Surviving Tuskegee Airmen invited to Obama's inauguration

Robert D. Rose, vice president of the Tuskegee Airmen, Inc.:

“The Tuskegee Airmen preceded Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, and if they hadn’t helped generate a climate of tolerance by integration of the military, we might not have progressed through the civil rights era,” he said. ”We would have seen a different civil rights movement, if we would have seen one at all.”

I beg to disagree that we would not have seen one at all. There is a cycle to such events, and once the momentum starts, it is difficult to staunch them over the long run. But it might well have been different had their example not been set.

The invitation to his swearing-in was extended Tuesday by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.

Just don't ask John Boehner to speak...

From the New York Times.