In honor of Black History Month, Fordham University Press is featuring Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman and POW, by Alexander Jefferson, one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down in World War II.
A Detroit native, Jefferson enlisted in 1942, trained at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, became a second lieutenant in 1943, and joined one of the most decorated fighting units in the War, flying P51s with their legendary, and feared, “red tails.”
Based in Italy, Jefferson flew bomber escort missions over southern Europe before being shot down in France in 1944. Captured, he spent the balance of the war in Luftwaffe prison camps in Sagan and Moosberg, Germany.
