Flight

Ben Vinson III is an associate professor of Latin American history at Penn State University. He is the author of Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico, and he lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

Virgil Richardson blazed his own unique trail through the twentieth century: a co-founder of Harlem's American Negro Theater, 1930s radio personality, World War II pilot, and expatriate for most of his life. In Flight, this remarkable man tells his story in his own vivid words. Educated in Texas, Richardson set out for New York City in 1938 to build a career on the stage. Just when he was on the brink of success as an actor, World War II broke out and he was drafted into the army. After overcoming numerous obstacles, Richardson became a Tuskegee cadet in 1943, and later saw action flying over the battlefields of Europe. Upon returning to the racially divided U.S., he decided to move to Mexico, where he encountered a society quite different from the one he had left behind. Compellingly told and historically fascinating, this is the story of a determined individual unwilling to accept the limited options of Jim Crow America.

The compelling life story of an accomplished African American actor and WW II combat pilot who fled the racism of the United States for Mexico

Preface - From the Eyes of an Historian Black American Yankees on Montezuma's Soil Before the War In the Army NowDays at Tuskegee From Tuskegee Back to War Atlantic Sound A Soldiers's Homecoming Bienvenidos a Mexico From Tourist to Resident - Being Black in Mexico City during the 1950's Livin' and Workin' the Mexico City Scene New York Interlude Transitions - Back to Mexico during the 1960's Border Crossings