When Melvin and Jean McNair hijacked a plane from Detroit to Algeria in 1972 to join Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers, they called it an act of political resistance to racism and the war in Vietnam. In reality, the hijacking was an act of desperation committed by two young people who saw no other way to escape what they felt was the constant state of racial oppression in the United States.
Forty years after the hijacking, Melvin and Jean are model citizens in France. If they return to the U.S., they could spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Forty years after the hijacking, Melvin and Jean are still coming to terms with their crime and its lifelong consequences.
