Jordan’s mother, First Lieutenant Louise Virginia Lomax Winters of the Army Nurse Corps. Credit: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture,

During World War II (1942-1946), 28 African-American women from the Army Nurse Corps manned the station hospital where the Tuskegee Airmen underwent basic and advanced pilot training. Most people are familiar with the Black military pilots and their exemplary combat record, but the stories of the nurses and lieutenants in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps that staffed Alabama’s Tuskegee Army Air Field are unfortunately more unknown.

Tampa Bay bookworms have a chance to do something about that next week.

Registration is free for a book talk and conversation with Pia Marie Winters Jordan, Project Director of the Tuskegee Army Nurses Project on Thursday, June 29 at Tombolo Books in St Pete.

Jordan is the daughter of a First Lieutenant and nurse who worked throughout the 1940s, and is in St. Pete to discuss her newest book and documentary with longtime activist and writer Gwendolyn Reese. St. Pete’s African American Heritage Association will provide light refreshments before the program starts.

Tombolo Books will have Jordan’s newest book, “Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse,” available for purchase.