Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you missed in history class, a production
Speaker 1: of I heart radio. Hello and happy Friday. I'm Tracy
Speaker 1: P Wilson and I'm holly FRY. We spent all week
Speaker 1: talking about Eugene Jacques Bullard. I mean that's a pretty
Speaker 1: dreamy way to spend a week. It really was. I
Speaker 1: mean I when people started asking us to do this episode,
Speaker 1: which it might have been before the earliest ones that
Speaker 1: are still in the inboxer from it really was like
Speaker 1: here's a viral facebook post about this black fighter pilot
Speaker 1: from World War One, and at first I was really like,
Speaker 1: that post you gave me is all the information that
Speaker 1: I'm seeing. So it sounds cool, but I don't know
Speaker 1: how that would work. Um. And at that point the
Speaker 1: like the book that I referenced. It was specifically, uh,
Speaker 1: focused mostly on like his jazz age Paris life. That
Speaker 1: book already existed. It just wasn't coming up in the
Speaker 1: places that I was searching for it, and there is.
Speaker 1: There's just way more information available about him now. I
Speaker 1: don't know if his unpublished memoir would ever be published.
Speaker 1: All I have read of it are passages that were
Speaker 1: quoted in other things about him from people who, you know,
Speaker 1: went to the archive where there's a copy of it
Speaker 1: and read it for themselves while working on a biography.
Speaker 1: But I kind of wonder what other bits in there
Speaker 1: besides his relationship with his wife, might be a little, uh,
Speaker 1: not in alignment with what can be verified, which is
Speaker 1: this is not a reflection like this. That happens with
Speaker 1: memoirs almost across the board, like anytime you're reading somebody's memoir,
Speaker 1: there's probably stuff in it that is either they remember
Speaker 1: it differently from how it really happened or they're kind
Speaker 1: of putting the best light they can on something, or
Speaker 1: maybe the worst light they can on something like this.
Speaker 1: Is Not unique to his memoir at all, but man,
Speaker 1: I'm curious about it. I think, I mean I I
Speaker 1: have a history crush on him. It's like everything you
Speaker 1: want in a person. He's interesting, he's resilient, he speaks
Speaker 1: of Kajillion languages, so he's clearly smart and interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: he punches racists and Nazis like this is this is
Speaker 1: the total package. Punching racist was a big part of
Speaker 1: his I didn't write about this in the episode at
Speaker 1: all just because it's totally speculative on my part. We've
Speaker 1: talked so many times on the show about the social
Speaker 1: expectations placed on black people and the measures that black
Speaker 1: people have had to take to try to keep themselves safe. Um.
Speaker 1: And like that came up in our episode on Mamie
Speaker 1: till Mobley and the murder of Emmett till and like
Speaker 1: how she had talked to him about how to behave
Speaker 1: around white people with the hope that he would be safe.
Speaker 1: So I wonder, or imagine that, like his leaving the
Speaker 1: United States for Europe when he did, when he was
Speaker 1: still relatively young. I mean he was into his teens,
Speaker 1: but he was not even he was not an adult yet. Um,
Speaker 1: how that influenced his willingness to just fight back violently
Speaker 1: all the time, because he uh, he had a passage
Speaker 1: that he sort of related a thing that his father
Speaker 1: had had told them in this conversation that his father
Speaker 1: had that was like, if something happens to me, I
Speaker 1: want you to be good, Um. And it was something
Speaker 1: along the lines of don't back down from a fight,
Speaker 1: but don't go looking for one either. Um. And that
Speaker 1: seems to have been something that he deeply into. Ternalized
Speaker 1: your bodied. Yeah, yeah, yes, Um, I bet you like me.
Speaker 1: Would like to use our imaginary time machine to go
Speaker 1: back in time and maybe listen. I'm not a fan
Speaker 1: of violence, but slap around Dr Edmund Gross a little. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that at least, like feed him a Sneezer, like
Speaker 1: give him, you know, food. I spit him. I don't. Don't.
Speaker 1: Don't spit in people's food. Just that man is deplorable.
Speaker 1: What a meme, natured snake of a weasel. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: combine all kinds of common there. There were other people
Speaker 1: in addition to him that we did not get into
Speaker 1: you at all, who were also part of handling the
Speaker 1: idea of white American troops and their proximity to black
Speaker 1: people in France in World War One and, like a
Speaker 1: lot of people, really concerned about how people were gonna
Speaker 1: Act if suddenly they were deployed next to a black battalion.
Speaker 1: And Oh, it was nauseating to read a lot of it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh, a lot of the things that I read
Speaker 1: that were about gross and what gross did and that
Speaker 1: gross is. I'm assuming that's how he pronounced its name.
Speaker 1: It was spelled G R O S and I I'm
Speaker 1: guessing it was pronounced like Gross, which makes it kind
Speaker 1: of a suitable name for somebody who just took such
Speaker 1: pains accuracy. But I kept finding people being like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not totally confirmed that he was the person
Speaker 1: who did this, but it does seem like he was
Speaker 1: the person who did this, and I'm like, are you
Speaker 1: just trying to cushion that possibility or what? Because there
Speaker 1: were just so many things that bullard was denied or
Speaker 1: kept out of or whatever, and that guy just kept
Speaker 1: showing up over and over M it's like every time
Speaker 1: we would I had read through it, but then every
Speaker 1: time we would get to his name or I would
Speaker 1: see it coming up as we were recording, it's like
Speaker 1: I had a fresh, like visceral yuck response, like you know,
Speaker 1: and it stinks that he kept recurring in Jean's life,
Speaker 1: like I have moved on to other things. Oh, here
Speaker 1: he is again, here he is again to maybe start
Speaker 1: another ambulance corps, which I mean was an important thing
Speaker 1: to do, but still, uh. This episode also made me
Speaker 1: wish somehow I had a time machine so that I
Speaker 1: could have researched it before we took our trip to
Speaker 1: Paris back in twenty nine. Team was that when we
Speaker 1: did that Um, because we spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: walking around Mamarch. He did indeed, and that, you know,
Speaker 1: might have been nice to do with that additional bit
Speaker 1: of context. I mean, the good news is Mal Matra
Speaker 1: is still there. We can still at some point and
Speaker 1: do it all over again, look for at least the
Speaker 1: space is where where he could have been, even though,
Speaker 1: like his building burned down and went not so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, any excuse to go to Paris. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, as soon as I got to the
Speaker 1: part where the minute he got to Paris, he was like,
Speaker 1: this is where I want to be, I was like,
Speaker 1: he and holly are kindred spirits. I was just like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is the history person of my dreams. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to hang with him. Are you kidding?
Speaker 1: Like the fact that he is Um, he was such
Speaker 1: a chameleon in terms of like being able to turn
Speaker 1: his efforts to so many different vocations and do pretty
Speaker 1: well in all of them. Like I like that he
Speaker 1: became a jazz drummer, and not only was he like, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can get booked because people need a drummer so bad,
Speaker 1: but Zelli is also like I also need you to
Speaker 1: like run this business for me and he's like Oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was also characterized as like good, but
Speaker 1: not great at most of the things that he tried.
Speaker 1: So he was like a good pilot but not a
Speaker 1: great one, and a good drummer but not a great one.
Speaker 1: I was like you keep saying that, just just like
Speaker 1: I've the number of things that he tried to do professionally.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's reasonable to expect that he would
Speaker 1: have been great at all of them. I love a
Speaker 1: Jack of all trade story. I love it. He's a
Speaker 1: renaissance man. Yeah, I think probably of all the things
Speaker 1: that he tried, the thing he was probably the best
Speaker 1: at was like running that nightclub like that. Like that,
Speaker 1: that aspect of it seems to be where he had
Speaker 1: the most standout success, versus being a boxer or a
Speaker 1: combat pilot or whatever, where it was more like he
Speaker 1: was he was pretty good, and a spy, and a spy,
Speaker 1: holy Moses, what a life like? That's the kind of
Speaker 1: life that, if it were fiction, you'd be like this
Speaker 1: is kind of a lot. You could let's edit out
Speaker 1: part one of these jobs please. So, yeah, you cain
Speaker 1: pull he's great. I really enjoyed doing this episode. Once again,
Speaker 1: happy Friday. Whatever is coming up for your weekend, I
Speaker 1: hope it's great. If it's not great, I hope there's
Speaker 1: at least like a moment of rest and peace for you.
Speaker 1: We'll have a brand new episode on Monday, Saturday, classic tomorrow,
Speaker 1: which is Saturday, and you can subscribe to our show
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