IN THE CLASSROOM:A meeting with heroes

To Casey Mix, the segregated America of several decades ago seems like a different universe. The Eastbluff Elementary School sixth-grader goes to a diverse campus and many of his best friends aren’t the same race as him.

“I couldn’t imagine saying to them, ‘I can’t hang out with you,’ ” said Casey, 12.

That less-tolerant America isn’t just a matter of history to everyone. Four Eastbluff teachers hoped to impart that message to their students as they visited Orange Coast College on Friday to meet the Tuskegee Airmen.

The college has held an annual luncheon the last three years to honor the Tuskegee Airmen, America’s first all-black military squadron from World War II.

This year, the college preceded the luncheon with a presentation for fifth- through 12th-graders, busing in students from schools around Orange County.

A small group of the original Tuskegee Airmen appearing in the Robert B. Moore Theatre received a standing ovation from the students. Retired black astronaut Winston E. Scott, the main speaker, showed a film about his experiences in space and talked about how World War II’s African American heroes influenced him in life.

“It shows how far we’ve come because now we have African Americans doing all kinds of things in society,” Scott told the crowd of nearly 1,000 children.

“What the Tuskegee Airmen did during World War II opened the door for people like me.”

As a child, Scott said, he didn’t know blacks could serve as pilots; the outer-space movies he watched on TV tended to have all-white casts. His presentation, though, focused on his NASA career more than on civil rights.

As students lined up at the microphones to ask questions, Scott explained how objects feel weightless in space and how stars look brighter and closer through the window of a shuttle.

He also noted the years of hard work that he had put into becoming an astronaut and said that he valued persistence over preferential treatment.

“All anybody ever wanted was fairness,” Scott said.

“We don’t want anything special. Just give us fairness and we will perform.”

The OCC trip was one of many activities Eastbluff holds annually to honor Black History Month.

Last week, the school displayed posters on campus featuring noted black artists, while librarian Barbara Yoffa said she spent much of February reading stories about racism and civil rights.

“We talk about the Ku Klux Klan, even with the young kids,” she said.