Storming the Heavens: African Americans and the Early Fight for the Right to Fly
Gerald Horne
Dec 2018 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Bill Andrew Quinn
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6 hr 38 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
The recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African American women shaped the U.S. effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this account and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African Americans to gain the right to fly. This struggle involved pioneers like Bessie Coleman, who traveled to World War I–era Paris in order to gain piloting skills that she was denied in her U.S. homeland; and John Robinson, from Chicago via Mississippi, who traveled to 1930s Ethiopia, where he was the leading pilot for this beleaguered African nation as it withstood an invasion from fascist Italy, became the personal pilot of His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie, and became a founder of Ethiopian Airways. Additionally, Horne adds nuance to the oft told tale of the Tuskegee Airmen and goes further to discuss the role of U.S. pilots during the Korean war in the early 1950s. He also tells the story of how and why U.S. airlines were fought when they began to fly into South Africa—and how planes from this land of apartheid were protested when they landed at U.S. airports.
About the author
Gerald Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations, and war.
Bill Andrew Quinn, a nationally recognized commercial and promo voice actor, has been narrating audiobooks since 1993. When not behind the microphone, Bill can be found doing research for his radio show The Bill Andrew Quinn Radio Hour X2, watching his beloved St. Louis Cardinals on the MLB Network, or sampling craft beer.
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