Even now
By Brandon Astor Jones
"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
At the tender age of 10, Eugene Bullard ran away from home. He was the seventh of 10 children born to a black father and Creek Indian mother in Columbus, Georgia. Even as a child he knew in 1904 that a black man was extremely limited in the United States. So he made his way to Newport News, Virginia, and stowed away aboard a ship.
He had heard that black people were treated with more fairness in France. He was determined to get there. However, his hiding place was discovered, and shortly thereafter he was put off the vessel when it reached Aberdeen, Scotland. There he earned a living as an errand boy.
As a teenager, young Bullard decided to move to Liverpool, England. He took up boxing there. For several years he fared well as a boxer. One of his last bouts took him to France. It was then, just 10 days after his 20th birthday that he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. In 1916, due to a wounded leg as a result of his valiant service with an infantry unit, he was discharged as disabled.
While recovering from his wound he met a very influential French family that had strong military connections. That family encouraged him to pursue his dream, which was to become an enlisted flying member of the French Air Force.
In 1917, he earned his wings and began flying Spad biplanes. During more than 20 combat missions, he downed two German planes.
Sometime later, as one might suspect, despite his having won no less than 15 French war medals and flying decorations, he began to yearn for the country of his birth. We should not be surprised that the US military forces would not allow him entry, let alone let him fly, for no other reason than the colour of his skin.
After World War I he stayed in France, where he opened and operated simultaneously a cabaret and gymnasium until World War II broke out, at which time he once again joined the French military. Later he was discharged. In spite of being roundly rejected by the US military, he eventually returned to the USA, where he was forced to work at a series of odd jobs until he died in New York in 1961, at age 67.
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported on October 8, 1994, that "the Black Swallow" (as he was known by his close friends) was honoured at last when Zell Miller, the governor of the state of Georgia, proclaimed October 9, 1994, to be "Eugene Bullard Day." That date was the 100th anniversary of the late hero's birth. The recognition, albeit small, is well overdue.
Eugene Bullard was buried in his legionnaire's uniform in the French war veterans' section of a cemetery in Flushing, New York. Reflecting once again on F. Scott Fitzgerald's words above, it is my opinion that he could not have found a better hero than Eugene Bullard, nor a more revealing and dehumanising tragedy than the USA's institutionalised racism then and, alas, even now.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]