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WRITING IN THE SKY: BLACK AVIATION IN THE INTERWAR BLACK PRESS A Thesis by JAN BENES Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Chair of Committee, Amy Earhart Co-Chair of Committee, Ira Dworkin Committee Member, Violet M. Johnson Head of Department, Maura Ives May 2017 Major Subject: English Copyright 2017 Jan Benes ABSTRACT This thesis traces the history of black aviation from 1921 to 1937 through textual analysis of the black press’s, in particular the Courier and the Defender ’s, coverage of black aviation, including texts submitted to the newspapers by black aviators themselves. The thesis focuses on the symbiotic development of black aviation and the black press in their efforts to present black America’s technological capability – embodied in what is here termed “the goodwill message of black aviation” – as well as on the black newspapers’ role in promoting aviation in the African American community as a civil rights and economic cause. The thesis further explores the anxiety expressed in black newspapers for black pilots to be included in the United States Air Service and later Air Corps as the aviation campaign in black papers emphasized not only the civilian and economic aspect of aviation, but also its military dimension. The thesis thus presents black aviation as a well-developed phenomenon in the black press long before black pilots became famous through the involvement of the Tuskegee airmen in WW2. The text emphasizes the fact that Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York were hubs of black aviation well before the establishment of a civilian-pilot training facility at Tuskegee and other historically black colleges and universities in late 1930s and early 1940s. It demonstrates that black aviation – similarly to baseball integration, improved housing conditions, and criminal justice reform – was among the causes widely discussed and advocated for in the black press, because of its economic and military dimension. Depicting African Americans as technologically and ii mechanically skilled and thereby qualified for employment in aviation as well as inclusion in the US military are shown here to have been the primary objectives of the campaign. Finally, black aviation is defined as a civil-rights cause well before the much- covered Tuskegee airmen’s struggle for civil rights. iii DEDICATION I dedicate this thesis to the Czech Educational Foundation, which provided me with the opportunity to study at Texas A&M University through the William J. Hlavinka Fellowship. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Earhart, for her kind advice, patience, and guidance, and my committee members, Dr. Dworkin and Dr. Johnson, for their guidance and invaluable feedback. Thanks also go to the Department of English at Texas A&M and the Czech Educational Foundation of Texas for making my time at Texas A&M University a great experience and an opportunity to grow as a scholar. v CONTRIBUTORS AND FUNDING SOURCES Contributors This work was supervised by a thesis committee consisting of Dr. Amy Earhart and Dr. Ira Dworkin of the Department of English, and Dr. Violet M. Johnson of the Department of History/Africana Studies Program. All work for the thesis was completed by the student, under the advisement of Dr. Earhart of the Department of English. Funding Sources Graduate study was supported by the William J. Hlavinka Fellowship from the Czech Educational Foundation of Texas. Research conducted in the thesis was partially sponsored by archival research funding from the Department of English at Texas A&M University. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. ii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... v CONTRIBUTORS AND FUNDING SOURCES ........................................................ vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................ vii 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Black Aviation and the Representation of Race in Technology ..................... 7 2. THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BLACK PRESS AND ITS TWO CRUSADERS ...................................................................................................... 12 3. AVIATION’S MESSAGE OF GOODWILL WITH MILITARY THREAT IN THE BLACK PRESS .......................................................................................... 18 3.1 Origins of Aviation’s Goodwill Message ...................................................... 22 3.2 Bessie Coleman: Black Aviation’s Joan of Arc ............................................ 28 3.3 Joel “Ace” Foreman and Hubert Fauntleroy Julian ....................................... 37 4. WILLIAM J. POWELL AND THE AVIATION CAMPAIGN, 1929-1931 ...... 53 4.1. 1930: New Voices and Genres, Old Faces and Problems ............................ 70 4.2 1931: The Negro in Aviation, How Shall He Be Portrayed? ....................... 82 5. GOING THE DISTANCE: LONG-DISTANCE FLIGHTS, 1932-34 ................ 94 5.1 Writing the First Transcontinental Flight .................................................... 105 5.2 Forsythe and Anderson’s Goodwill Flights for Interracial Understanding . 114 6. 1933-34: CALIFORNIA AND CHICAGO LEADING THE WAY IN AVIATION EDUCATION................................................................................ 130 7. 1935-37: THE MAKING OF AN AVIATION CAMPAIGN HERO ............... 144 vii 7.1 Black Aviation’s Military Displays in Chicago .......................................... 146 7.2 The Meaning of Ethiopia for Black Aviation .............................................. 148 7.3 The Black Eagle Has Landed: Hubert Julian as John C. Robinson’s Foil .. 162 7.4 John C. Robinson’s Ethiopian Endeavors in the Black Press ..................... 168 8. THE ROBINSON EFFECT: THE CHICAGO DEFENDER ’S AVIATION CAMPAIGN IN 1936-37................................................................................... 187 8.1 Not Tuskegee: Robinson’s New Aviation School ....................................... 195 8.2 Robinson’s New Mission ............................................................................ 202 8.3 Networking in the South: Schools and Air Lines ........................................ 206 9. CONCLUSION: BLACK AVIATION AS COMMON OCCURRENCE ........ 212 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 215 viii 1. INTRODUCTION On September 16, 1939, the Pittsburgh Courier announced in an exalted tone that “a seven-leagued stride in The Courier ’s fight for greater recognition for the American Negro in his nation’s armed forces was realized Monday when the Civil Aeronautics Authority named two Negro colleges […] to participate in the civilian pilot training program” (“Select Two Race Colleges”). In a similar tone, the Chicago Defender praised its own efforts three months later, when, on a visit to the West Virginia State Air Pilots Program facilities, the paper’s reporter observed that “the successful launching of the collegiate flight training marks the attainment of one more objective in the Defender’s long fight to give Race youth their opportunity in the skies” (“Defender Sports Editor Inspects”). Indeed, the fall of 1939 marked a milestone in the concerted efforts of the black press and political leaders to secure a federally-funded air-pilot training program – the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) – on the eve of the upcoming world war. True to its reputation and history as a fierce advocate of various community causes as well as social changes at large, the black press – in particular the Courier and the Defender – promoted the active participation of African Americans in the development of initially civilian and later military aviation as its main cause in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s. Stories of black pilots, pioneer aviators, and calls for allowing African Americans to join the United States Air Service and later the Air Corps, however, featured on the pages of the two newspapers long before events in Europe announced the 1 coming of another world-wide armed conflict. Even though Lawrence P. Scott and William M. Womack, authors of the seminal monograph Double V: The Civil Rights Struggle of the Tuskegee Airmen , and Enoch P. Waters, an influential Defender journalist and aviation advocate, suggest that the Courier and the Defender , respectively, only took up the aviation cause in 1936, the research presented here demonstrates that articles on black aviation can be discovered in both papers much earlier. In an editorial from March 1939, for example, the Courier dated its own calls for inclusion of black soldiers into all branches of the army, including aviation units, to 1929. George S. Schuyler, Courier ’s famous columnist, however, had written a short piece on the issue as early as 1925. In fact, the two newspapers began to cover black aviation in detail from 1921 onwards. Both papers published regular articles on local and national progress in aviation, snippets that announced new aviation students, pilots, air shows, promotional and lamenting editorials,