Spoke several languages, taught boxing............Prince of Egypt gave him money b/c he was impressed by this American's boxing abilities...................got tons of medals, and as my continued theme on how ungrateful this country can be, the guy ended up running an elevator, and some white tv host saw him and couldn't believe a real life hero was reduced to running an elevator, had him on his show, someone could have given him money to open a boxing school in NYC, NY or something...

Truly amazing story, one of my favorites, if heroes like him and me are treated like they have been treated................killing the roses, and keeping the weeds, that is a large part of the problem...red carpet treatment for a war criminal, Vlad Putin, i saved the presidents life, and until last Thursday was homeless for ten years.........this guy worked an elevator, he had France's top soldier medal, helped catch Nazi spies, owned a nightclub in Paris, ran the place, an amazing story....Kobe B, dead, Luther Vandross, dead, Whitney H, same fate, and many others....................like what is so great about this backwards, backstabbing country.........they are supposed to promote the best and brightest, the bravest, etc.....

One of my all time favorite stories, not even just saying that.......a truly legendary life.......aviator, translator, like wow...

Bullard in his uniform as a French Army caporal
Nickname(s)	French: l'Hirondelle noire de la mort, lit. 'Black Swallow of Death'
Born	October 9, 1895 Columbus, Georgia, U.S.
Died	October 12, 1961 (age

Eugene Jacques Bullard (born Eugene James Bullard; October 9, 1895 – October 12, 1961) was one of the first African-American military pilots,^[1][2] although Bullard flew for France, not the United States. Bullard was one of the few black combat pilots during World War I, along with William Robinson Clarke, a Jamaican who flew for the Royal Flying Corps, Domenico Mondelli [it] 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 (literally "Black Swallow").

All Blood Runs Red, a biography of Bullard by Phil Keith and Tom Clavin, was published in 2019 by Hanover Square Press.

Early life

Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia, the seventh of 10 children born to William (Octave) Bullard, a Black man from Stewart County, Georgia, and Josephine ("Yokalee") Thomas, a Black woman said to be of African-American and Indigenous (Muscogee Creek) heritage.^[3] 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.^[4][5][6][7] Bullard attended the 28th Street School in Columbus from 1901 to 1906, completing the fifth grade.^[3]

During his youth, he suffered the trauma of watching a white mob attempt to lynch his father over a workplace dispute. Despite the rampant racism of Jim Crow-era Georgia, his father continued to voice the conviction that African Americans had to maintain their dignity and self-respect in the face of the white prejudice.^[8] 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. When he reached his 11th birthday, Bullard ran away from home with the intention of getting to France. Stopping in Atlanta, he joined a British clan of gypsies known by the surname of Stanley and traveled throughout Georgia tending their horses and learning to race. It was the Stanleys who told him how the racial barriers did not exist in Britain and reset his determination to now get to the United Kingdom.^[3]

Disheartened that the Stanleys were not scheduled to return to the United Kingdom, Bullard found work with the Turner family in Dawson, Georgia. 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.^[9] In 1912, he made his way to Norfolk, Virginia, where he stowed away on the German freighter Marta Russ,^[10] hoping to escape racial discrimination. 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.^[10] While in London, he trained under the then-famous boxer Dixie Kid, who arranged for him to fight in Paris, France. As a result of that visit to Paris, Bullard decided to settle in France. He continued to box in Paris and also worked in a music hall until the start of World War I.