Remembering a Tuskegee Hero, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Jefferson, featured in Apple TV’s “Masters of the Air.”
What a treat it was to see the life of my friend, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Jefferson, featured in the limited series “Masters of the Air” on Amazon’s Prime Video.
I met the famed Tuskegee airman in March 2010 when he came to King, NC as part of a book-signing tour for his memoir “Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman and POW.”
Having heard the announcement on our local Public Radio Station, I arrived at the little Japanese restaurant where the signing was scheduled, only to find that almost no one else had shown up. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Jefferson welcomed me and signed several of his books — for myself and as presents for family members.
I mentioned how I’d first heard of the Tuskegee Airmen from my Grandpa Riley, who had served as a sharpshooter in Europe during WWII. Grandpa rarely talked about the war, but when I was a kid, I used to do some woodworking with him, and when other WWII veterans from our Chicago neighborhood stopped by, they would trade stories and remembrances of the war with one another. It was then that I first heard of the Black Tuskegee fliers and their reputation of being the best of the best.
Alexander chuckled and said that every single Black flier had been rejected from American military service going back to WWI because of a widespread belief that Blacks were mentally incapable of performing as fighter pilots. When advocates in the military finally succeeded after two decades of effort in getting approval for the Tuskegee program, the organizers recruited the best of the best Black candidates to make certain none of the critics had an excuse to cancel it. Most of the recruits had finished college with advanced degrees (Alexander himself was a graduate student in Chemistry when he began pilot training).
In an interview with famed journalist, Studs Terkel, his fellow Tuskegee airmen, Second Lieutenant Colman Young (later to become the first Black mayor of Detroit) said, “They made the standards so high, we actually became an elite group. We were screened and super-screened. We were unquestionably the brightest and most physically fit young blacks in the country. We were super-better because of the irrational laws of Jim Crow. You can’t bring that many intelligent young people together and train ’em as fighting men and expect them to supinely roll over when you try to fuck over ’em, right?”
Frustrated that no one else was there to have a book signed, I explained that I was an artist and would love to do a charcoal portrait of Alexander as a gift while he waited for people to show up.
“That would be fun,” Alexander said, “since I’ve always loved drawing, myself.” He opened one of his books and showed me several pages displaying some of the professional-quality drawings he’d done while a POW in Germany.
So, I got a sketchbook from my car and drew while Alexander told me story after story about his amazing life. Descended of slaves (and even one slave-master), Alexander was born in Detroit in 1921, excelled in science, and earned a degree in Chemistry when World War II broke out.
After volunteering and being turned down for flight training in 1942, he was accepted into the Tuskegee flight training program in 1943. Despite approval of the program, other road-blocks to Black fliers emerged. Commanding officer of the Army Air Forces, General Henry “Hap” Arnold said this: “Negro pilots cannot be used in our present Air Corps units since this would result in Negro officers serving over white enlisted men, creating an impossible social situation.”
To avoid the unthinkable “impossible social situation” of Black officers giving commands to white soldiers, a “compromise” was arrived at to allow Blacks to fly as part of their own separate Air Corps unit — the all-Black 99the Pursuit Squadron (known as the “Red Tails” because of the red-painted tail fin of their aircraft).
The 99th shipped out of Tuskegee for North Africa in 1943, where it’s first combat mission was aimed at the strategically significant island of Pantelleria. Despite being given little advice from the battle-tested white pilots, the 99th not only succeeded in its mission, but the subsequent surrender of the garrison of Italian and German soldiers based solely on the Red-Tails’ air assault was a milestone for the entire air force.
“When we first showed up to escort bombers,” Alexander told me, “there was pushback, but once they saw us in action, they requested us.”
Alexander completed eighteen missions in his P-51 Mustang when he was finally shot down on his nineteenth mission attacking a radar station over Toulon, France in August of 1944. He explained that disabling radar stations were crucial to protect bombers for the planned Allied invasion from the southern oceans three days later. They were particularly dangerous to attack since pilots had to dive directly into ground fire defenses around the station to destroy it at close range with the plane’s 50 caliber machine guns.
After being hit, bailing out, and parachuting into a forest, he was immediately captured by Nazis ground troops and taken to Stalag Luft III in Poland (famous as the prison camp of “The Great Escape” film).
“When I got to the camp, this American officer from Mississippi with a deep southern drawl pointed at me and said, ‘We’ll take that boy in our barracks.’” Alexander shook his head at the memory as I sketched. “There was plenty of racism in Detroit, of course. I’d experienced it my whole life. But the Deep South was an entirely different level. I’d visited relatives down there and knew first-hand. So, when that white officer chose me for his bunkhouse, I flat-out refused. But I was told in no uncertain terms that it was a direct order from an officer, so I had no choice but to go with him.
“Once we were out of earshot of the German guards, that officer explained that he’d chosen me because their bunkhouse was used for organizing operations for escape — forging documents, making maps, and such. Out of all the newly captured prisoners brought into the camp that day, I was the one soldier that they knew wasn’t a German spy pretending to be an American flier. The irony was that, at home in the United States, I was looked at with suspicion wherever I went because of the color of my skin, and now in this German prison camp I’d been transformed into the most trusted person there because of the color of my skin.”
When they saw Alexander’s skill as an artist, he was put to work forging documents and making maps to assist with escape operations.
Alexander smiled. “And you know what? That white soldier from Mississippi ended up becoming one of my best lifelong friends.”
As the Allied troops advanced, the Nazis soldiers moved the prisoners to Stalag VII-A, just outside Dachau and its Death Camp. When the Russians reached Poland, the prisoners were forced-marched to Munich. Those that survived were finally freed by Patton’s US Third Army.
Alexander and many of the other fliers were left tagging along with the army with nothing much to do as the ground troops took on the last of the German war machine.
“Here’s a story that isn’t in my book,” Alexander told me as I sketched him. “You have to understand that after so long living with the constant threat of death at any moment, and then being cooped up so long in those camps, and with no planes to fly or way to contribute to the war at that point — well, the lure of Paris was simply too much for me to resist.”
Alexander told me how he’d simply left the American military camp and went to Paris for an unauthorized two-week “vacation,” despite explicit orders against this. His eyes unfocused as he explained how those two weeks of freedom seemed even now almost like a dream. “The French didn’t have any of the racism towards Blacks that existed in the States. There were Jazz clubs everywhere and the joy at seeing an American Black flier who had helped liberate the country…” He smiled a bit sheepishly. “Let’s just say that I’ve never experienced that level of gratitude in my life, and leave it at that.”
“But what happened when you got back to the army?” I asked.
“I expected to be thrown in jail for desertion,” Alexander said. “But it was the strangest thing. I suppose since I wasn’t technically part of any unit there with any duties for anyone to monitor, no one had noticed that I’d been gone for those two weeks.”
Alexander eventually was shipped home to New York City aboard the RMS Queen Mary in the middle of 1945. Years later, Alexander recounted his reception in a video interview with The Digital Collections of the National WWII Museum:
“You’ve been to war. You’re on a boat with thousands of men who experienced all this war. All these anxieties. All these experiences. And everybody’s exuberant, flags are waving, horns are blowing, past the statue of liberty. And then you’re waiting for your time to get down the gangplank with everybody else with your duffle bag. And you walk down the gangplank, and down at the bottom of the gangplank a little white soldier says, ‘Whites to the right and niggers to the left.’ Damnit, coming back home! Back to racism, segregation, and discrimination. That which you’ve lived with all your life. And overseas, I fly and spend nine months in Germany… but it’s reality, so you gird yourself together and say, God Damnit and see what happens. And back to reality. [1]
Alexander continued at Tuskegee as an air instructor after the war. When the Tuskegee program ended, he was retired from service in 1946. He moved to Lockport, married Della, a parachute instructor he’d met at the Tuskegee base, and started a family.
Many white pilots moved from the military to fly commercially with high salaries in the burgeoning and prestigious airline industry. Since Blacks were barred from such jobs at the time, Alexander moved his family back to his hometown of Detroit and became a public-school elementary science teacher, received his Master’s degree in education in 1954, became an assistant principal, and retired in 1979.
When asked why so many Blacks would join the military to fight for a country that so discriminated against them, Alexander quoted Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. (A fellow Tuskegee fighter pilot who went on to become the first Black four-star general in the United States Armed Forces). “As Chappie James used to say, ‘This is my country. I will hold her hand. I will fight for her, I will protect her, but damnit, I’ll make her treat me the way she should.’”
Alexander added, “I believe I was part of the Civil Rights Movement. As an airman, we helped to change the military by our deeds and our accomplishments. We helped to change the whole country, the whole world after World War Two. Blacks in the military. Blacks in civilian life.” [1]
When I finished the portrait, a couple of white WWII veterans showed up to meet Alexander, so I sprayed the drawing and presented it as a gift of thanks. He told me to stop by his house in Detroit if I was ever in the area, but that was the only time I had the pleasure of meeting this hero — in so many ways.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Jefferson died in Detroit, Michigan on June 22, 2022, at the age of 100.
Segregation in the military was ended in 1948 by President Truman.
You can hear Alexander’s account of being shot down and captured in his own words on YouTube at this link: https://youtu.be/fCgeZHH1zU8
Here’s a link to Alexander’s book recounting his experiences. I highly recommend it!
Citations:
[1] The Digital Collections of the National WWII Museum.
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