25 at 250: Lowriders and the flight suit that opened the skies for Black pilots

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0:20Joseph Abel:WBUR Podcasts. Boston. The lack of decoration, to me, speaks to the desire of African Americans to simply be treated as equals in the sky. Not all heroes wear capes, as they say. The little-known story of Chauncey Spencer, an aviation daredevil in the era of segregation.

0:52Joseph Abel:It's Friday, April 3rd, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

1:01Joseph Abel:Today on the show, we continue our series, 25 at 250, exploring the archives of the Smithsonian in search of objects that help tell the story of America. It's a storied institution, of course, with a collection that includes items from the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and the 1903 Wright Flyer, which helped usher in the age of flight. It's also got an example of another fly mode of transportation, a custom-made lowrider from 1964.

1:32Anthea Hartig:She is a standout, totally tricked out, totally candy impala.

1:38Joseph Abel:The Wright brothers could never. A little later, we'll hear about the history of lowriders, their roots in Chicano culture, and their influence on art and activism.

1:55Joseph Abel:But first, there is a good chance that you've heard of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black aviators in the American military. But before they flew in World War II, there was an intrepid pilot named Chauncey Spencer, who in 1939 flew a rickety biplane from Chicago to Washington, D.C. Today, his flight suit is on display in the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. Curator Joseph Abel at the museum told Scott Tong all about Chauncey Spencer. Chauncey Spencer was born in Lynchburg, Virginia. And like a lot of pilots here in this sort of golden age of flight, He had his first encounter with an airplane at a barnstorming event.

2:40Joseph Abel:He became fascinated with flight and decided that was what he wanted to do with his life. Growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia at the time, segregated city, opportunities for him to train as a pilot were virtually non-existent. So he actually made the move to Chicago after graduating high school and college and began and working odd jobs while he took flying lessons at a local integrated flight school on the south side of Chicago. And what kind of flyer did he become? I gather fairly risk-taking. He was indeed, yes. Spencer developed a reputation for parachute stunts. He would jump from the plane and very conspicuously discard the parachute that he was wearing, which amazed the crowd of course and then he would deploy a second parachute that he had hidden in his suit right as he he could avoid injuring himself now interestingly uh in his memoirs he recounts that one of these stunts went awry he actually pulled the ripcord too late and he ended up paralyzed for uh i think something like 10 days wow so early evil knievel so he goes on this journey called the Goodwill flight, I gather.

4:03Joseph Abel:It's 1939. Tell me about the plane they flew, the risk of that plane. Ironically enough, the plane's name was Old Faithful, and it was a red and cream colored Lincoln Page biplane with a 90 horsepower engine. And according to Spencer, the only instruments that it had were an oil pressure gauge and an airspeed monitor. He also claimed that it was so underpowered that it would fly backwards if it encountered a headwind. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's a good copy, right? So Spencer, as a navigator, and his pilot, Dale White, took off from Chicago. From the very start, they had problems with the aircraft.

4:47Joseph Abel:Eventually, they get to Washington, D.C., talk to some lawmakers. And I understand a key meeting is when they actually happen upon a senator by the name of Harry S. Truman. They have an unscheduled meeting with Truman in a hallway in the Capitol. And he asks them what they're doing in D.C. and goes on to inquire why the pair aren't in the Air Corps, to which they respond that the Army didn't accept black pilots at the time. This answer actually really seemed to surprise Truman. And he asked the pair if they wouldn't mind taking him to see their aircraft. Truman famously said something to the effect of, if Spencer and White were brave enough to fly such an aircraft to D.C., he would be brave enough to back their cause in Congress.

5:32Joseph Abel:So in the coming months, Truman, alongside Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, they managed to insert a provision into a civil aeronautics bill that ensured that the civilian pilot training funds would be accessible by black aviators. And eventually, of course, leading to the story that's more familiar to us, the Tuskegee Airmen. The Air and Space Museum has the flight suit of Spencer's on display and other things he wore then. But when you step back, how do you situate this man and this flight and this exhibit you have in the longer story of American civil rights, the U.S. military? Looking at the flight suit, one of the things that strikes me as a curator is there's not anything particularly notable about the suit itself.

6:26Joseph Abel:I mean, it's a pair of drab green coveralls that are made with standard materials. It's wool, cotton, sheepskin. These are all materials that would have been very familiar to aviators at the time. They were functional. They were designed to protect pilots from the elements in open cockpit airplanes. The lack of decoration on Spencer's flight suit, to me, speaks to the desire of African-Americans to simply be treated as equals in the sky. Spencer's life, as represented in this artifact, it shows to me that even massive institutions like the military change more often than not, comes from the bottom up and depends on the willingness of ordinary people to speak up for what they believe in.

7:11Joseph Abel:We've been talking about Chauncey Spencer and his 1939 Goodwill flight from Chicago eventually to Washington, D.C. with Joseph Abel, curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Joseph, thanks so much for the story. Thank you. It's great to be here.

7:39Joseph Abel:coming up next based on his death defying antics with parachutes we just heard about i gather chauncey spencer was a showman who knew the thrill of riding a finely tuned vehicle so do the people who pioneered the piece of machinery at the heart of our next story. Stick around for the story of the low rider.

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9:02Joseph Abel:Low riders. They're cars, but they're also works of art on wheels. Americans have been cruising on gleaming chrome rims and dancing suspensions for decades. And now a new exhibit at the Smithsonian traces the history of lowriding back to its roots in the Mexican-American culture of Southern California in the 1940s. The centerpiece of the exhibit is Gypsy Rose, a customized 1964 Chevy Impala. Indira Lakshmanon recently went to the National Museum of American History to see it with museum director Anthea Hartig, who cleared the air before with a little song, because it's crazy we've talked even this long about lowriders without mentioning the song of that name by the funk band war dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun

9:59Anthea Hartig:so welcome to the museum and welcome to Corazoni Vida so literally the heart and the life of lowriding culture that we're exploring here in this beautiful exhibition and yes we're in front of the Gypsy Rose. So she is a standout, totally tricked out, totally candy impala that made television and movie history. She was both in Chico and the Man and Boulevard Nights. So both 1970s classics. 70s classics for TV and film. And low writing culture really, I think, gets to the heart of the way in which especially post-war United States, especially Los Angeles, and as it's spread throughout communities grew up.

10:44Anthea Hartig:So you have the American dream, right? Your own car, your own little house. You use the GI Bill. You get these incredible kind of markers after all of the heartbreak and loss of World War II. Except if you're Mexican-American and African-American and many others, those opportunities were not necessarily easily afforded to you. You still rode on segregated streetcars, segregated buses. You were even told which stops you could get off at all throughout Southern California. So if you could get a car, maybe your poppy's 1930s car, then applying the skills of as auto body and this incredible artistry, as we understand chrome and paint and etching, pinstriping, the incredible work we're looking at here with the gypsy rose, you know, plastered with these gorgeous pink roses.

11:36Anthea Hartig:and, of course, the pink velvet interior, you really start to see the rise of this remarkable culture of men and women coming together in community, in safe spaces like garages and community halls and churches. And so if anyone's ever seen this amazing car roll by, maybe with a lot of hydraulics, maybe seen it jumping, then you've seen a sliver of what we're showing you here with low riding culture. The gallery, too, is we're surrounded by these absolutely beautiful photographs by many Latino and Latina photographers who have captured lowriding culture across the world, including in Japan. And we also see, you know, signs as late as the 1990s.

12:21Anthea Hartig:No loitering, no lowriding, right? Echoing the segregated signs that you would see throughout California and Texas and through the southwest. no dogs, no Mexicans, no shoes. The tension that we see from people banning loitering or cruising, because the expression really, if you're going to invest this remarkable amount of time and artistry into creating these cars, you're going to show them off. So cruising became a critical part of so many people's lives. You work hard all day. You cruise around a little bit at night, especially in the summer. It's hot. You roll down the windows. You turn up the music.

13:06Anthea Hartig:You sip on a little beverage, and away you go. But it was also a contested space, too. So for the beauty and the joy in the community of lowriding culture, it was also a policed space. It was a really complicated set of spaces. Well, let me ask. So this car is part of the series we're doing on our show about 25 objects that tell the story of America in our 250th anniversary year as we come up on the 4th of July. So tell our listeners why this car is so important to telling the story of America. So making the Gypsy Rose one of our objects is a joy, really. First, that we even have it here and that the families have loaned it to us.

13:49Anthea Hartig:And two, if you think about everything that the museum has to help people learn about the last 250 years, the ways in which American culture has represented its struggle and its quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I think is beautifully manifested in the Gypsy Rose. Anthea Hardig is the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Anthea, thank you so much. Thank you. It's been wonderful to have you here.

14:27Joseph Abel:We've got to take one more short break and we'll be back in just a minute.

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15:16Joseph Abel:there's a lot more to our series 25 at 250 at hereandnow.org we'll keep bringing you two objects from the smithsonian every other week through july 4th so make sure you're following here and now anytime wherever you listen to podcasts so you keep up and if you missed any scroll back in the feed and check out all of our episodes titled 25 at 250 if you head to hereinnow.org. You'll find stories about all kinds of things, not just low riders and aviators and other things from the Smithsonian. Like the story of a tiny goat in Wyoming that sparked a lawsuit testing constitutional rights across the West.

15:55Joseph Abel:I want as an elected official to, as much as possible, let people live their lives. And if they want to have fun, quirky pets, who am I to tell them that they can't. To life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I don't know, my happiness just involves a little pygmy goat that brightens my little world. Or how about a look at a rare tick-borne disease that makes some people so allergic to a particular carbohydrate that eating red meat could send them into anaphylactic shock. You know, I carry an EpiPen now. I've luckily never needed it, but I make sure I never travel without one and always have one in my truck if needed.

16:41Joseph Abel:What is alpha-gal syndrome? Find out right now at hereandnow.org.

16:51Joseph Abel:But that'll do it for us today. Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WVU are Boston. Today's stories were produced by Jenea Walker and Will Wackey. Our series, 25 at 250, is edited by Kat Welch. Michael Scotto edited the podcast. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And here and now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend, and we'll be back with you on Monday.

17:36Anthea Hartig:This message comes from Babbel. Babbel's conversation-based language technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash NPR. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash NPR. Rules and restrictions may apply.