Jacques Bullard
October 9, 1895 – October 12, 1961
The first Haitian-American military pilot. the first BLACK MILITARY combat pilot, was one of 200 Americans who flew for France in World WarI AND also in WWII.
Jacques Bullard was one of the first African American military pilots, although Bullard flew for France, not the United States. Bullard was one of the few black combat pilots during World War I, along with William Robinson Clarke, a Jamaican who flew for the Royal Flying Corps, Domenico Mondelli [it] from Italy, and Ahmet Ali Çelikten of the Ottoman Empire. Also a boxer and a jazz musician, he was called “L’Hirondelle noire” in French (literally “Black Swallow”)..
Nicknamed ‘the black swallow of death’ he survived the war and died in 1961 aged 66.
