All Blood Runs Red

Starred review from September 2, 2019
This dazzling biography, drawing on the subject’s unpublished memoir, explores the incredible life and times of the first African-American fighter pilot: Eugene “Gene” Bullard. At 12, he ran away from Columbus, Ga., to escape the vicious racism of the early-20th-century South for France, the country revered by his formerly enslaved father. He crossed the Atlantic straight into minor fame as a boxer in Liverpool and Paris, and experienced partial freedom from the scorn and hatred of whites. In WWI, he joined the French Foreign Legion, fighting for his adopted homeland as a pilot. After a brief interwar interlude as a nightclub band drummer, manager, and owner—rubbing shoulders with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, and Pablo Picasso, and spying on Germans for the French—he volunteered again with the French military when WWII broke out. After being injured as the Germans advanced into France, military and consular personnel advised him to flee the country to avoid being executed by the Nazis. He settled in New York City with his teenage daughters and became variously a longshoreman, a traveling salesman of French perfumes, and an elevator operator at Rockefeller Center. Keith vividly describes Bullard’s experiences—including his medal-worthy military exploits, the luck that allowed him to cheat death repeatedly, and the bizarre parallels between his life and the movie Casablanca. This may be a biography, but it reads like a novel.

September 1, 2019

The wildly improbable life story of Eugene Bullard (1895-1961) almost defies belief. Born in Georgia, the son of a formerly enslaved man, Bullard left home at the age of 11 in search of France, drawn to the country as a place where he heard African Americans could escape the racism and violence of home. Keith (Stay the Rising Sun) and Clavin (Dodge City) tell how Bullard made it to Paris, where he initially gained renown as a boxer, then later as a fighter pilot for France during World War I, well before any African Americans were flying for the U.S. military. After the war, he was a jazz drummer and eventually a nightclub owner. His acquaintances in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Langston Hughes (whom Bullard hired to work in his club), and Josephine Baker. In the late 1930s, Bullard used his club to help spy on visiting German soldiers. When Paris fell to the Germans, Bullard finally returned to the United States. VERDICT Recommended for readers who enjoy compelling biography and fast-paced narrative, and especially for those interested in African American history. [See Prepub Alert, 4/28/19.]--Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019
The picaresque adventures of a former slave's son who achieved glory in both world wars and was nearly forgotten by his own country. Two intrepid authors and researchers--military historian and former Navy aviator Keith (America and the Great War: A 100th Anniversary Commemorative of America in World War I, 2019, etc.), a Purple Heart recipient, and Clavin (Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter, 2019, etc.)--team up in this dogged effort to excavate the facts of the amazing life of Eugene Bullard (1895-1961). In 1959, France recognized the achievements of the American pilot and soldier with its highest honor, the Legion of Honor, which subsequently gained Bullard, then an elevator operator at Rockefeller Center, his 15 minutes of fame on The Today Show. However, there was much that was never revealed in Bullard's remarkable trajectory from indigent runaway to Jazz Age impresario and many details he fudged or perhaps forgot in an era of turbulent race relations when he later wrote his autobiography. Two traumatic events in his childhood propelled him to strike out on his own at age 11: the death of his Creek Indian mother when he was 6 and a white mob's threatening to lynch his Haitian-born laborer father after a violent altercation with his foreman. Bullard managed never to look back, and the "French connection" from his roots propelled him to "a land where racial prejudice did not exist"--or so he imagined. The authors diligently pursue his story: learning to box in Scotland and then arriving in France just as World War I broke out; getting wounded at Verdun before embarking on a legendary, if short-lived position as a fighter pilot, probably the first black American to do so; and forging a career as a nightclub and athletic club owner in Paris before his next soldierly stint in World War II. Keith and Clavin constantly keep readers guessing about Bullard's next move. Terrific detective work revealing a man determined to forge his own destiny when his country said he couldn't.

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Starred review from October 1, 2019
Military historian and decorated naval aviator Keith and author Clavin (Wild Bill, 2019) present the first biography of Eugene Bullard, the first African American fighter pilot. The authors cover Bullard's respectable career as a middleweight boxer, his achievements as a twice-wounded aviator during WWI, and, most remarkably and enjoyably, his adventures as a spy for America while living in France. A hot-tempered but charming club owner, like Humphrey Bogart entertaining German spies in Casablanca, according to the authors, Bullard used his establishment, Le Grand Duc, as a hub for anti-Nazi espionage. In a narrative fit for a thriller, Keith and Claivin track Bullard's battles with Jim Crow at home and heroism on the American expat scene in Montparnasse between the world wars. Bullard employed Langston Hughes as a dishwasher before the poet achieved fame, and hosted such patrons as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, and Ernest Hemingway. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and French President Charles de Gaulle both spoke of his importance, she in a 1959 syndicated column, and he in person at a reception where de Gaulle remarked, 'Tout notre pays est dans votre dette' (All of our country is in your debt). An excellent and significant portrait of a long forgotten, now rightfully reclaimed hero.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)