Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman and POW

2 Clark College

18 2 Clark College Alexander Jefferson, college senior, 1942. There was never any question about my attending college, and I had long known it would be Clark College, founded in 1869 by the Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which later became the United Methodist Church. When I started college in 1938, Clark was still known as Clark University, but after it moved in 1941 to downtown Atlanta, across the street from Atlanta University and Morehouse College, it became Clark College. In 1988, the official name became Clark Atlanta University. I find it odd that today so many young people have to be motivated and pushed into college. I took it for granted that college was just part of the process of growing up. Grandfather White, my mother, and her two sisters were all graduates of Clark, so going to Clark College was a given. I would, of course, stay with Grandfather and ‘‘Mother,’’ who was his second wife. I even had my own car to drive to Atlanta. In 1937, my mother’s brother Mace, who had moved to Detroit, had given her a 1932 Model A Ford Coupe, with a rumble seat and big wire-spoked wheels. Unfortunately, no one in my family drove, so it was put up on blocks in our barn, where it stayed until the following summer, when, after my graduation from high school, I was given permission to drive it. I had to clear the junk from around it, remove the blocks, pump up the tires by hand, put in oil and gas, and recharge the battery. Imagine my exuberance when, after many bruised knuckles, that fourcylinder motor coughed and began to chug! I drove Lizzie all alone to Atlanta that fall of 1938, but I already knew the road and what to expect. Every summer my mother’s brother-in-law, Norman, would drive four or five of us in his car to visit Grandfather White. Because there were few if any restaurants that would feed us once we crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, we would pack enough fried chicken and other food for the entire trip. There was also no place where we were allowed to stay overnight, so we’d drive 2. clark college 19 ‘‘Lizzie.’’ straight through to Atlanta. It was about eight hundred miles, and we’d make it in something less than twenty-four hours. Uncle Norman knew where we could stop to buy gasoline and find a bathroom. So when I set out on my own, I knew exactly what to do. I had enough money to buy gas, sufficient chicken to snack on, and that was pretty much it. I remember between Lexington and Chattanooga following a Greyhound bus around those dangerous mountain curves on old, two-lane US 25. But Lizzie and I navigated those roads, and we arrived in Atlanta with no problems. I moved into Grandfather White’s house on the south side of Atlanta, just two blocks from Clark College. Grandfather was then the pastor emeritus of the South Atlanta Methodist Church. He was in his late eighties or early nineties and almost blind, but he was still performing hard physical labor. My grandfather owned eight or nine shotgun houses that he rented out, and it was a full-time job to keep them in repair. I remember being with him on a two-story roof and him saying, ‘‘Alex, give me a nail! Now, show me where it goes?’’ I’d place his hand on the spot; he’d feel it with his finger, place the nail, and pound it in. He did this while sitting on the edge of the roof, with his feet hanging over the edge, and me hanging onto the top of the ladder, trying to keep him from slipping off. Helping him, I learned how to mix red mud, cement, and lime to make plaster 20 red tail captured, red tail free for walls. I also learned how to repair toilets with used plumbing materials, patch roofs with makeshift paper and cardboard, mix concrete with sand, gravel, lime, and a little cement, and fix rotting windows and porches. You name it, Grandpa could repair it. At the time, I weighed 110 pounds dripping wet, and when we used a big crosscut saw to cut up crossties for the fireplace, I can still hear him yelling, ‘‘Pull that saw, boy! Don...