Bullard, Eugene Jacques

Impact on the world

Rejected by the U.S. Air Service solely because of his race despite an outstanding combat record — more than 20 missions and at least one confirmed kill — Bullard became the world's first Black combat aviator while flying for France, having already earned the Croix de Guerre for valor as an infantryman wounded at Verdun. France awarded him 14 wartime decorations, and in 1959 made him a Knight of the Legion of Honor, its highest honor, while in his own country he remained largely unknown, working as a Rockefeller Center elevator operator; he was not formally recognized by the U.S. military until 1994, when he was posthumously commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, 33 years after his death.

Life & background

Born October 9, 1895, in Columbus, Georgia, the seventh of ten children of a formerly enslaved father, Bullard ran away from home at eleven after witnessing a near-lynching of his father, eventually stowing away on a German freighter to Scotland in 1912 and working as a boxer and entertainer in England before settling in Paris, where he felt, for the first time, treated “as a man regardless of the color of his skin.” He joined the French Foreign Legion at 19 when World War I began, fought at the Somme and Verdun with the 170th Infantry Regiment — nicknamed “The Swallows of Death” — and was severely wounded in 1916, after which he trained as a pilot, earning his license in 1917 and flying combat missions over Verdun. After the war he settled permanently in Paris, running nightclubs frequented by Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, and Josephine Baker, and served as a French Resistance spy during World War II owing to his fluency in English, French, and German, until he had to flee the Nazi invasion on foot to Spain. He returned to the U.S., worked as a security guard, perfume salesman, and elevator operator, and in 1954 was chosen by Charles de Gaulle to relight the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris; he died of stomach cancer in New York City on October 12, 1961.

Sources

1. National Air and Space Museum; PBS American Experience; New Georgia Encyclopedia