Lieutenant Colonel Marcella Ann Hayes Ng, U.S. Army (Ret.) was an ROTC cadet at the University of Wisconsin when she began to have an interest in flying. She was commissioned into the Army in 1978.
Ng had no idea she was about to make history until a civilian mail clerk pointed it out.
In 1979, Ng (then 2nd Lt. Hayes) graduated helicopter flight training at the U.S. Army Aviation Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama. This accomplishment made her the 55th woman to earn pilots’ wings, the first black woman to graduate from this Army Flight School and– what she’s most distinctly known for– the very first black woman to become a pilot in the United Sates Armed Forces.
After receiving her wings, she was assigned to the 394th Transportation Battalion in Germany where she became the first African American soldier and the first woman leader at that unit.
She went on to serve a total of 22 years before retiring from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2000. In 2022, she was inducted into the university of Wisconsin-Madison Army ROTC Hall of Fame.
“Don’t let the circumstances of where you are, regardless of how rough it was, regardless of how bad it was, define who you are. Because that’s not who you are.” -Lt. Col. Marcella Ann Hayes Ng
Sources
https://www.army.mil/women/profiles/
https://www.awfdn.org/trailblazers/marcella-a-hayes-ng/
Back To Blog