Collection: Between Love & Liberation: The Letters of James Brant Smith and Florence Evelyn Smith (March 24–31, 1943)
What you witness here is more than a collection of handwritten words, it is Black history etched in ink, a powerful testament to love, service, struggle, and survival.
On display are eight original letters, dated March 24–31, 1943, from Florence Evelyn Smith, written during one of the most pivotal chapters in American and African American history. These deeply personal letters were addressed to her husband, Aviation Cadet James Brant Smith, while he trained at Tuskegee Air Field in Alabama with the 1155th Single Engine Flying Training Squadron (S.E.F.T.S.), preparing to become a fighter pilot, one of the first of his kind.
James Brant Smith would go on to become not just a war veteran but a prisoner of war, enduring captivity and returning home with honor. His life and legacy are preserved in a collection of over 750 letters exchanged between him and Florence, the majority written in 1943 and 1944 (housed at the University of West Georgia's Public History Program). These documents span from their engagement and marriage to the birth of their first child, all while he trained in the skies and she worked at an airplane assembly plant in Ohio, both serving their country, both fighting battles on different fronts.
What makes these eight letters exceptional: sacred, is how Florence, though writing to her husband, also writes to herself and, unknowingly, to us. Her voice, filled with longing and purpose, captures the dual realities of being Black and in love during wartime: dignity under pressure, devotion amid distance, and a future imagined through hope.
These aren’t just letters. They are documents of resistance, revealing the heartbeat of a Black couple who dared to believe in tomorrow when today was uncertain. They show us that the Tuskegee Airmen weren’t just warriors in the sky, they were men deeply rooted in families, in communities, in Black womanhood. And those women, like Florence Evelyn Smith, were warriors too.
To Black America, this is our story:
Of flying while Black.
Of loving while Black.
Of working, waiting, writing, and remembering while Black.
The Smith letters remind us that Black love is a radical act, that our joy has always been political, and that even in the shadow of war and white supremacy, we have written ourselves into history: with pen, with purpose, and with pride.
“Behind every Tuskegee Airman who soared into battle was a family who held the line at home: waiting, working, believing. What you see here is not merely paper and ink. It is history with a heartbeat. These letters (eight of hundreds) carry the voice of Florence Evelyn Smith, a woman of immeasurable strength, courage, and resilience. While her husband, Aviation Cadet James Brant Smith, trained to defend a country that often denied them both dignity, Florence built airplanes in Ohio, raised their child, and held their love together with handwritten hope.
She reminds us that Black women were not just bystanders to history...they were the steel beneath the wings! As she wrote in the shadow of war, she etched into time a testament of faith, fortitude, and fierce devotion.
Florence Evelyn Smith is proof that not all warriors wore uniforms: some wore aprons, held babies, and wrote letters by lamplight. We honor her voice and her victory.”
- Dr. Tracy P. Washington (Curator, United Crowns Mobile Museum of Black History & Culture)