The Columbia Air Center was an airfield in

Croom Croom () is a village in County Limerick, Ireland. It is located just off the N20 (which has bypassed the town since 2001) on the River Maigue. It is 8 km southeast of Adare on the N20. The village is in a townland and civil parish of t ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

from 1941 to 1958. It was started by

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

pilots who were not permitted to use other airports, but was also open to whites. It had an all black staff, and a number of the trainers had served in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Tuskegee Airmen The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of primarily African American military pilots (fighter and bomber) and airmen who fought in World War II. They formed the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Fighter Group, 477th Bombardment Group (Medium) of th ...

. John R. Pinkett founded the airport in

Croom, Maryland Croom is an unincorporated area, unincorporated community and census-designated place in Southern Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census it had a population of 2,720. Croom largely consist ...

, in

Prince George's County Prince George's County (often shortened to PG County or PG) is located in the U.S. state of Maryland bordering the eastern portion of Washington, D.C. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the population was 967,201, making it the second-most populous ...

on leased land near the

Patuxent River The Patuxent River is a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay in the state of Maryland. There are three main river drainages for central Maryland: the Potomac River to the west passing through Washington, D.C., the Patapsco River to the northeas ...

. Originally operating as Riverside Airport, it was renamed Columbia Air Center in December 1944. It was largely known as Croom Airport or Columbia Airport. It housed up to five runways, three hangars, ten planes, and an all-black chapter of the

Civil Air Patrol Civil Air Patrol (CAP) is a Congressional charter, congressionally chartered, federally supported Nonprofit corporation, non-profit corporation that serves as the official civilian auxiliaries, auxiliary of the United States Air Force (USAF). CA ...

. The airport was operated from 1941–1954 by John William Greene Jr, and also by Tuskegee Airmen, Herbert Jones Jr., who would later form International Air Association, the first African-American owned airline. In 1959, the property was purchased by the

Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) is a bi-county agency that administers parks and planning in Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland. History The commission was formed in 1927 by the Maryland G ...

and became the first part of the Patuxent River Watershed Park.

References

External links

*{{cite web , url = http://www.geocities.com/cd19/croom.html , title = Columbia Air Center, Croom, Maryland , author = Clayton Davis, archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091027081746/http://geocities.com/cd19/croom.html, archivedate=2009-10-27
Cloud Club IIColumbia Air Center
from The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, who now runs the park African-American history of Prince George's County, Maryland Buildings and structures in Prince George's County, Maryland Aviation in Maryland 1941 establishments in Maryland