About Eugene Bullard
Eugene Jacques Bullard was one of the first African-American military pilots, although Bullard flew for France, not the United States. Bullard was one of the few black combat pilots during World War I, along with Pierre Réjon from France, William Robinson Clarke, a Jamaican who flew for the Royal Flying Corps, Domenico Mondelli from Italy, and Ahmet Ali Çelikten of the Ottoman Empire. Also a boxer and a jazz musician, he was called "L'Hirondelle noire" in French. Because he was hard-working as a stable boy, young Bullard won the Turners' affection and was asked to ride as their jockey in the 1911 County Fair races. Bullard arrived at Aberdeen, Scotland, and made his way first to Glasgow and then to London, where he boxed and performed slapstick in Belle Davis's "Freedman Pickaninnies", an African-American troupe. His paternal ancestors had been enslaved in Georgia and Virginia according to U.S. census records, and his father was born on a property owned by Wiley Bullard, a slave-owning planter in Stewart County. Despite this, Bullard became enamored with his father's stories of France, where slavery had been abolished and blacks were treated in the same way as whites.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.