Before Tuskegee, There was Bullard

[unhappycamper]

Before Tuskegee, There was Bullard
February 19, 2009
Military.com|by Bryant Jordan

He's probably the most famous African-American combat pilot that you've never heard of.

His name was Eugene Bullard, and he didn't fly in Vietnam or Korea or even with the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II fame.

Bullard, a Georgia native whose father had once been a slave, flew in World War I. And he flew for the French.

"A lot of Americans don't because his part in aviation history came to be known, I think, only in the late 1950s and early '60s, shortly before he died," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Russell Davis, president of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., the official organization that honors America's black WWII airmen. "He set a pretty high standard. He also proved that African-Americans could fly and were human beings like everyone else."

Bullard's story is the stuff of high adventure. Born in 1894, he grew up in an American South where lynchings were not uncommon but justice for blacks certainly was. He had only a few years of grade school education behind him when he left home, working odd jobs here and there until finally, in 1912, he stowed away on a German ship bound for Scotland, according to a memoir he wrote in his last years.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/before-tuskegee-there-was-bullard.html

[catnhatnh]

1. WOW! Just fucking WOW!

You hit this one out of the park UHC! I know a shitload of aviation history and got blindsided by this. Big K&R and hope this makes the "Greatest" page soon.

[Ecumenist]

2. Wow, I'm black and had never heard of him.

What a shame. He's accomplished so much and deserves so many remembrances. America should be ashamed that we haven't remember those heroes who weren't born in certain groups or people born with silver spoons in their mouths, be they black, white, brown, purple or blue.