Pilots

Born on a Georgia plantation in 1915, James Woods never let his humble beginnings as an African American raised in the segregated South deter him. He has befriended world leaders, and as an aviation pioneer, helped break racial barriers and thus helped his peers attain a better life. His love of aviation has played a big part in his success.

It all began when Woods was 12 years old and barnstormers were touring the South, touching down in small towns and giving rides. Woods' father, who ran the plantation on which they lived, allowed a barnstormer to use his field one day on one condition: that the pilot let young James have a ride in the Waco. Woods' love for aviation was born.

In 1932 Woods hitched a ride to Montgomery, Alabama, with a friendly white businessman who put Woods in touch with a friend at Alabama State University. Woods attended high school there and later college. Woods put himself through school by starting a taxi service, which he sold in 1940 to his employees before heading out West. He used some of the proceeds to buy his first airplane.

Woods settled in Los Angeles and began flight school. "I took civil pilot training courses at the University of Southern California and took my flight training at Compton Airport. Earl Woodley — a white guy — he was the one who let me fly there, as well as several other blacks, including [the founder of] Ethiopia Airlines."

Aviation was the key that opened many doors for Woods. "Timing has always been in my favor," he says. He decided to go for his A&P certificate at a time when "they wouldn't even let a black sweep the floor of an airplane factory." Undeterred, he persevered and convinced an instructor at a Pratt & Whitney subsidiary to teach him.

"So I went on and graduated, and when President Roosevelt handed down the 8802 [an executive order integrating black workers in defense plants] I went to work at Lockheed — the first black at Lockheed. I worked on P-38s."

When the War Department created the Tuskegee Institute in 1941 to train the first African American pilots to serve in the military, Woods became one of its first black instructors. "I joined the Army Air Corps [to fly], but they wanted me to teach." So Woods became part of history, helping to train the black fighter pilots who had a pivotal role in the liberation of Europe — the Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber that they were protecting.

After the war he returned to Southern California with his wife, Hettie, whom he had married in 1940. He soon had two sons and a daughter and became one of the area's more successful black homebuilders. He later helped found a savings and loan to lend to blacks, as well as a successful automotive parts company.

Woods never lost his fervor for flying. He bought a Navion after the war and competed in races, winning many of them. In the mid-1950s, he attended a Navion Society convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and competed in a race there, which proved to be a turning point. He came in second to "a guy who was the best Navion pilot in the world," Woods remembers. However, his euphoria soon evaporated. "The Ramada Inn decided that they weren't going to let me [stay there]," Woods remembers. "A friend of mine, Angelo Cardono [who is white], was the first man to get up and say, 'You don't let him in there, then we're not gonna have a convention!" The hotel relented and allowed Woods to stay.

In the 1960s and 1970s he served as a roving ambassador under President Nixon to numerous African countries. Woods traveled with Mrs. Nixon extensively in Africa in the 1970s, including apartheid South Africa, where he lent his voice to the cause to free Nelson Mandela.

He stopped flying in the mid-1970s because of deteriorating eyesight, but that didn't diminish his involvement with aviation. In the late 1970s he was appointed as the first African American to the Los Angeles County Aviation Commission, a position that he used to great distinction promoting GA in one of the nation's busiest markets. Recently retired from the commission, his enthusiasm will be missed.

Woods now lives quietly in Los Angeles and reflects on a life in which he seized opportunities to make life better for himself and others, while helping to chart the course of modern aviation along the way.