by Phil Keith
A tall dark-haired man dressed as a dock worker pushed through the knot of men surrounding Bullard. He raised his hand above his head to show his shiny gold FBI badge.
“I saw what happened. This guy—” pointing to the man Bullard had struck “—shoved the nigger first. He started it. Now move back, all of you.”
The show of authority dispersed the angry mob. The FBI agent grabbed the perpetrator by the scruff of his jacket and pulled him close. He growled at him, “This man has more medals for bravery than you’ll ever get in your life. He’s fought the goddamn Germans in two wars. Now apologize!”
The man did so and was allowed to go on his way. The agent and Bullard walked off the ferry together, the latter in a state of shock.
“So, Bullard, you okay?” the G-man asked.
“Oui... I mean, yes. How did you...?”
“These are dangerous times, Bullard. The FBI is just being...careful. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Bullard blurted out, “Sure. I’m here to get a job as a longshoreman. Can you help?”
The agent eyed him with incredulity. “Are you crazy? That kind of work, with your bad back?”
“How did you know about my back? Who are you?”
“Not important. Just doing my job. Are you sure you really want that work?”
“Absolument.”
“You’re nuts. Okay, let’s go.”
The FBI man, who never identified himself to Bullard, walked with him to the employment office. With the agent’s endorsement, it was a slam dunk. Bullard got the job instantly and went to work the next day.
The records show Bullard did, indeed, get the job but there are still several curious loose threads in this anecdote. Why was an FBI agent tailing Bullard? Or did he just happen to be there, perhaps watching the crowd, or maybe even doing routine surveillance work? Either way, how did he know Eugene Bullard? What interest would the FBI have in a broken-down former jazz drummer, or even a war hero who had fought for “the good guys”? Did they know about his activities on behalf of the Deuxième Bureau? Bullard never said another word about this incident.
It was certainly true that the FBI was engaged in massive amounts of counterintelligence work, especially in the days leading up to America’s entry into World War II. It was certainly well-known that the FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, was a fanatic paranoid who kept boxes and boxes of secret records on all kinds of persons of interest. Would Bullard fit in that category—and if so, why? Proof, if any, of surveillance on Bullard would have been lost forever in the purge of those FBI spying records, illegal, by the way, which occurred on the same day Hoover died in office on May 2, 1972.1
What was the FBI’s interest in Eugene Bullard? There is no longer any way to know for sure, but a clue may exist in the work he was doing in his spare time. In the summer of 1941, shortly after he had started his new job as a security guard, he joined a group called France Forever. This international organization had been founded by Eugene Houdry, an accomplished mechanical engineer who had been a lieutenant in a French tank regiment in World War I. He was a staunch opponent of the Vichy Regime and an active proponent of the Free French movement and the advancement of General Charles de Gaulle. The Vichy government was so angered by Houdry’s efforts that he was stripped of his French citizenship in 1941. He became an American citizen soon thereafter, in early 1942. Houdry’s aim, and the goal of France Forever, was to do everything possible outside of France to support de Gaulle and elevate him to the presidency of a restored Free French government.
It would not be hard to imagine that Eugene Bullard would be attracted to such an organization, and he embraced it fully. In 1941, at least until December 7, the United States was still neutral and officially in support of the Vichy Government (but not the Nazis), so any “opposition” group, such as France Forever, would come to the attention of the FBI. It was likely, therefore, that at least a few FBI agents were assigned to monitor the activities of that group. If so, it would not be a stretch to imagine that an active member, such as Bullard, would merit some “watching.” This could be one possible explanation for Bullard encountering the agent who rescued him from the crowd on the Staten Island Ferry and helped him get his job as a longshoreman.
It may also have been possible that his previous involvement in the French Resistance was working in his favor. Was Inspector Leplanquais’s hand still in the game? Could Bullard’s contacts with no less a personage that Ambassador Bullitt and Secretary Hull have brought him under the FBI’s protection? All these threads were certainly wound around the life of “Monsieur Bullard, Resistance Spy,” as he made his transition back to “Mr. Bullard, American Citizen.”
* * *
Bullard settled into what would become his final residence, 80 East 116th Street, in July 1941, and began toiling hard on behalf of France Forever whenever he was not loading ships with sacks of war materials. He gave talks to social clubs, church groups, civic associations, hiring halls, and interested gatherings all over Manhattan and Harlem. He often wore his French Legionnaire’s uniform, bedecked in medals, which always gave a sterling impression and made the crowds take notice. Interestingly, he never wore either of his French pilot’s uniforms. In Paris, he had had one made up out of black and red cloth, with an outsized set of pilot’s wings, and there was another of the more regulation khaki and blue. He never explained why he did not wear them. Perhaps it was as simple as they had been lost in his travels out of France and through Spain and Portugal. He did, however, retrieve all his important documents and papers, plus his Escadrille books and medals, from Roger Baldwin, in New York City, as had been promised by Craney Gartz in Biarritz.
Perhaps, too, Bullard preferred to wear his Legionnaire’s uniform since it had been in the Foreign Legion where he had won most of his decorations. It could also be that his last assignment in uniform was not as an aviator. After the final Dr. Gros disgracing, he had been sent back to his old infantry unit, the 170th, where he completed the war in khaki.
When Bullard spoke, he emphasized the need to free the French, and to elevate General de Gaulle. He also constantly encouraged the recruiting of young African American men to go and fight for France, as he had once done. These were different times, however, and although racial attitudes had not changed a great deal in the past three decades, young black men did not find it appealing to go to another country and face death for little reason. Young black men in America also were aware that the armed forces of the United States were still segregated—could conditions in France really be that much different?
Bullard wrote to Walter White, president of the NAACP, in 1941, encouraging the recruitment of black men for the Free French, especially as “pilots and mechanics.” In the same vein, he also corresponded with Frederick D. Patterson, president of the Tuskegee Institute, insisting that he, Bullard, could be instrumental in getting young black men into nonsegregated Free French aviation units. Bullard was apparently unaware that the US Army Air Corps had, in January of 1941, ordered up a unit of black fliers and that they were, at the time he wrote Patterson, already in training. The soon-to-be-fabled Tuskegee Airmen had been established, although the first group was a paltry thirty-three airmen among the fifty thousand white fliers already in training.
White was not polite enough to return Bullard’s correspondence. Patterson did, noting only that “Tuskegee is always happy to support or do whatever it can for the furtherance...of worthwhile causes.” Craig Lloyd notes in his book that to him it seemed apparent that neither White nor Patterson had ever heard of Eugene Bullard and therefore did not know that they were being addressed by the first African American combat aviator. If so, what a shame: Bullard could certainly have been a role model to the young men who were already under orders at Tuskegee. No one ever made the connection, so nothing along these lines ever happened.
* * *
East 116th Street, where Bullard had settled,
was squarely within Spanish Harlem. The African American Harlem of that time was a bit farther north, from Lenox Avenue and 125th Street and above. Bullard picked his location, first, because the rents were more reasonable, but also he felt more at home among the broader avenues and open markets of the growing Puerto Rican community than he did in the stacked and crowded tenement houses of the African American enclaves farther uptown.
This would make perfect sense for a man who had spent the last quarter century on the broad boulevards and in the open-air markets of the sprawling City of Light. Even the squat brownstones and flat-sided row houses of Spanish Harlem were more reminiscent of the genteel arrondissements in which Bullard had lived.
Those who visited him in his “headquarters”—and there were many visitors over the years—describe his apartment as neat and organized but also overstuffed. Photographs of the many rich and famous people he had met took up every inch of wall space. Wooden and plastic models of the aircraft he had flown, plus the dozens of other types the French and allies had used in two wars, hung from the ceiling everywhere, suspended by thin strands of wire. Every windowsill and spare bureau top or credenza was filled with potted plants, which Bullard tended constantly and lovingly.
Within the 750 square feet or so, he lived quietly and comfortably with his two daughters. He held court in his tiny living room or dining space when company came calling. There wasn’t a wasted square inch, and every piece of furniture, bookcase, and surface was immaculately clean.
Jacqueline and Lolita lived with their father until each married and moved away—but neither daughter moved far while Bullard was still alive. Lolita, born in 1928, married an African American gentleman eighteen years her senior, Rowland Garnett Johnson, in 1949. They had one child, a daughter, Denise, and lived near Bullard in Harlem. Sadly, Lolita died relatively young, of a heart attack, at age forty-six in 1974. Her husband lived until ninety-one and died in New York City in 2001.
Jacqueline also lived in Harlem for a long time, only moving to Staten Island after her father died. Born in 1924, Jacqueline married a gentleman by the name of Joaquin Hernandez before her father’s death. Sometime later, whether widowed or divorced is unknown, she married a gentleman by the name of Charles Reid, by whom she had one son, Richard. Jacqueline died at age eighty-five in July 2009.
* * *
History was still not finished with Eugene Bullard. There were more adventures ahead, even as he struggled to pay his bills on a modest and sometimes intermittent income and to make sure his daughters were happy and well cared for. As the battles of World War II raged on, several times Bullard volunteered to fight yet again, for both France and America. He was politely but firmly turned down—every time.
He continued to work diligently on behalf of the Free French, right up to and through the end of the war. On June 17, 1944, eleven days after D-Day, France Forever held a massive parade down Fifth Avenue to honor the anticipated liberation of all of France. Four weeks later, a triumphant General de Gaulle paid a visit to New York where he was hosted by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Six weeks after that, the total liberation of France finally came, and de Gaulle was installed as president. With the goals of Forever France having been achieved, the organization turned from active lobbying to one of fraternal pleasures, meetings, dinners, and swapping stories among old comrades. Bullard participated regularly, wearing his old Foreign Legion uniform.
There were also parties and gatherings for the American-based members of American Legion Post 1 of Paris. Even here, though, Bullard could not escape the ugly shadow of racism. Prior to a Post 1 dinner in 1943, he received an anonymous letter in his mailbox postmarked from Jamaica, New York. The letter read, in part: “Your extended sojourn abroad has perhaps made you forget that in the states [sic] white and colored don’t mix at social functions. It would be to your advantage not to attend the dinner on Monday night or to join in any social activities of the Post in the future.”
Whether meant as a threat or a warning was not clear. Gene ignored it either way and attended the gathering without incident. He shared a copy of the letter with Jack Spector, the Post liaison officer in New York—the same man who had initially “forgotten” to provide for Bullard when he got off the refugee ship from Portugal. Spector never replied and, given that he lived in Queens, there was at least some suspicion that Spector himself had composed the ugly missive.
At Lafayette Escadrille functions there was never a doubt as to the sole black member being welcomed. Bullard was often the center of attention for his uniqueness and carried with him business cards that contained the line, along the bottom, “First Known Negro Military Pilot.”
* * *
A year after World War II ended, Bullard thought it was time to return home—not to France, but his original stomping grounds. He made just one trip to Columbus, Georgia, after returning to America. It occurred in 1946, and it was a trek that Bullard made with not a little trepidation. He was so fearful of what he might find that he went alone, leaving his precious daughters in the care of friends back in New York even though he very much wanted to introduce them to any members of his family he might rediscover.
He wondered if a little of his reputation might have preceded him; that is, he had become a highly decorated hero of France, having fought for his adopted country in both world wars. It had not. The news blackout concerning accomplishments of African Americans was still so complete in the Deep South that the deeds of famous native sons and daughters such as Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were all but ignored and even scoffed at. As previously noted, only one small piece concerning Eugene Bullard and his war exploits had made it into any American publication—and even part of that was incorrect. He was as unknown and unappreciated in Columbus in 1946 as he had been when he ran away from home in 1907.
When Bullard had left on the odyssey that would eventually bring him to France, his mother had been dead at least five years and his father was still viewed as somewhat of a scoundrel and a fugitive after his run-in with his white stevedore boss at Mr. Bradley’s dock. During the ensuing years, Gene’s six surviving siblings had scattered to the winds. His older brother Hector had suffered the fate Gene had feared for his father and for himself. Sometime after Gene had arrived in Europe, Hector had sought to attain proper title to a small peach farm left to him (as the eldest child) by his maternal grandmother, a Creek Indian. The white squatters illegally living on the plot trussed up Hector and hanged him from the nearest tree.
Gene’s oldest sister, Pauline, had also made good on an escape from Columbus. After World War II, and until her death in the mid-1950s, she lived peaceably and successfully with her husband and children in Newport News, Virginia (ironically, the place where Gene had begun his long European sojourn). Gene was unsuccessful in reuniting with any of his other four siblings: no one, not even his sister, knew where they had gone or what had happened to them. Even the old ramshackle house on Talbotton Avenue where the Bullards lived had been swept away to make room for an urban renewal project.
Big Chief Ox had passed away sometime in the 1930s. However, the “man” Gene feared the most, old Jim Crow, was still very much alive and would be for some decades to come. After taking a rueful look around, Eugene Bullard escaped once more, by hopping on a train headed back to New York. He would never venture across the Mason-Dixon line again.
* * *
1 In an interesting footnote to history, these “secret files” were shredded and burned, as Hoover had ordained, by the Number Two man at the FBI at that time, Mark Felt, who would end up being the “Deep Throat” of Watergate fame.
24
SUDDEN CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST
The heavy burdens of being a longshoreman ultimately proved too much for Bullard’s twisted back and old wounds. Shortly after the end of war, he gave up his union card and went into business for himself. He bought a used s
tation wagon and became an independent and itinerant salesman for a range of French perfume manufacturers. Department stores up and down the state, from Manhattan to Buffalo, got used to the smiling “colored man,” with his thick French accent and jaunty beret, offering up the latest in Parisian fragrances. Bullard’s personality was half the sale, and for several years, although he did not grow rich, he did quite well. His income was enough to support his fraternal activities, apartment, station wagon, and daughters with a little left over for creature comforts and the occasional extravagance.
Still, though, behind the ready smile lurked the hair-trigger temper, as Bricktop had noted long ago. On an early 1950s trip upstate, through the Catskills, Bullard decided to take a bus. After a transfer in Peekskill, the relief driver insisted that he sit in the back of the bus “where the Negroes belong.” This was enough to set Bullard’s hair on fire, and he threw a punch. The motorman, much younger and bigger than the fifty-five-year-old passenger, fought back.
The confrontation turned into a donnybrook, with the driver and Bullard tumbling off the bus and squaring off in the street. After a couple of rounds, and police intervention, the two men were separated. Bullard was taken to the local hospital and treated for several facial lacerations. One of the driver’s fists had landed squarely on his left eye socket and caused real damage. Bullard would ultimately lose most of the vision in his left eye.
This altercation was in the supposedly more liberal North and preceded Rosa Parks’s famous December 1, 1955 defiant act on a bus in Montgomery. However, unlike that groundbreaking confrontation in Alabama, Bullard’s somewhat pioneering stand received no notice.
This was not the first time, however, that he had stood up for the cause of civil rights. He had been involved in a much more notorious scrap, one that did make the news, in 1949.