SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio City Council this week approved a renaming for a portion of an East Side street in honor of the Tuskegee Airmen, the United States Armed Forces’ first African-American pilots.
Councilmembers approved the memorial designation as part of its consent agenda during a Thursday A session meeting, which also included voting to move municipal elections to November in odd-numbered years.
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A portion of Iowa Street from South Cherry Street to South Palmetto Street will be renamed to Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Way after the council’s approval.
No address changes will be needed, according to online agenda documents. Signage will be added to the segment.
The designation cleared several city committees throughout November ahead of Thursday’s vote. The District 2 City Council office covered the costs of the designation, with funding sourced from the General Fiscal Year 2026 budget, the agenda documents said.
“We wanted to memorialize the idea of what they stood for in World War II,” said Rick Sinkfield, a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and president of the San Antonio Chapter of Tuskegee Airmen, during the Thursday meeting.
Sinkfield said the group chose Iowa Street for its service as a pedestrian connector from the East Side to downtown.
In all, 20 individuals have been identified as former airmen who resided in the San Antonio area and the East Side, according to Sinkfield. At least two lived in the Denver Heights neighborhood, which Iowa Street bisects, according to online documents.
In an August 2025 posting to its website, the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum describes a donation that included a photo album describing the story of Joshua Lankford, a Tuskegee pilot from San Antonio from 1943 to 1946.
A photo in the story shows 35 service members, including Lankford, dated Aug. 18, 1944, at the former Army Airfield in Hondo. The navigation school was the United States Air Force’s largest school in the world when it was built in July 1942, according to the Texas State Historical Association.
KSAT has reached out to the Development Services Department to ask about the timeline for adding the signage.
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