Eugene Jacques Bullard, the first black military combat pilot in World War I, was born Eugene James Bullard. He led a colorful life, albeit much of it happened in Europe where his life has been surrounded by many legends. He was known as the “black swallow of death” for his courage during missions. Bullard was born on October 9, 1895, in Columbus, Georgia, one of 10 children of William O. Bullard, and his wife, Josephine Thomas, a Creek Indian. He was a student at Twenty-eighth Street School in 1901-1906, where he learned to read and write. As a teenager, Eugene Bullard stowed away on a ship bound for Scotland, seeking to escape racial discrimination (he later claimed to have witnessed his father's narrow escape from lynching). Bullard arrived at Aberdeen, Scotland before making his way south to Glasgow. He finally arrived in Paris, France where worked as a boxer and did odd jobs in a music hall. In 1914 at the age of 20, Bullard enlisted in the French Foreign Legio...