Eugene Bullard

BACKGROUND PAPER

ON

EUGENE BULLARD

1. As a youth in grade school, I remember how it was always nice to be first. The first person to do everything was like being king for a day. I am sure we can relate in some way of how it feels to be first. Being first paves the way for followers to strive to accomplish the things you did to become first. Imagine being first, must have felt for Eugene Bullard, the first African American combat pilot. I know that a lot of people, including myself, thought that the first African American combat pilots were The Tuskegee Airmen. "He flew nearly 25 years before the first African American pilots graduated from Air Corps pilot training in 1942, at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama (African American Pilot Eugene Bullard, 1). Had it not been for famous firsts, such as Bullard, who helped pave the way for racial equality, I would not be able to sit in the same classroom with you today. "For 350 years, blacks in America's military have fought a dual fight- against their country's external enemies and against the internal enemy of racism," says Bernard C. Nalty, a historian in the Office of Air Force History (Nalty, preface). Military and civil leaders were divided on the policy of using blacks in armed combat, setting the pattern for exclusion and acceptance, by using blacks in time of crisis and ignoring them in times of peace. Through a remarkable combination of persistence, skill and luck, Eugene Bullard became the first African American combat pilot.

2. Eugene Bullard was born in 1894 and lived with his father in Columbus, Georgia. His father always talked of France as a country where whites and blacks were treated equally. The mere thought of racial equality was all the fuel Bullard needed to get his internal fire raging with a

dream of going to France. He hitch-hiked from Georgia to Virginia at age eighteen. He reached Virginia, where he stowed away on a ship to Scotland, and worked his way to France. He enlisted in the French Foreign Legion immediately after the start of World War I. After being transferred to a regular unit in the French army, Bullard was wounded twice, and was declared disabled. He then applied for pilot training with a French air service and was accepted on the basis of combat heroism, thus becoming the first African American fighter pilot. He learned to operate the throttle of a clipped wing monoplane incapable of flight. Bullard soon graduated to flyable trainers and in the summer of 1917 joined a pursuit squadron. Denied in his first attempt to transfer to the American air service, an organization solely for whites, he continued to wear the uniform of France on November 7, 1917, when he shot down a German triplane fighter. It was his second aerial victory, but the first he actually received credit for. During World War I, he became a highly distinguished fighter pilot and flew 20 missions against the Germans and was wounded three times. Bullard's career as a sergeant pilot ended as a result of a misunderstanding with a French officer. A racial insult was the cause of the misunderstanding. "Unlike the average citizen of France, many of those who had exercised authority in the colonies believed themselves innately superior to blacks or Asians" (Nalty, 124). Bullard's demise occurred after he demanded that a colonial officer return his salute and he punched a lieutenant when the lieutenant tried to prevent him from boarding a truck carrying men on leave back to their units. Although Bullard was reduced in rank and ended up serving