Eugene Bullard, Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris

Although he was the first African American fighter pilot, Eugene Bullard is still a relative stranger in his homeland. An accomplished professional boxer, musician, club manager and impresario of Parisian nightlife between the world wars, Bullard found in Europe a degree of respect and freedom unknown to blacks in America. There, for 25 years, he helped define the expatriate experience for countless other African American artists, writers, performers and athletes.;This biography follows Bullard's lifelong search for respect from his poor boyhood in Jim-Crow Georgia to his attainment of notoriety in Jazz-Age Paris and his exploits fighting for his adopted country, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Drawing on a vast amount of archival material in the United States, Great Britain and France, Craig Lloyd unfolds the story of an African American who sought freedom overseas. Lloyd provides a new look at the black expatriate community in Paris, taking readers into the cabarets where Bullard rubbed elbows with Josephine Baker, Louis Amstrong and even the Prince of Wales. Lloyd also uses Bullard's life as a lens through which to view the racism that continued to dog him even in Europe in his encounters with travelling Americans.;When Hitler conquered France, Bullard was wounded in action and then escaped to America. There, his European successes counted for little: he spent his last years in obscurity and hardship but continued to work for racial justice. "Eugene Bullard, Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris" offers a look at an extraordinary man who lived on his own terms and adds a new facet to our understanding of the black diaspora.