EUGENE JACQUES BULLARD
Name: Eugene Bullard
Born: 9 October 1894
Died: 12 October 1961
Eugene Bullard (9 October 1894 – 12 October 1961) was the first African-American
military pilot.
He was born Eugene Jacques Bullard in Columbus, Georgia, in the United States of
America. His father was known as "Big Chief Ox" and his mother was a Creek
Indian; together, they had ten children. Bullard stowed away on a ship bound for
Scotland to escape racial discrimination (he later claimed to have had witnessed
his father's narrow escape from lynching as a child).
While in the United Kingdom he worked as a boxer and also worked in a music hall.
On a trip to Paris he decided to stay and joined the French Foreign Legion upon
the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Wounded in the 1916 battles around Verdun
and awarded the Croix de Guerre, Bullard transferred to the Lafayette Flying
Corps in the French Aéronautique Militaire and was eventually assigned to SPA 93
on 27 August 1917, where he flew some 20 missions and shot down two enemy
aircraft (one of them unconfirmed).
With the entry of the United States into the war the US Army Air Service
convened a medical board in August 1917 for the purpose of recruiting Americans
serving in the Lafayette Flying Corps. Although he passed the medical
examination, Bullard was not accepted into American service because blacks were
barred from flying in U.S. service at that time. Bullard was discharged from the
French Air Force after fighting with another officer while off-duty and was
transferred to the 170th (French) Infantry Regiment on January 11, 1918, where
he served until the Armistice.
Following the end of the war, Bullard remained in Paris. He began working in
nightclubs and eventually owned his own establishment. He married the daughter
of a French countess, but the marriage soon ended in divorce, with Bullard
taking custody of their two daughters. His work in nightclubs brought him many
famous friends, among them Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong and Langston Hughes.
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Bullard, who spoke German, readily
agreed to a request from the French to spy on German agents frequenting his club
in Paris.
After the German invasion of the French Third Republic in 1940, Bullard took his
daughters and fled south from Paris. In Orléans he joined a group of soldiers
defending the city and suffered a spinal wound in the fighting. He was helped to
flee to Spain by a French spy, and in July 1940 he returned to the United States.
Bullard spent some time in a hospital in New York for his spinal injury, but he
never fully recovered. During and after World War II, when seeking work in the
United States, he found that the fame he enjoyed in France had not followed him
to New York. He worked in a variety of occupations, as a perfume salesman, a
security guard, and as an interpreter for Louis Armstrong, but his back injury
severely restricted his activities. For a time he attempted to regain his
nightclub in Paris, but his property had been destroyed during the Nazi
occupation, and he received a financial settlement from the French government
which allowed him to purchase an apartment in New York’s Harlem district.
In the 1950s, Bullard was a relative stranger in his own homeland. His daughters
had married, and he lived alone in his apartment, which was decorated with
pictures of the famous people he had known, and with a framed case containing
his 15 French war medals. His final job was as an elevator operator at the
Rockefeller Center, where his fame as the “Black Swallow of Death” was unknown.
In 1954, the French government invited Bullard to Paris to rekindle (together
with two Frenchmen) the everlasting flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
under the Arc de Triomphe, and in 1959 he was made a chevalier (knight) of the
Légion d'honneur. Even so, he spent the last years of his life in relative
obscurity and poverty in New York City where he died of stomach cancer on
October 12, 1961. He was buried with military honors by French officers in the
French War Veterans' section of Flushing Cemetery in the New York City borough
of Queens.
In 1972, his exploits as a pilot were published in the book The Black Swallow of
Death: The Incredible Story of Eugene Jacques Bullard, The World's First Black
Combat Aviator by P.J. Carisella, James W. Ryan and Edward W. Brooke (Marlborough
House, 1972). This book, with jacket art by famed WWI aviation illustrator
George Evans, is part of the Bullard display at the National Museum of the
United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.
On 23 August 1994, 33 years after his death, and 77 years to the day after his
rejection for U.S. military service in 1917, Eugene Bullard was posthumously
commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.
In 2006, the movie Flyboys loosely portrayed Bullard and his comrades from the
Lafayette Flying Corps. Abdul Salis portrays Eugene Skinner, the character based
on Bullard.
Name: Eugene Bullard
Born: 9 October 1894
Died: 12 October 1961
Eugene Bullard (9 October 1894 – 12 October 1961) was the first African-American
military pilot.
He was born Eugene Jacques Bullard in Columbus, Georgia, in the United States of
America. His father was known as "Big Chief Ox" and his mother was a Creek
Indian; together, they had ten children. Bullard stowed away on a ship bound for
Scotland to escape racial discrimination (he later claimed to have had witnessed
his father's narrow escape from lynching as a child).
While in the United Kingdom he worked as a boxer and also worked in a music hall.
On a trip to Paris he decided to stay and joined the French Foreign Legion upon
the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Wounded in the 1916 battles around Verdun
and awarded the Croix de Guerre, Bullard transferred to the Lafayette Flying
Corps in the French Aéronautique Militaire and was eventually assigned to SPA 93
on 27 August 1917, where he flew some 20 missions and shot down two enemy
aircraft (one of them unconfirmed).
With the entry of the United States into the war the US Army Air Service
convened a medical board in August 1917 for the purpose of recruiting Americans
serving in the Lafayette Flying Corps. Although he passed the medical
examination, Bullard was not accepted into American service because blacks were
barred from flying in U.S. service at that time. Bullard was discharged from the
French Air Force after fighting with another officer while off-duty and was
transferred to the 170th (French) Infantry Regiment on January 11, 1918, where
he served until the Armistice.
Following the end of the war, Bullard remained in Paris. He began working in
nightclubs and eventually owned his own establishment. He married the daughter
of a French countess, but the marriage soon ended in divorce, with Bullard
taking custody of their two daughters. His work in nightclubs brought him many
famous friends, among them Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong and Langston Hughes.
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Bullard, who spoke German, readily
agreed to a request from the French to spy on German agents frequenting his club
in Paris.
After the German invasion of the French Third Republic in 1940, Bullard took his
daughters and fled south from Paris. In Orléans he joined a group of soldiers
defending the city and suffered a spinal wound in the fighting. He was helped to
flee to Spain by a French spy, and in July 1940 he returned to the United States.
Bullard spent some time in a hospital in New York for his spinal injury, but he
never fully recovered. During and after World War II, when seeking work in the
United States, he found that the fame he enjoyed in France had not followed him
to New York. He worked in a variety of occupations, as a perfume salesman, a
security guard, and as an interpreter for Louis Armstrong, but his back injury
severely restricted his activities. For a time he attempted to regain his
nightclub in Paris, but his property had been destroyed during the Nazi
occupation, and he received a financial settlement from the French government
which allowed him to purchase an apartment in New York’s Harlem district.
In the 1950s, Bullard was a relative stranger in his own homeland. His daughters
had married, and he lived alone in his apartment, which was decorated with
pictures of the famous people he had known, and with a framed case containing
his 15 French war medals. His final job was as an elevator operator at the
Rockefeller Center, where his fame as the “Black Swallow of Death” was unknown.
In 1954, the French government invited Bullard to Paris to rekindle (together
with two Frenchmen) the everlasting flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
under the Arc de Triomphe, and in 1959 he was made a chevalier (knight) of the
Légion d'honneur. Even so, he spent the last years of his life in relative
obscurity and poverty in New York City where he died of stomach cancer on
October 12, 1961. He was buried with military honors by French officers in the
French War Veterans' section of Flushing Cemetery in the New York City borough
of Queens.
In 1972, his exploits as a pilot were published in the book The Black Swallow of
Death: The Incredible Story of Eugene Jacques Bullard, The World's First Black
Combat Aviator by P.J. Carisella, James W. Ryan and Edward W. Brooke (Marlborough
House, 1972). This book, with jacket art by famed WWI aviation illustrator
George Evans, is part of the Bullard display at the National Museum of the
United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.
On 23 August 1994, 33 years after his death, and 77 years to the day after his
rejection for U.S. military service in 1917, Eugene Bullard was posthumously
commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.
In 2006, the movie Flyboys loosely portrayed Bullard and his comrades from the
Lafayette Flying Corps. Abdul Salis portrays Eugene Skinner, the character based
on Bullard.