Blue Skies, Black Wings

At the age of 17, Samuel L. Broadnax - enamoured with flying - was enlisted and trained as a pilot at the Tuskegee Army Air Base. Although he left the Air Corps at the end of the Second World War, his experiences inspired him to talk with other pilots and black pioneers of aviation. "Blue Skies, Black Wings" recounts the history of African Americans in the skies from the very beginnings of manned flight. The book tells the story of Black airmen from Charles Wesley Peters, who flew his own plane in 1911, and Eugene Bullard, a black American ace with the French in World War I, to the World War II heroics of the 'Tuskegee Airman', and 1945 Freeman Field mutiny against segregationist policies in the Air Corps. The contribution of African American aviators was only fully recognised years after the war, and in 2006, the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor was awarded to the Tuskegee Airmen. Broadnax paints a vivid picture of the people who fought oppression to make the skies their own.