Colin Powell once observed that "a dream doesn't come true through magic, it takes sweat, determination and hard work." This principle is dramatically reflected in the history of African Americans in aerospace history. The invention of the airplane in the first decade of the 20th century sparked a revolution in modern technology. This new realm of powered flight rapidly altered modes of travel and reformulated the conduct of warfare. Aviation in the popular mind became associated with adventure and heroism. For African Americans, however, this exciting new realm of flight remained off-limits due to racial discrimination. Many African Americans showed a keen interest in the new age of the air, but found themselves regularly excluded from training as pilots or mechanics. This pattern of racial prejudice became enshrined in the elite Army Air Corps, with blacks denied on racial grounds. Beginning in the 1920s, a small and widespread group of black air enthusiasts challenged this prevailing pattern of racial discrimination. With no small effort and against formidable odds, they obtained their pilot's license and acquired the technical skills to become aircraft mechanics. Their dreams became a concrete reality through Powell's formula of “sweat, determination and hard work.” However, there is astronomical agreement that the U.S. military still faces shortages in cockpits for Black pilots. It's not just about creating pilot diversity in the military, but also about seeing the contributions that black pilots have made and can still make to their nation. Military officials, like Captain Kathy Contres, say that having maximum diversity representation is just not the right thing to do do... half of the document... primary degrading factor for minority candidates. Overall, black applicants generally score lower than their white counterparts, but the report also states that high test scores do not mean the applicant will make a good driver. Daryl Jones, a 1977 magna cum laude graduate of the Air Force Academy, says kids who don't meet academic standards can still become a good pilot through hard work and repetition. But even through hard work and repetition sometimes blacks typically don't do as well in flight school as their white counterparts. Flight instructors struggle to find the answer to why the attrition rate is unusually high for Black student pilots. Fred Fayerweather, a retired Air Force pilot, had an answer to that predicament. He said black pilots generally shower more often because “flight instructors hold them to a higher standard.”