I'm Aisha Roscoe, and you're listening to The Sunday Story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story.

Today, the Tuskegee Airmen are celebrated as American heroes.

Black men who fought in World War II for a country that was still brutally segregated.

Eventually, these men who shattered the color line as combat pilots would be awarded some of the

nation's highest honors.

In 2007, the Tuskegee Airmen were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George

W. Bush.

The Tuskegee Airman helped win a war,

and you help change our nation for the better.

Yours is the story of the human spirit,

and it ends like all great stories do,

with wisdom and lessons and hope for tomorrow.

But some never got to see those tributes because they never made it home.

And their families felt they were forgotten by the U.S. government.

The families I got to know, I think, would be happy with someone knocking on their door,

picking up the phone, saying, you know what, we haven't forgotten about your dad.

We haven't forgotten about your brother.

We haven't forgotten about your uncle, something.

But does it have crickets, you know, is probably the most hurtful thing for them.

NPR investigative correspondent Cheryl W. Thompson is the author of a book that published

earlier this year. It's called Forgotten Souls, The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen.

It tells the stories of 27 black airmen who went missing during flights overseas,

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