I grew up during the early sixties, and as a black kid who loved all things flying, I never heard of Eugene Bullard until I stumbled across a copy of the P. J. Carisella and James Ryan book The Black Swallow of Death while I was in high school. I’ve since collected several of his biographies. The best are All Blood Runs Red by Jamie Cockfield and Eugene Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz Age Paris by Craig Lloyd, which goes into more detail about his time in Paris. Both are well worth reading.
There are a lot of amazing stories out about black pilots who overcame incredible odds to get into the sky, that of the Tuskegee Airmen are the only ones who are well known at this point (but not when I was a kid). By the way, I did get a pilot license of my own, and spent many years flying a glider around the mountains of California, Nevada, and Utah.
There are at least three! I read this one and found it to be a very good read.
On the topic of undeservedly little-known Black heroes, I also recommend General Dumas, the first Black general of a mostly white army and father of the novelist (both Porthos and the Count of Monte Cristo were reputedly modeled partly on the General). It isn’t quite as well written, but he’s such an incredible figure that it’s a good read anyway. It won the 2013 Pullitzer Prize in biography. The Black Count:
Given how money talks and the success of The Black Panther, I wouldn’t totally discount the possibility of Bullard’s story making the big screen. Just need to hype this epic bio.
The hard part would the matter of squeezing in all the celebrities that befriended Bullard. Three hours wouldn’t be enough to cover any single phase of his life. Netflix mini-series? I’d watch that.
My first thought was of Hidden Figures, which “grossed $169.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $66.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide gross of $236 million, against a production budget of $25 million.” [3]
