A few days ago someone on Twitter posted the story of this guy:
He was a war hero in France, WW1 hero. He received top military French medals.
His name was Eugene Bullard, and although his name sounds French, he was in fact Black American (perhaps some Louisiana ancestry?). He was from Columbus, Georgia, which he fled in 1906 after witnessing a White mob lynching a Black guy. The lynched Black guy was... his father.
After an adventurous life that I won't detail, he eventually arrived in France in 1913 where he was a professional boxer. When the German Empire invaded France in 1914, he immediately enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. He took part in the most gruesome battles (Somme, Champagne, Verdun), was wounded 3 times. His 3rd wound permanently damaged one of his legs, so he had to quit the (land) army. But he immediately decided to become an aviator.
In a Paris café in the spring of 1916, he met 3 White American friends, and told them about his project (becoming an aviator to return to the front). They laughed at him: "There is no damn Negro in aviation!" His answer was: "There has to be a first to everything, and I'm going to be the first."
And he was. He earned his (French) pilot's licence in May 1917. He flew 20 combat missions in August, September, and October 1917. On the fuselage of his plane was a bleeding heart pierced by a knife with this French motto: "Tout le sang qui coule est rouge" ("All blood that flows is red"). The French press nicknamed him "L'Hirondelle Noire" (the "Black Swallow").
When the USA entered the war, he immediately applied to transfer to the U.S. Army Air Service.
His application was flatly rejected.
The U.S. Army Air Service had a policy, in 1917, of not accepting Black pilots. The other American pilots flying for France in his unit, all of them White, were transferred to the U.S. Air Service. He was the only one who was not.
He survived the war, and received, as I've said, the top French military medals for his bravery. He owned a cabaret in Montmartre after the war, which was frequented by famous guests like Hemingway, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong (who became his friend)
He came back to the US during WW2, after having been smuggled across the French-Spanish border. In the US he received a cold welcome. No one to congratulate him. He ended his life as the guy operating the elevator at Rockefeller Center in NYC.
But someone hadn't forgotten him.
In April 1960, Charles de de Gaulle was visiting the United States. He asked the FBI to help him locate Eugene Bullard. 6 months earlier, he had been made a knight of the Légion d'honneur in Paris (in his absence), and de Gaulle wanted to give him his medal. The FBI located him within a few days.
He was wearing the elevator uniform on the day a producer from NBC came down from the studios upstairs to ask if he was the man Charles de Gaulle had been looking for. A few weeks later, NBC sent a film crew to interview him in the lobby. The studios where NBC produced The Today Show were on the floors above. He had operated the elevator that took the network executives up to those studios every morning for nearly ten years. They had never paid attention to him.
After receiving the Légion d'honneur from de Gaulle, he went back to operating the elevator. He died a year later of cancer.
He was buried in the French War Veterans' section of Flushing Cemetery, in Queens, in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion. The casket was draped with the French flag.
In 1994 — 33 years after his death — the United States Air Force formally commissioned Eugene Jacques Bullard as a Second Lieutenant, posthumously.
It was the first commission the U.S. military had ever offered him. He had been the first Black combat pilot in American history.
And the guy who recounted his story (I have summed up above the main points) wrote this (his words, not mine):
"The French had been calling him a hero since 1917.
The Americans got around to it in 1994."