Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama, 1910 (review)

July 2011 247 black freedom struggle in America itself, Tuck’s book offers multiple, conflicting, and dialectical stories of the black freedom struggle cleverly woven into a neat pattern of resistance, confrontation, progress, and triumph —while acknowledging that much of this struggle remains still to be reconciled. We Ain’t What We Ought to Be is a synthesis of black history over the last century and a half, an amalgamation of black protest movements , and a fusion of innumerable voices that demanded and created change via generations of black dissent. A book this dense that attempts to cover so much history naturally fails to treat some important topics adequately. The discussion of the Black Panther Party, one of the most vital components of the black freedom struggle, is narrow. Unfortunately, Tuck repeats falsehoods and generalizations about the organization. His description devalues the Panthers as an “incoherent, faction-ridden, anti-white, sloganeering, futile movement of hopeless youth” (p. 331). He portrays the Panthers as sexist and dismisses Elaine Brown, one of the few women leaders of any Civil Rights/Black Power group, as simply “a former lover of Huey Newton” (p. 365). Since 1998, more than fifty-five scholarly works have been written on the Panthers. Much of this scholarship addresses such misrepresentations and would have helped Tuck to produce a more balanced treatment of the organization. We Ain’t What We Ought to Be is nonetheless a great resource for both survey and graduate courses in African American history. Beginning the study with the Civil War provides Tuck with the opportunity to supply detailed accounts from those out in front and in marginalized shadows that stretch from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Tuck’s book is a provocative interpretation of the long black freedom movement written for general readers who have an interest in the struggle for social justice and an end to racism, as well as in the history of race in America. Jakobi Williams University of Kentucky Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama, 1910. By Julie Hedgepeth Williams. Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2010. 168 pp. $19.95. ISBN 978-1-58838-168-2. From her perspective as a professor of journalism, Julie Williams utilizes the narratives of an unknown reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser, considered the principal compiler of information relating to the flying the alabama review 248 school of the Wright brothers, to document the history of this endeavor and to examine the influence of the school in bringing about a change in a prevailing negative image of post–Civil War Alabama. In February 1910 Wilbur Wright visited Montgomery while touring the Southeast to locate a genial climate and suitable grounds to establish a flying school to train members of the Wright exhibition team. Williams suggests that the Wrights’ presence in Montgomery was an answer to a prayer for the city’s forward-thinking young men. With the war “still lingering as a defining characteristic of the city’s image” business leaders “understood clearly that the city, state, and region had an image problem ” (pp. 15, 24). The well-documented text provides an in-depth history of the nation’s first civilian flying school. Although the subject has been addressed in previous journal articles, specifically “The ‘Wright Stuff’: Pilot Training at America’s First Civilian Flying School” (Air Power History, Winter 2002), Williams is the first to provide a critical review of the school in the context of early twentieth century Alabama. During the early months of 1910, only two airplanes were being operated legally in the United States (that is, within the provisions of patents awarded to the Wright brothers ). Consequently, establishment of the school provided Alabamians with a vision of the future before it would have otherwise been possible. Using articles from the Montgomery Advertiser, Williams has essentially compiled a chronicle of the daily activities of the school and the civic leaders who worked to ensure success of the project. Learning from their previous attempt to attract a military installation to the city, members of the Commercial Club, a predecessor to the Chamber of Commerce, were aggressive in their efforts to secure the school. The Wrights received thirty telegrams from...