This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
James and the 332nd Fighter Group flew skillful combat mis-


sions over North Africa, Sicily, and mainland Europe until the war ended in 1945. They risked and sometimes gave their lives for the Allied cause, despite the discrimination they faced both inside and outside the military. After the war, James was eager to return to Loyola, where he


studied the classics: Latin, Greek, and philosophy. He was one of just six African American students at the university, and he recalls being treated well. “There weren’t enough of us to cause a fuss,” James says. In 1946, while in school, James began to volunteer at Chi-


cago’s Friendship House, a Catholic apostolate devoted to inter- racial justice and race relations. It was there that he met a young lawyer named Mary Genevieve Galloway, who asked him to join a sit-in at a Walgreens lunch counter. “I thought, I must have some homework or something to do,” James says. But he went anyway. The two married in 1949 and went on to have six children. Mary, who came from a well-off family in Wisconsin, was in-


spired to work for racial and economic equality by a walk through a poor Chicago neighborhood on her way to catch a train at the LaSalle Street Station. “She just couldn’t believe people lived like that,” James says.


“She had never seen poverty before. She started asking ques- tions, and the answers she got were very stupid, like, ‘They want to live that way.’ Nobody wants to live like that if they have a choice. She wanted answers, and she spent a lifetime trying to figure them out.” Upon his graduation from Loyola, James went to work for the


Burroughs Corporation, a business equipment manufacturer, as the company’s first African American salesman. He chose the company because of its work in developing electronics, which James believed to be revolutionary. “I decided that computers were the wave of the future,” James says. He later worked for the University of Chicago and the State


“You have to learn lessons in humility— your senses aren’t reliable, so you learn to depend on your instruments.”


of Illinois, eventually pursuing a law degree, which he obtained from De Paul in 1963. “I married a lawyer, and I went to law school to figure out what


she was talking about,” James says. In 1967, James became the first African American lawyer to be


hired by the American Bar Association, where he worked until 1984. He and Mary continued their work for Friendship House, and


through his connection with the organization, James met Martin Luther King Jr. when he came to speak at the Village Green in predominantly-white Winnetka, Illinois, in 1965. King had been invited to speak by a group of citizens con-


cerned about housing discrimination and a lack of diversity in North Shore communities. “I drove him up to the speech. There were eight to ten thou-


sand people on the Village Green. I said, ‘Good luck,’” James says. “But it didn’t precipitate a riot. Martin said, ‘These folks are incredibly receptive. Someone’s got to break the ice and move in here.’ At the time, I hadn’t the foggiest notion of moving to Winnetka.”


Top: The diploma from David James’s 1948 Sodality ceremony. The program featured the hymn “Mother Dear, O Pray for Me,” which James remembers his mother singing. While fiying missions in World War II, James would sing the hymn in the cockpit.


Bottom: A photo of James during primary training in Tuskegee in 1943.


But, in 1967, move into the area he did, becoming the first


African American homeowner in Winnetka. That same year, he and Mary founded the Together We Influence Growth day camp, which brings children from the South Side of Chicago together with children from the North Shore each summer. In the early ‘70s, James helped found the Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs, which works for housing equality. His legal career took him from the US Department of Labor to private practice until his retirement in 2000. Mary passed away in 1996. Harry Truman signed an executive order ending racial segrega-


tion in the military in 1948. In 2007, George W. Bush honored the Tuskegee Airmen with a Congressional Gold Medal for their service six decades earlier. In 2009, James, along with more than 100 other Tuskegee Airmen, attended the inauguration of Barack Obama by special invitation. David James has lived a life touched by war and discrimination,


but also by love and an unceasing commitment to justice. And through his bravery and determination—both in the air and on land—he has changed for the better the country he loves.


WINTER 2015


15


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44