Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The Two Lives of Eugene Bullard

THE GREAT WAR | ARTICLE

The Two Lives of Eugene Bullard

How the first black combat pilot escaped America, 

became a hero in France, and ended up an elevator

operator in New York.

By Cori Brosnahan







Bullard _1.jpeg
Eugene Bullard (far left) in a group shot circa 1914–1918. Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

In his own words, Eugene Bullard was the “first known Negro military pilot.” 
That, at least, was what was printed on his business cards. By that time, after a 
quarter-century in France, Bullard was back in the U.S., living in New York City, 
where he worked variously as a security guard, a perfume vendor, and a 
Rockefeller Center elevator operator. First known Negro military pilot; Bullard 
was a man both proud and humble, and his business card reflected that. But it 
also reflected the world in which he lived. His was not a first that had been 
formally recognized — much less celebrated. The story of how Eugene Bullard 
became the first black combat pilot, and why his achievement stayed in the 
shadows for so long, is a tale of alternate realities, of what happens when 
opportunity is offered or denied — and, ultimately, seized regardless.
Born in Columbus, Georgia in 1895, Bullard would recall that as a child, he was 
“as trusting as a chickadee and as friendly.” For a while, his parents were able to
insulate him from the realities of racism so that he “loved everybody and thought
everybody loved me.” But they could only do so much. When Bullard’s father got 
into a fight with a racist supervisor, a lynch mob came to the house. Bullard’s 
father survived, but was forced to go into hiding. Dreaming of a place “where 
white people treated colored people like human beings,” Bullard decided to run 
away. Accounts vary, but he was likely only 11 when he left home.
For the next five years, Bullard roamed around Georgia, encountering kindness 
and cruelty from a wide cast of characters along the way. At one point, he joined
 a band of English gypsies who opened his eyes to the possibility of a better life 
for African Americans in Europe. Crossing the Atlantic would become Bullard’s 
new objective; in 1912, at the age of 16, he stowed away on a ship leaving 
Norfolk, Virginia for Germany. It dropped him off in Scotland, where people 
treated him “just like one of their own.” Within 24 hours, he was “born into a 
new world” and “began to love everyone” once again.
From Scotland, Bullard would make his way to England. He took whatever jobs he
could find, including: street performer, dock-worker, target for an amusement 
park game, helper on a fish wagon, and boxer — the last of which would eventually
 take him to France. Bullard was instantly smitten, recalling later how “it seemed
to me that the French democracy influenced the minds of both white and black 
Americans there and helped us to act like brothers as near as possible.” France 
would become so important to Bullard that he would rewrite his own biography to
imbue his arrival there with a sense of destiny; in Bullard’s memoir “All Blood 
Runs Red,” his father has French roots, and it is the dream of France that pulls 
him away from Georgia in the first place.







Bullard_2.jpeg
Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.



























So it was no surprise when, just 19-years-old, Bullard joined the fabled
French Foreign Legion to fight for his adopted country against Germany 
in the Great War. He was later transferred to a standard French army
unit and fought at the Battle of Verdun, where he was seriously injured
attempting to carry a message from one French officer to another. The 
wound would take him out of ground combat permanently; his heroism
would earn him the Croix de Guerre military decoration. 

It was during his convalescence at a clinic in Lyon that he became 
acquainted with a French air service officer who promised to help him 
become an aircraft gunner. The officer made good on his word; in 
October of 1916, Bullard began training as a gunner at a military air 
station near Bordeaux. There he learned about the Lafayette Escadrille,
a squad of American fighter pilots flying under the French flag. The 
Escadrille was well-compensatedand undeniably glamorous (their 
mascots were two lion cubs named Whiskey and Soda). 

Bullard immediately asked to train as a pilot rather than a gunner. He 
would receive his pilot’s license seven months later. Celebrating his 
achievement with friends in Paris, he later recalled that, “by midnight 
every American in Paris knew that an American Negro by the name of 
Eugene Bullard, born in Georgia, had obtained a military pilot’s license.”
As for Americans back in America, they remained ignorant of Bullard’s 
achievement. It was not reported in American newspapers or magazines, save a 
small item in the January 1918 issue of The Crisis, a journal produced by the 
NAACP, which said only that Bullard had “enlisted in the Aviation-Corps.” 
Bullard’s biographer Craig Lloyd notes that the American military had privately 
decided not to accept African Americans, and the media silence “may have been 
a result of censorship, official or self-imposed, by the American press.”
Bullard would soon feel the sting of that rejection directly. After America entered
the war in April of 1917, Bullard — who still loved the country he’d left — applied to
fly for the American Expeditionary Forces. He was rejected. Still, he derived 
“some comfort out of knowing that I was able to go on fighting on the same front 
and in the same cause as other citizens of the U.S.”
He could not have known that his career would soon be cut short entirely. The 
end of the war was still a year away. Bullard, who had flown some 20 missions, 
was a competent pilot who had earned the trust and respect of his comrades. So 
the American was surprised and confused when French military authorities 
ordered him out of aviation and into a noncombat position in the infantry.
The exact reasons remain murky. According to Bullard, the dismissal could be 
traced back to Edmund C. Gros, the primary American liaison for the Lafayette 
Escadrille. Bullard had a tiff with a racist French officer and Gros had used what 
seemed to Bullard a minor incident to oust him. In their 1972 biography of 
Bullard, P.J. Carisella and James W. Ryan would reject their subject’s 
conjecture; instead, they relay a story ostensibly supported by Bullard’s 
wartime acquaintances, in which Bullard is relieved of his duties after 
committing a far greater offense — punching a French lieutenant. Craig 
Lloyd, writing almost three decades later, acknowledges that the 
evidence against Gros is circumstantial, but believes it ultimately 
“confirms Bullard’s suspicion.”







Bullard_3.jpeg
Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.


































 We may never know what happened, but context helps fill in the picture. 
When  Carisella and Ryan discarded the idea that Gros could have been 
behind Bullard’s dismissal, they did so reasoning that it “seems hardly 
credible that white Americans living in wartimeParis could still practice 
their age-old prejudices and deprive France of such a badly needed fighter.” 
But it is clear that Jim Crow had arrived in France with the American 
Expeditionary Force in late 1917 and early 1918. As Lloyd explains, 
American officers believed that the morale of their white American soldiers
would suffer if they “saw black American troops enjoying freedom from 
segregation and discrimination, and especially the freedom to 
associate with white women.” Measures were taken to disparage black troops;
 white officers publicly accused them of everything from cowardice to rape.
Perhaps the most blatant and notorious display of American racism in France was
 the Linard Memo. The confidential document advised French military and civilian
 authorities that “although a citizen of the United States, the black man is
regarded by the white American as an inferior being with whom relations of
business or service only are possible.” It went on urging them to “prevent the rise
of any pronounced degree of intimacy between French officers and black
 officers” because “we cannot deal with them on the same plane as with
 the white American officers without deeply wounding the latter.” 
Though signed by a Frenchman, it was composed by a French-American 
committee, and clearly reflects American attitudes; when the memo 
came to light in France, it was roundly denounced by the government.
For all the U.S. military’s attempts to re-create the American racial paradigm 
overseas, they couldn’t control everything. African American soldiers returned to
 America after the war with a wholly different sense of themselves and their 
place in the world. That newfound consciousness would influence the struggle for
equal rights in the decades to come.
Eugene Bullard, whose wounds entitled him to French citizenship, would remain 
in Paris after the war. There he became a successful nightclub impresario and 
gym owner. He lived at the starry center of a Parisian post-war society; Josephine
Baker babysat for him; Langston Hughes washed dishes at his cabaret; Ernest 
Hemingway based a character on him.
Bullard’s life in France came to an end with World War II. Volunteering once again
 to fight for France, he was wounded. Forced to flee to neutral Spain, Bullard 
would escape embattled Europe for America aboard a steamship, crossing the 
Atlantic for the second time, in the opposite direction, almost three decades 
after his original voyage. He would live out the rest of his days in New York, 
where he enthusiastically took part in the French cultural life of the city. Two 
years before his death in 1961, the French made him a Knight of the Legion of 
Honor; thirty-three years after his death, the United States Air Force appointed 
him a second lieutenant.







Bullard_4.jpeg
In 1959, Bullard appeared in his elevator operator’s uniform on the Today Show. 
Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

America was and is a country to which people from all over the world come for 
the opportunity to realize their full potential. But Eugene Bullard and countless 
other African Americans had to leave it to realize theirs, and many who stayed 
never had the chance. In that, Bullard’s story is a testament to what prejudice 
has cost all Americans. “Bullard’s two lives,” writes Lloyd in his epilogue, “the 
one in America and the other in France, illustrate the colossal spiritual, social, 
and economic waste to this nation caused by the tenacious denial to black
people of their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Sources:
Craig Lloyd, Eugene Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris (Athens, Georgia: University 
of Georgia Press, 2000).
Eugene J. Bullard, manuscript for “All Blood Runs Red: My Adventurous Life in Search of 
Freedom,” 
Louise Fox Connell collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
P.J. Carsella and James W. Ryan, The Black Swallow of Death (Boston: Marlborough House,

1972).



Article is courtesy of The American Experience, PBS. 


Sunday, May 7, 2017

Modern Library's 100 Best Novels

How many have you read?  Favorites? 

THE BOARD'S LIST


  1. ULYSSESby James Joyce
  2. THE GREAT GATSBYby F. Scott Fitzgerald
  3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MANby James Joyce
  4. LOLITAby Vladimir Nabokov
  5. BRAVE NEW WORLDby Aldous Huxley
  6. THE SOUND AND THE FURYby William Faulkner
  7. CATCH-22by Joseph Heller
  8. DARKNESS AT NOONby Arthur Koestler
  9. SONS AND LOVERSby D.H. Lawrence
  10. THE GRAPES OF WRATHby John Steinbeck
  11. UNDER THE VOLCANOby Malcolm Lowry
  12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESHby Samuel Butler
  13. 1984by George Orwell
  14. I, CLAUDIUSby Robert Graves
  15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSEby Virginia Woolf
  16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDYby Theodore Dreiser
  17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTERby Carson McCullers
  18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVEby Kurt Vonnegut
  19. INVISIBLE MANby Ralph Ellison
  20. NATIVE SONby Richard Wright
  21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KINGby Saul Bellow
  22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRAby John O’Hara
  23. U.S.A.(trilogy)by John Dos Passos
  24. WINESBURG, OHIOby Sherwood Anderson
  25. A PASSAGE TO INDIAby E.M. Forster
  26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVEby Henry James
  27. THE AMBASSADORSby Henry James
  28. TENDER IS THE NIGHTby F. Scott Fitzgerald
  29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGYby James T. Farrell
  30. THE GOOD SOLDIERby Ford Madox Ford
  31. ANIMAL FARMby George Orwell
  32. THE GOLDEN BOWLby Henry James
  33. SISTER CARRIEby Theodore Dreiser
  34. A HANDFUL OF DUSTby Evelyn Waugh
  35. AS I LAY DYINGby William Faulkner
  36. ALL THE KING’S MENby Robert Penn Warren
  37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REYby Thornton Wilder
  38. HOWARDS ENDby E.M. Forster
  39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAINby James Baldwin
  40. THE HEART OF THE MATTERby Graham Greene
  41. LORD OF THE FLIESby William Golding
  42. DELIVERANCEby James Dickey
  43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series)by Anthony Powell
  44. POINT COUNTER POINTby Aldous Huxley
  45. THE SUN ALSO RISESby Ernest Hemingway
  46. THE SECRET AGENTby Joseph Conrad
  47. NOSTROMOby Joseph Conrad
  48. THE RAINBOWby D.H. Lawrence
  49. WOMEN IN LOVEby D.H. Lawrence
  50. TROPIC OF CANCERby Henry Miller
  51. THE NAKED AND THE DEADby Norman Mailer
  52. PORTNOY’S COMPLAINTby Philip Roth
  53. PALE FIREby Vladimir Nabokov
  54. LIGHT IN AUGUSTby William Faulkner
  55. ON THE ROADby Jack Kerouac
  56. THE MALTESE FALCONby Dashiell Hammett
  57. PARADE’S ENDby Ford Madox Ford
  58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCEby Edith Wharton
  59. ZULEIKA DOBSONby Max Beerbohm
  60. THE MOVIEGOERby Walker Percy
  61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOPby Willa Cather
  62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITYby James Jones
  63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLESby John Cheever
  64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYEby J.D. Salinger
  65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGEby Anthony Burgess
  66. OF HUMAN BONDAGEby W. Somerset Maugham
  67. HEART OF DARKNESSby Joseph Conrad
  68. MAIN STREETby Sinclair Lewis
  69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTHby Edith Wharton
  70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTETby Lawrence Durell
  71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICAby Richard Hughes
  72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWASby V.S. Naipaul
  73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUSTby Nathanael West
  74. A FAREWELL TO ARMSby Ernest Hemingway
  75. SCOOPby Evelyn Waugh
  76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIEby Muriel Spark
  77. FINNEGANS WAKEby James Joyce
  78. KIMby Rudyard Kipling
  79. A ROOM WITH A VIEWby E.M. Forster
  80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITEDby Evelyn Waugh
  81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCHby Saul Bellow
  82. ANGLE OF REPOSEby Wallace Stegner
  83. A BEND IN THE RIVERby V.S. Naipaul
  84. THE DEATH OF THE HEARTby Elizabeth Bowen
  85. LORD JIMby Joseph Conrad
  86. RAGTIMEby E.L. Doctorow
  87. THE OLD WIVES’ TALEby Arnold Bennett
  88. THE CALL OF THE WILDby Jack London
  89. LOVINGby Henry Green
  90. MIDNIGHT’S CHILDRENby Salman Rushdie
  91. TOBACCO ROADby Erskine Caldwell
  92. IRONWEEDby William Kennedy
  93. THE MAGUSby John Fowles
  94. WIDE SARGASSO SEAby Jean Rhys
  95. UNDER THE NETby Iris Murdoch
  96. SOPHIE’S CHOICEby William Styron
  97. THE SHELTERING SKYby Paul Bowles
  98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICEby James M. Cain
  99. THE GINGER MANby J.P. Donleavy
  100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONSby Booth Tarkington

THE READER'S LIST

  1. ATLAS SHRUGGEDby Ayn Rand
  2. THE FOUNTAINHEADby Ayn Rand
  3. BATTLEFIELD EARTHby L. Ron Hubbard
  4. THE LORD OF THE RINGSby J.R.R. Tolkien
  5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRDby Harper Lee
  6. 1984by George Orwell
  7. ANTHEMby Ayn Rand
  8. WE THE LIVINGby Ayn Rand
  9. MISSION EARTHby L. Ron Hubbard
  10. FEARby L. Ron Hubbard
  11. ULYSSESby James Joyce
  12. CATCH-22by Joseph Heller
  13. THE GREAT GATSBYby F. Scott Fitzgerald
  14. DUNEby Frank Herbert
  15. THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESSby Robert Heinlein
  16. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LANDby Robert Heinlein
  17. A TOWN LIKE ALICEby Nevil Shute
  18. BRAVE NEW WORLDby Aldous Huxley
  19. THE CATCHER IN THE RYEby J.D. Salinger
  20. ANIMAL FARMby George Orwell
  21. GRAVITY’S RAINBOWby Thomas Pynchon
  22. THE GRAPES OF WRATHby John Steinbeck
  23. SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVEby Kurt Vonnegut
  24. GONE WITH THE WINDby Margaret Mitchell
  25. LORD OF THE FLIESby William Golding
  26. SHANEby Jack Schaefer
  27. TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOMby Nevil Shute
  28. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANYby John Irving
  29. THE STANDby Stephen King
  30. THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMANby John Fowles
  31. BELOVEDby Toni Morrison
  32. THE WORM OUROBOROSby E.R. Eddison
  33. THE SOUND AND THE FURYby William Faulkner
  34. LOLITAby Vladimir Nabokov
  35. MOONHEARTby Charles de Lint
  36. ABSALOM, ABSALOM!by William Faulkner
  37. OF HUMAN BONDAGEby W. Somerset Maugham
  38. WISE BLOODby Flannery O’Connor
  39. UNDER THE VOLCANOby Malcolm Lowry
  40. FIFTH BUSINESSby Robertson Davies
  41. SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYINGby Charles de Lint
  42. ON THE ROADby Jack Kerouac
  43. HEART OF DARKNESSby Joseph Conrad
  44. YARROWby Charles de Lint
  45. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESSby H.P. Lovecraft
  46. ONE LONELY NIGHTby Mickey Spillane
  47. MEMORY AND DREAMby Charles de Lint
  48. TO THE LIGHTHOUSEby Virginia Woolf
  49. THE MOVIEGOERby Walker Percy
  50. TRADERby Charles de Lint
  51. THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXYby Douglas Adams
  52. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTERby Carson McCullers
  53. THE HANDMAID’S TALEby Margaret Atwood
  54. BLOOD MERIDIANby Cormac McCarthy
  55. A CLOCKWORK ORANGEby Anthony Burgess
  56. ON THE BEACHby Nevil Shute
  57. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MANby James Joyce
  58. GREENMANTLEby Charles de Lint
  59. ENDER’S GAMEby Orson Scott Card
  60. THE LITTLE COUNTRYby Charles de Lint
  61. THE RECOGNITIONSby William Gaddis
  62. STARSHIP TROOPERSby Robert Heinlein
  63. THE SUN ALSO RISESby Ernest Hemingway
  64. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARPby John Irving
  65. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMESby Ray Bradbury
  66. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSEby Shirley Jackson
  67. AS I LAY DYINGby William Faulkner
  68. TROPIC OF CANCERby Henry Miller
  69. INVISIBLE MANby Ralph Ellison
  70. THE WOOD WIFEby Terri Windling
  71. THE MAGUSby John Fowles
  72. THE DOOR INTO SUMMERby Robert Heinlein
  73. ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCEby Robert Pirsig
  74. I, CLAUDIUSby Robert Graves
  75. THE CALL OF THE WILDby Jack London
  76. AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDSby Flann O’Brien
  77. FARENHEIT 451by Ray Bradbury
  78. ARROWSMITHby Sinclair Lewis
  79. WATERSHIP DOWNby Richard Adams
  80. NAKED LUNCHby William S. Burroughs
  81. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBERby Tom Clancy
  82. GUILTY PLEASURESby Laurell K. Hamilton
  83. THE PUPPET MASTERSby Robert Heinlein
  84. ITby Stephen King
  85. V.by Thomas Pynchon
  86. DOUBLE STARby Robert Heinlein
  87. CITIZEN OF THE GALAXYby Robert Heinlein
  88. BRIDESHEAD REVISITEDby Evelyn Waugh
  89. LIGHT IN AUGUSTby William Faulkner
  90. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NESTby Ken Kesey
  91. A FAREWELL TO ARMSby Ernest Hemingway
  92. THE SHELTERING SKYby Paul Bowles
  93. SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTIONby Ken Kesey
  94. MY ANTONIAby Willa Cather
  95. MULENGROby Charles de Lint
  96. SUTTREEby Cormac McCarthy
  97. MYTHAGO WOODby Robert Holdstock
  98. ILLUSIONSby Richard Bach
  99. THE CUNNING MANby Robertson Davies
  100. THE SATANIC VERSESby Salman Rushdie


Thursday, May 4, 2017

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

"Everyone believes the world's greatest lie."
"What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised.
"It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.  That's the world's greatest lie."


Not going to say much about The Alchemist.

It's the story of a shepherd boy in Spain, who one days meets a king who tells him there's a treasure waiting for him at the Pyramids in Egypt.  He tells the boy that it is his destiny to seek and find that treasure.  

So the boy sells his sheep and departs for Africa and crosses the Sahara to get to Egypt.  The book is the journey, and it's almost myth-like.  

I enjoyed this book.