Description

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A] superb job in presenting the history of the first African-American military pilots...quite gripping. --ARMY

Excellent history of the first African-American military pilots...Moye's lively prose and the intimate details of the personal narratives yield an accessible scholarly history that also succeeds as vivid social history. --Publishers Weekly

A scholarly but accessible treatment of a significant forerunner of the civil-rights movement. --Kirkus Reviews

In several particularly moving passages, veterans recall the heavy load they carried to attain not only personal success but also achievement for their entire race...The personal nature of the examples Moye cites make it a far deeper and richer narrative than typical WWII fare...As both civil rights and U.S. military history, the Tuskegee Airmen comprise a worthy subject, while the author's friendly style should open the title up to even casual readers. --Booklist

This book is an important contribution that will be enjoyed by general readers and historians. --ForeWord Reviews

Moye, a history professor at the University of North Texas, directed the National Park Service's five-year Tuskegee Airmen Oral History Project. He draws on those interviews to inject a first-person, insider feel into his exhaustive study of the Tuskegee program. --The Dallas Morning News

Moye draws on three elements to set his book apart as the best overall account of how blacks aspired to fly for the Army Air Corps were accepted into an experimental program at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama starting in 1941, and then amassed a remarkable wartime record that ultimately led to the integration of the U.S. armed forces. -- Aviation History

An] enriching, deeply humane, and academically rigorous volume. -- CHOICE

J. Todd Moye's Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II is the best book yet written about the total experience of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American or black pilots in the Army Air Forces, and their support personnel...The book is valuable not only for its wealth of information about the Tuskegee Airmen groups and squadrons, but also for placing them in the broader context of American history, including the sociological
and political forces that pressured the War Department and the Army Air Corps, and later the Army Air Forces, to include blacks among its pilots, not only for fighters but also for bombers. --Daniel Haulman, H-Net

About the Author

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J. Todd Moye is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Oral History Program at the University of North Texas. A historian of the American civil rights movement, he directed the National Park Service's Tuskegee Airmen Oral History Project from 2000 to 2005. He consulted on Double Victory, the Lucasfilm documentary about the Tuskegee Airmen.