Virgil Richardson blazed his own unique trail through the twentieth century: a co-founder of Harlem's American Negro Theater and radio personality in 1930s , a pilot in the famed Tuskegee Airmen brigade, and an expatriate in Mexico through much of the last half century. FLIGHT tells this determined man's story in his own words-as someone who was unwilling to accept the limited options available in Jim Crow America.

Educated in Texas, Richardson set our for New York City to try his hand on the stage. On the brink of success as an actor, he was drafted into the army at the dawn of World War II, where he became a Tuskegee cadet in 1943, and saw action above the battlefields of Europe. Upon returning to the United States, and after encountering the harsh racial climate of pre-Civil Rights America, Richardson decided to move to Mexico. He spent most of the 1950s and 1960s there, making his way as a performer and teacher. Both a story of the fight against racism and the willingness to forge a new path, FLIGHT draws readers into African American history, both north and south of the Rio Grande.

ISBN: 1-4039-6618-4
Price: $26.95
218 pages