Eugene Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris »

Craig Lloyd is a professor emeritus of history and former Director of Archives at Columbus State University.

Although he was the first African American fighter pilot, Eugene J. Bullard is still a relative stranger in his homeland. An accomplished professional boxer, musician, club manager, and impresario of Parisian nightlife between the world wars, Bullard found in Europe a degree of respect and freedom unknown to blacks in America. There, for twenty-five years, he helped define the expatriate experience for countless other African American artists, writers, performers, and athletes.

This is the first biography of Bullard in thirty years and the most complete ever. It follows Bullard's lifelong search for respect from his poor boyhood in Jim-Crow Georgia to his attainment of notoriety in Jazz-Age Paris and his exploits fighting for his adopted country, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Drawing on a vast amount of archival material in the United States, Great Britain, and France, Craig Lloyd unfolds the vibrant story of an African American who sought freedom overseas. Lloyd provides a new look at the black expatriate community in Paris, taking readers into the cabarets where Bullard rubbed elbows with Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, and even the Prince of Wales. Lloyd also uses Bullard's life as a lens through which to view the racism that continued to dog him even in Europe in his encounters with traveling Americans.

When Hitler conquered France, Bullard was wounded in action and then escaped to America. There, his European successes counted for little: he spent his last years in obscurity and hardship but continued to work for racial justice. Eugene Bullard, Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris offers a fascinating look at an extraordinary man who lived on hisown terms and adds a new facet to our understanding of the black diaspora.

Library Journal

Lloyd (history, Columbus State Univ.) explores the extraordinary life of Eugene Bullard (1895-1961), the first black wartime aviator and celebrated prize fighter, musician, and decorated member of the French foreign legion and the French airforce in World War I. Beginning with his birth in Georgia, the author charts Bullard's boyhood, his flight from home, and his emigration to Scotland and then to Paris as a stowaway in 1912. There, in the city's tolerant racial climate, Bullard soaked up the cabaret scene and mingled with jazz stars Sidney Bechet and Josephine Baker. Lloyd continues with Bullard's role in the French fight against Nazism during World War II and his flight to New York in 1940, where he battled racism until his death and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Providing excellent background material, especially about Paris after World War I, Lloyd adds substantially to Bullard's unpublished memoirs and the thinly researched first biography of Bullard by P.J. Carisella and James W. Ryan, The Black Swallow of Death (1972. o.p.). He provides a solid monograph for scholars that will serve as the definitive biography of a remarkable man in search of freedom.--Dave Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\