Before the Tuskegee Airmen, There Was Eugene “Jacques” Bullard

Editor’s note: This is the first of a series honoring aviation pioneers during Black History Month.

Eugene “Jacques” Bullard (1895-1961), America’s first Black combat aviator, pre-dated the famous Tuskegee Airmen by three decades.

Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia, the seventh of 10 children. At age 11, he ran away from home to join a band of nomadic performers after witnessing his father almost being lynched.

In 1912, at age 17, he stowed away on a German merchant ship, landing in Aberdeen, Scotland. While in Scotland, he started a career in boxing, which allowed him to travel around Europe.

Bullard was in Paris when World War I broke out and joined the French Foreign Legion as a machine gunner. He saw combat on the Somme front.

Eugene “Jacques” Bullard joined the French Foreign Legion as a machine gunner at the start of WWI, eventually seeing combat on the Somme front. (Courtesy of the National Museum of the United States Air Force)

In 1916, at the Battle of Verdun, he was severely wounded. While recuperating, he learned to fly on a bet. After a full recovery, he volunteered as an air gunner on Oct. 2, 1916, for the French Air Service (French: Aéronautique Militaire) and underwent training at the Aerial Gunnery School in Cazaux, Gironde. Following this, he went through his initial flight training at Châteauroux and Avord and received pilot’s license number 6950 from the Aéro-Club de France on May 5, 1917.

When the U.S. entered the war, he applied for a transfer to the U.S. armed forces. Not only was he denied the transfer, but the U.S. government pressured France to ground him to uphold the U.S. policy against allowing Black pilots. France acquiesced, removing Bullard from aviation duty.

After the war, Bullard remained an expatriate in France, where he opened nightclubs in Paris. When the Germans invaded France in May 1940, the 46-year-old Bullard rejoined the French service. He was seriously wounded by an exploding shell but escaped the Germans and made his way to the United States. For the rest of World War II, despite his lingering injuries, he worked as a longshoreman in New York and supported the war effort by participating in war bond drives.

The Eugene Jacques Bullard exhibit in the Early Years Gallery at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. (Courtesy of the National Museum of the United States Air Force)

Bullard stayed in New York after the war and lived in relative obscurity, but he remained a hero to the French.

In 1954, the French government invited Bullard to Paris as one of the three men chosen to rekindle the everlasting flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe. In 1959, he was made a Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d’honneur by General Charles de Gaulle, who called Bullard a “véritable héros français” (“true French hero”). He also was awarded the Médaille militaire, another high military distinction. In all, he received 14 decorations and medals from the government of France.

In 1989, he was posthumously inducted into the inaugural class of the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame.

On Aug. 23, 1994 – 33 years after his death, and 77 years to the day after the physical that should have allowed him to fly for his own country – Bullard was posthumously commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force.