Red Tails

     The movie, which opens Friday, tells the story, more or less, of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black combat pilots in the U.S. Military.
     The folks at Alabama Heritage Magazine offer up their non-dramatized story of the airmen as a primer before you go see how Hollywood handles it.

     The movie is doing quite well, despite critics, like this one for The Associated Press, who finds it a poor telling of the real drama behind what the men accomplished in the air over the theater of war and back home on the ground in America. He did, however, like the aerial scenes.

     The Boston Globe review finds the making of the movie depressing because he believes moviegoers will be foreced to support it, despite the fact that it is not a very good movie. And he writes that it stalls in the aerial scenes.

     My Father was in The Army Air Corps in World War II, the all-white Army Air Corps.

     He and I never talked about that aspect of the war, in fact not much about the war at all. But my Mom told the story of traveling to Florida from New York to visit him during one part of his training.

     She got on a city bus in or near Miami and grabbed a seat at the back. You guessed it, the driver told her to move because that wasn't where she belonged. I would love to finish that tale with a reverse Rosa Parks moment, but alas, Mom did as told and moved to the white section.

[NOTE: The CBS 8 Newsroom reports Red Tails sold out at The Rave Theater Friday night.]