E-mail a friendVernice Armour
airdate July 23, 2007
As the first-ever African American female combat pilot, Marine Capt. Vernice Armour is part of U.S. military history. She flies a missile-equipped Super Cobra helicopter and has served two tours in Iraq. During college, the multi-sport athlete joined the Army Reserves and took private flying lessons. After graduation, Armour worked as a police officer before joining the Marines. She was admitted to Officer Candidate School on an aviation contract and finished at the top of her flight school class.
The first African American female combat pilot discusses growing up in a military family. (2:46)
Vernice Armour
Tavis: Vernice Armour is a Marine captain who has the distinction of being the first African American female combat pilot in U.S. history. During her stand-out career in the Marines, she served two tours of duty in Iraq, most recently flying the Marine Corps SuperCobra attack helicopters. Recently she was featured on the cover of "Crisis" magazine - that would be the NAACP's magazine - an issue devoted to women's history month. Captain Armour, nice to have you on the program.
Capt. Vernice Armour: Nice to be here, Tavis.
Tavis: It's a pleasure to meet you.
Armour: Thank you.
Tavis: I guess you have the appropriate name for a Marine captain - Vernice Armour.
Armour: Yeah, one of my buds actually dubbed me Vernice Strong-As-Armour, so -
Tavis: I like that.
Armour: I kind of like the ring of that one, so I think I might use it.
Tavis: Vernice Strong-As-Armour. I'll take that. I was laughing about your background because you grew up in a military family - not laughing at your background but laughing because you grew up in a military family, which I assume is part of how the bug bit you. I grew up in a military family, and I had - with all due respect - no interest in going into the military, no interest in flying helicopter.
Armour: I didn't, either.
Tavis: So what happened to you that didn't happen to me?
Armour: Well honestly, I didn't have any interest in going into the military, either. Both my dads had done it. My grandfather, he's Munford Point Marine, back when the Marine Corps had a third boot camp there at Munford Point from '42 to '48, when it was segregated. But I actually wanted to be a cop that rode a horse downtown.
Being born in Chicago, I grew up in Memphis, but I never forgot that vision when I saw it downtown. When I was in college, I saw a flyer - you go to school, and you don't have that much money, some of us, and you're trying to make ends meet. But you still want to go out and recreate and have a good time. Saw a flyer said, free trip to Mardi Gras. And notice I didn't say vacation. Trip.
Tavis: Yeah.
Armour: All you had to do is join the women's rifle team and ROTC. So I get to hold a rifle? Family history, right?
Tavis: You got it.
Armour: So I joined up, made some great relationships, and ended up getting involved in the Army ROTC. Enlisted in the Army in '93, took a semester off from college, came back, ended up getting an invitation to the Nashville police department. Was a cop for a while, rode a steel horse downtown. I was part of the traffic squad.
Tavis: Downtown Nashville, not Chicago.
Armour: Nashville. Nashville, Tennessee, right, right, right.
Tavis: But you're downtown on a horse. All right. (Laughter)
Armour: Right, a steel horse. And when I got involved with ROTC when we were looking at MOSs, I still hadn't become a police officer. So I wanted to do anything where you could carry a gun or blow something up. A woman with a power tool. But my battle buddy was on an aviation contract - a young White female. And by the end - half of the day, we'd looked at all the different (unintelligible) displays and careers and she said "Hey, can we go to the aviation tent now?"
And I was, like, "Mm, yeah, all right, whatever, let's go to the aviation tent." It was across the field in a tree line - little dim inside, hazy. Your eyes adjust once you go in. Black chick in a flight suit - man, why didn't I think of that? It planted a seed. It was a crossroads. And after becoming a police officer, I had the opportunity to become a Marine, because you don't join the Marines, you become a Marine.
Tavis: There you go.
Armour: There you go.
Tavis: They taught you that, if nothing else.
Armour: That's right, that's right.
Tavis: That, and how to fly helicopters.
Armour: That's right. (Laughter) And I said "I can always be a police officer," because serving the community and the public and my society - making a difference is what I really wanted to do. And when I joined the Marine Corps, amazing experience. I ended up becoming the first Black female pilot in the Marine Corps and combat pilot in American history, so.
Tavis: It's a fascinating story. As you told that story about all of these - and I know it probably doesn't strike you in this way but I heard at least three firsts that you have the distinction of being in the story you just told. You're downtown in Nashville, riding. I know ain't a bunch of sisters doing that. (Laughter)
We already know of your history in the Marines and what a first that is. So I hear these two or three firsts that you're putting out there. It occurs to me as I listen to you as a Black woman talk about these firsts that you have done on the law enforcement side, on the military side. I think of all the Black women who find themselves on the other side of that equation - that is to say, Black women who because of the way the law or the military has treated or maltreated their sons, their husbands, their nephews - you know where I'm going with this story.
You're on the opposite side. You're a Black woman who's had a different executive. I don't mean to suggest that all Black women have problems with law enforcement, but there are so many who look at law enforcement, which you've been in, look at the military askew because of what they do to our Black boys. Your take on that is what?
Armour: Well I feel if you want to make a difference, you have to change policy, and in order to change policy you have to be in a position to do that. You're not going to do that sitting on your couch at home or anywhere else where you're not in a position of empowerment. So if I wanted to become empowered, I had to go to the places to get that empowerment, to get that experience, to get that preparation.
I am blessed God put me in some of those positions and places. I wanted to reach out to the youth, I wanted to reach out to our community, I wanted to reach out to our parents and make a difference, because one person can make a difference. When I thought about the Marine Corps, I'm like okay, God, how is this setting me up?
Well, I was going back to my elementary school, to my junior high, and to other youth organizations. Well now, people actually request me to come speak to their corporations or their youth organizations or their businesses. So I'm not going out there saying I want to - even though I am - but people are actually requesting me. So it's really just passing the blessings on. Everything that God has given me has been a blessing, but they're not for me to keep. They're for me to pass on.
Let me take this line of conversation and go a little further with it. If Black women and other folk in the Black community have issue with law enforcement across the country, in many instances with the military, they certainly have issues with the war in Iraq.
Armour: Right.
Tavis: And again, I'm not trying to put you in a policy position. You were in the military; you do what you're supposed to do; the commander in chief sends you; you fly your helicopter and bring people back to safety and rescue people, as you have done. But how do you process the fact that so many people in your own community are - and not even just Black folk.
Black folk have always been opposed to the war in Iraq, and now, according to the polls, just about everybody else in America is now opposed to the war in Iraq. But here you are, a Black woman coming out of our community who's doing not one but two tours of duty in Iraq.
Armour: Well, the number one answer I have for that, Tavis, when I enlisted in the Army back in 1993 and when I became a Marine in December of 1998, there was no war in Iraq. I didn't join for that. I joined as a service to my country - civic allegiance. Now there happens to be a war in Iraq, but my grandfather, my dad - we joined out of allegiance and servitude to our country.
And that's what it means to me. Now, if I'm given an order to go serve in Washington, D.C., Camp Pendleton, California, or Iraq, that's what I do. It's not for me, in the role that I play, to second-guess those decisions because when we're out in the field and I'm supporting those guys on the ground and they say, hey, shoot this target here, we're being pinned down and I'm "Well, wait a minute, is this - " lives are at stake. I have a job to do. That's to bring those guys and women on the ground back safely, and the men and women in the sky, we're a team, we're a family.
Tavis: Let me ask how it is that you have navigated these two tours of duty in Iraq, and for that matter just being in the Marines as a helicopter pilot to begin with. And I want to ask this question against this backdrop: I was just giving a speech the other day, and somehow it came up in the speech in the conversation for me to share - to remind this audience of the Tuskegee Airmen.
And you know the story as well as I do, given what you do. In World War II, when the military - after Harry Truman opens up the military for Black folk to come in, when the military can't do anything else, they're up against the wall, they need men, they finally give these Black pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen a chance to fly.
They were qualified - they wouldn't let them tour, they wouldn't let them fly until they absolutely needed them and they were in trouble. They bring in the Black pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen - we all know the story. They never lost a single plane that they escorted back to safety, not unlike Harriet Tubman, who never lost a single passenger on the Underground Railroad.
I'm raising that because they only brought in the Tuskegee Airmen when they needed them - when they had no other alternative. You got a chance to serve because you wanted to; you've served successfully in Iraq on two different tours. What's it like these days, being a Black woman with that backdrop in the military doing something very unusual?
Armour: Well, I'm actually a member of the Tuskegee Airmen - the East Coast chapter.
Tavis: See, I didn't even know that. Shout out to the Tuskegee Airmen.
Armour: That's right, that's right. And the Bessie Coleman Foundation. And she was the first African American to get her international pilot's license - not even woman or man, but person. So that's awesome - from Chicago, south side, right? (Laughter) But I'm standing on the shoulders of those men and women who've come before me.
They blazed a trail, and it left a path, it left a mark for me to walk down to blaze a slightly different trail for those next to me and behind me to follow. I heard a phrase, and I love it and I use it - I'm standing on the shoulders of many. I'm preparing my shoulders for that next generation. But we have to go out there and prepare - show them how to prepare their shoulders.
And it's really just about passing the blessings and the legacy - their success. People will say they're successful. Their significance - you made an impact on someone else's life. But I like to look at it as success, significance, and legacy. What are we leaving behind? Tuskegee Airmen absolutely did that, and I'm here today because of them.
Tavis: So you've served successfully, and this I think I have correct - your service in the military is coming to an end, and you're going to start doing something else now. First of all, I'm just glad that you survived.
Armour: Yes, me too (laughs).
Tavis: With all due respect, there are so many people who have lost their lives in Iraq, so I'm glad you went there safely a couple of times and came back, and now your tour of service to the country in this capacity is up, so what do you do now? What's Vernice doing next?
Armour: Well, I stepped out there back in '03 with motivational speaking, but now I'm going to be pursuing that exclusively. I'll also be working with Dr. Roosevelt Thomas on diversity management. He's out of Atlanta. Primary focus is going to be the motivational speaking, though - reaching out, again, to our society with an emphasis, for me, on youth.
Because our young men and women growing up today, we need role models and we need mentors. And could I stay in and have a successful career in the military? Absolutely. But my passion, again, is in my community and in my society, and I truly believe the Lord sent me there to give me that platform to go out there and do that work for that purpose. So my passion, my purpose, and I'm now just taking the positive steps to do that.
Tavis: Well, I'm delighted that you are doing it, and I suspect that you'll be as successful as you want to be, given what you've done already. So it's nice to have you on the program. A pleasure meeting you. From the south side of Chicago, Vernice Armour.
Back to July 23, 2007