Robinson, John Charles

Impact on the world

Became the first Black student and the first Black faculty member at the Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical School after persuading its all-white board to admit him, then in 1934 flew his own plane to Tuskegee Institute to propose the aviation program that, five years later, became the foundation for the Tuskegee Airmen; in 1935 he traveled to Ethiopia at his own initiative to fight Italian fascist invasion as commander of Emperor Haile Selassie's air force, becoming, by some historical accounts, among the first Americans of any background to take up arms against fascism in what would become World War II.

Life & background

Born in Florida and raised in Mississippi, Robinson left home after the tenth grade to study automobile mechanics at Tuskegee Institute, graduating in 1923 before settling in Chicago, where persistent rejection from employers unwilling to hire a Black mechanic eventually gave way to success running his own garage. After repeated rejection from the all-white Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical School, he took a job as the school's janitor to gain entry, eventually becoming both its first Black student and, after graduating, its first Black instructor, teaching both Black and white students. In May 1934 he flew his own small plane to his alma mater, Tuskegee Institute, to propose establishing an aviation training program there, planting what biographer Phillip Thomas Tucker has called the actual seed of the Tuskegee Airmen, five years before the school's selection as a Civilian Pilot Training Program site. In 1935, with Mussolini's Italy threatening invasion, Robinson volunteered to serve Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie, who personally commissioned him a colonel and named him commander of the small, poorly equipped Ethiopian Air Force; he flew reconnaissance and communications missions throughout the brief war before Italy's conquest forced his return to the U.S. as a celebrated public figure, nicknamed the 'Brown Condor.' He returned to Ethiopia after its 1941 liberation to rebuild its air force and helped found Ethiopian Airlines, dying in 1954 from injuries sustained in a plane crash during a mercy mission to obtain blood for a transfusion, and was buried in Addis Ababa with full military honors before thousands of mourners.

Sources

1. Warfare History Network; Military.com; Britannica Kids; University of Nebraska Press