P-51D model signed by Alexander Jefferson

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Original Tuskegee Airmen Lt Col Alexander Jefferson, who signed this model P-51D Mustang, was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered them to be second-class citizens. He recounts his experience as a prisoner of war in a German prison camp in his 2005 book, “Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free.” Jefferson’s account is perhaps the only published perspective from an African American in a German prison camp. On August 12, 1944 while on a strafing run over southern France, his nineteenth and final mission, Jefferson was shot down and became a “guest of the Third Reich” as he puts it.

Learn more about the 32 captured Tuskegee Airmen POWs

Read his story in TUSKEGEE AIRMEN PROFILES