Born in Georgia in the heart of the viciously racist Jim Crow American South, Eugene Bullard (1914-1961) managed to stowaway on a ship to Europe, first becoming a noted boxer before joining the French Foreign Legion, fighting for his adopted country of France, and becoming one of the first Black military fighter pilots of WWI. Wimberly and Revel’s lively new graphic biography captures nearly the full range of his remarkable life. Bullard was also a Jazz musician, and nightclub owner, a friend to such stars as Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes, and Pablo Picasso, and among the most decorated and honored veterans of WWI and WWII by the French government before his return to the U.S., where he worked as an elevator operator at Rockefeller Center, his courage and military celebrity unknown to the Americans he worked around every day. In this nine-page excerpt, trapped in a stalled elevator, Bullard tells the story of his life (and becoming an early fighter pilot) to an astonished white TV executive trapped along with him, leading eventually to his appearance on the Today Show in 1959. Now Let Me Fly: A Portrait of Eugene Bullard by Ron Wimberly and artist Brahm Revel will be published by First Second Books in January 2023.
