Eugene Bullard (9 October1895 - 12 October, 1961) was the first African-American military pilot.
Born Eugene Jacques Bullard in Columbus, Georgia, one of ten children. His father was known as "Big Chief Ox" and his mother was a Creek Indian . Bullard stowed away on a ship bound for Great Britain to escape racial discrimination. While in Britain he worked as a boxer and also worked in music hall. On a trip to Paris he decided to stay and joined the French Foreign Legion upon the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914. Wounded in the 1916 battles around Verdun, and already awarded the Croix de Guerre, Bullard transfered to the French Service Aeronautique and was eventually assigned to 93 Spad Squadron on August 17, 1917.
In October 1917, Headquarters U.S. Air Service convened a medical board for the purpose of recruiting Americans serving in the Lafayette Escadrille. Although he passed the medical examination, Bullard was not accepted into American service.
Following the end of the war, Bullard remained in Paris. He began working in nightclubs and eventually owned his own. His work in nightclubs brought him many famous friends, among them Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, and Langston Hughes. After the German invasion of France in 1940, Bullard returned to the United States. The last years of his life were spent in relative obscurity in New York City where he died of stomach cancer on October 12, 1961.
Reference
- Herbert Molloy Mason Jr., High Flew the Falcons: The French Aces of World War I, New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1965.
- Lloyd, Craig. Eugene Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz Age Paris. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2000.
External links
