Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman and POW, Revised Edition (World War II: The Global, Human, and Ethical Dimension) - Hardcover

Jefferson, Alexander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823274381 ISBN 13: 9780823274383

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is a rare gift detailing the experience of Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson, who was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered them to be second-class citizens. In this vividly detailed, deeply personal story, Jefferson writes as a genuine American hero about what it meant to be an African American pilot in enemy hands, fighting to protect the promise of freedom. The book features the sketches, drawings, and other illustrations Jefferson created during his nine months as a POW, and Lewis Carlson's authoritative background to the man, his unit, and the fight Alexander Jefferson fought so well.

This revised edition covers the story of Jefferson's continuing outreach and education work, as he brings the story of the Tuskegee Airmen to communities and schools across the country, and the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Airmen in 2007.

Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is perhaps the only account of the African American experience in a German prison camp.

About this title

About the Author:

Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson, (USAF, Ret.) has degrees from Clark College and Wayne State University. He won numerous citations and remains active in Veterans' and Tuskegee Airmen organizations. He served in Michigan public schools for thirty years as a teacher and administrator, and lives outside Detroit in Southfield.

Lewis H. Carlson is co-author of Life behind Barbed Wire: The World War II Photographs of Prisoner of War Angelo M. Spinelli (Fordham).

From Booklist:

Jefferson, a Tuskegee Airman who was shot down during World War II and held in a German prison camp for nine months, recalls better treatment as a prisoner of war than as a black citizen in the U.S. He had been fascinated with airplanes since his childhood in Detroit, where he was born into a long line of clergymen and educators, who nonetheless suffered the racial indignities of the time. Jefferson went on to become a chemist when the chance to join the 332nd Fighter Group captured his imagination. He piloted a Red-Tail Angel, one of the planes assigned to protect bombers' crews. On his eighteenth mission, he was shot down over southern France and taken to Stalag Luft III, a camp primarily for captured British and American Air Force officers. While at the camp, he began recording observations of the cold, occasional shootings of prisoners, but mostly boredom and hunger. Later, he recorded his impressions of the ignominious welcome home reserved for black soldiers. Photographs and Jefferson's drawings during his imprisonment add to the fascination of this memoir. Vanessa Bush
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About this edition

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0823274381
• ISBN 13: 9780823274383
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192