Flight, involving young people at 15 locations in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Festival of Flight is organised by the Heartstone social enterprise whose mission is ‘challenging racism, prejudice and intolerance.” The highlight was a live phone linkup to two of the living black pioneers of flying in Tuskegee, Alabama. The linkup featured Mildred Carter, the first black woman to gain a pilot’s licence in the southern USA, fighting both gender as well as race prejudice, who went on to become part of the Civil Rights Movement marching alongside Martin Luther King and also Herbert Carter, one of the black Tuskegee Airmen who fought in the Second Word War. They linked up in several conversations with the Rt. Hon. Shahid Malik, Under Secretary of State for Communities and MP for Dewsbury and several young people including Ambassadors of Flight, young people with a special role in promoting the Festival of Flight nation-wide.
The Festival of Flight involves an exhibition whose main purpose is to provide a vehicle to bring together groups who would otherwise not meet from different backgrounds, nationalities, races and cultures. Our photo here shows Councillor Masood Ahmed, Chair of the Dewsbury Area Committee, with young people and airmen from the modern UK Armed Forces at Earlsheaton Technology College.
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