Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School principal Sharon Riggs needs one more substitute teacher to fill in for all the teachers who have taken the day off to celebrate the first warm day. Victor Kennedy, the father of the school's secretary, agrees to teach the seventh-grade American-history class for the day and tells the students about the Tuskegee Airmen.
Beginning in 1941, young black men began training at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama to become Army Air Corps pilots. Tuskegee Airmen: American Heroes tells young readers about these brave men who flew over 1, 500 missions during World War II.