Black Knights: the Story of the Tuskegee Airmen.

By Lynn M. Homan and Thomas Reilly. (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing Company, 2001. Pp. 336. $23.00, ISBN 1-56554-828-0.)

Twenty years ago literature was scarce about the Tuskegee Airmen (a term generally used to refer to all African Americans who served in segregated World War II flying units), but the 1990s witnessed an outpouring of material in various media, including books, films, museum exhibitions, news stories, juvenile literature, and websites. Black Knights now joins this growing body of popular works.

One result of this recent interest in the Tuskegee Airmen is that the educated public now knows the general outline of their story. Put succinctly, in early 1941 the War Department announced the establishment of a racially segregated pursuit squadron whose pilots would be trained at a new airfield near Tuskegee, Alabama. By 1945 almost a thousand men had earned their wings at Tuskegee, some 450 of whom flew fighters in combat over North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Europe. A segregated bomber group was also formed, but racial tensions delayed their training and the unit never saw overseas duty. After the war these segregated squadrons persisted until the desegregation of the armed forces in 1948.

Authors Lynn M. Homan and Thomas Reilly, who design museum exhibitions, were commissioned to produce a traveling exhibition on the Tuskegee Airmen in 1996. After it had opened in 1997, they continued their research, supplementing extensive archival work with dozens of interviews. In the foreword a veteran of the first all-black flying unit describes Black Knights as "the most comprehensive, accurate, and exhaustive record to date concerning America's first black military pilots" (p. 9), but unfortunately, while the book has its strengths--excellent photographs, colorful quotations, and a useful roster of pilot training graduates--on balance its weaknesses outweigh them. Consider, for example, the documentation of sources. Many popular histories forgo citations altogether, but Homan and Reilly instead provide them sporadically, and moreover, these references are often so sketchy as to be useless. Additionally, the book contains troubling errors that undermine its credibility; for example, Thurgood Marshall never served as chief justice of the Supreme Court (p. 29). Finally, the editing and printing of the book does not do justice to the topic. Lines are dropped and stories duplicated; more careful editing might have significantly improved the writing style and organization. Despite its limitations, however, Black Knights does provide useful insights into the experiences of the Tuskegee Airmen, especially through its extensive quotations drawn from interviews with surviving members.

ROBERT J. JAKEMAN

Auburn University