Robbins Airport was built after the closure of the Acres Airport, the only Chicago-area airport that serviced black pilots. It was constructed by the Challenger Air Pilots' Association, a group of 15 to 20 black aviators that included pilots Cornelius Coffey, John C. Robinson, Janet Bragg, Earl W. Renfroe, and Harold Hurd, on the site of an abandoned airfield. The site consisted of one hangar and a half-mile-wide dirt airstrip. Construction was completed in January 1933. It was approved as an airfield by the United States Department of Commerce and was the only accredited black-owned Airport in the country. The airport was managed by Robinson, who began teaching other members of the Challenger club to fly in the spring of 1933. Robbins Airport had the only flight school at the time where African-Americans could be trained as pilots. The surrounding white communities, such as Blue Island and Midlothian, did not approve of this activity, and their police