Opinion: Remembering a Hero: Eugene Jacques Bullard (1895-1961)
On Nov. 11, America celebrates its veterans, with special acknowledgement of those who sacrificed everything and didn’t make it home.
The original Armistice Day was celebrated Nov. 11, 1919, at 11 a.m. with the signing of the treaty ending World War I at Versailles, France. What was called Armistice Day underwent a name change in 1954 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had overseen U.S. troops in another Great War.
Eugene Bullard served in two wars. Born in Georgia in 1895, he grew up in the racism of the Jim Crow South. After escaping to the North as a teenager, he stowed away on a German ship in Baltimore, bound for Europe. Discovered on board, he was allowed to earn his passage to Scotland. There, he worked odd jobs and fell in love with the art of boxing, becoming good enough to make a Scottish boxing team, which traveled to France. He fell in love with the country and became a French citizen.
When the war started in 1914, Bullard joined the French Foreign Legion. Severely injured, he earned his first medal of valor and, while hospitalized, he met a French aviator who mesmerized him with tales of air flight. He bet the pilot $2,000 that he could become a pilot and, when he earned his license, became the first African American combat aviator in France. He named his fighter “All Blood Runs Red” and is credited with shooting down two German planes.
When America joined the war, all other American pilots fighting in WWI were accepted into the U.S. Army Air Corps, but Bullard was rejected twice because of his race. Instead, Bullard served in the infantry.
After the war ended, he returned to France and became an entrepreneur and, when WWII started, he became a spy for the French Resistance against Nazi Germany. After that war, French President Charles DeGaulle awarded Bullard France’s highest military honors, bringing his medal total to 15.
Finally, on April 23, 1994, President Bill Clinton posthumously corrected the Army’s refusal to recognize the first African American pilot and hero in two wars, and named Bullard a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force.
On this Veterans Day, please remember all of our own. “All blood runs red.”
Al Mayes of Eureka is a military service veteran and minister with Renaissance Incarceration.
