The Man Called Brown Condor (12 page)

When John met Harold Hurd, he took an immediate liking to him. In turn, Hurd grew to look upon Robinson almost as a big brother. Robinson allowed Hurd to tag along with him in the air if he had an extra seat, as well as on the ground. Hurd once heard one of Johnny's girlfriends complain, “Why do you always have to bring that kid along?”

Hurd recalls one incident that well illustrates the problems facing black pilots and students of aviation during the twenties and thirties: “On one occasion, Robinson agreed to check me out in an International OX5 biplane. When we took off, the International had less than a third of a tank of fuel. At the time, the Robbins Airport did not have aviation fuel facilities. Although the International had enough fuel for a checkout flight in the area of Robbins Airfield, John decided to let me fly to Ashburn Field so they could fill up the tank before returning to Robbins. (Ashburn was the oldest airfield in Chicago. It was often visited by Lindbergh and other great aviators of the day.) After landing at Ashburn, we taxied up to the fuel pump. When the attendant came out and discovered that the flyers were black, he informed us in no uncertain terms that Ashburn Field was closed to coloreds. He flat refused to sell us any gasoline. We were low on fuel, but had little choice but to take off since the ground crew and a couple of pilots hanging around were openly hostile toward us. We barely managed to reach Chicago Airpark. They allowed us to buy fuel.”

But despite the refusals he received and racism he faced, by persevering and pursuing his aviation dreams John Robinson was helping to break down barriers and to establish a legacy that would eventually open the way for black flyers to enter service in the Army Air Corps.

1
Coffey was often overheard calling it the Coffey School of Aviation. Though he later had a school of his own, some modern articles list Coffey's name erroneously as Cornelius Robinson Coffey

R
OBINSON BECAME A PROFESSIONAL PILOT DURING THE
G
OLDEN
Age of Aviation during the 1920s and 30s. Lindbergh soloed the Atlantic in 1927, the year Robinson earned his pilot's license. New aviation records were being made almost daily. Air races, stunt flying, and the rapid advance of aircraft design were all making headlines. Jimmy Doolittle, using Sperry's new gyro-stabilized instruments and newly developed radio aids to navigation, successfully took off in a plane with a hood blocking his vision to the outside world, flew a predetermined course, and referring only to the aircraft's instruments found the field and landed blind. Air travel was becoming more acceptable to the public.

John believed there was a place for Negro youth in aviation. He searched for better facilities and tools with which to teach them. He also believed that the best way to lead was by example and hard work, traits he had been taught at Tuskegee.

The Roaring Twenties rushed full throttle to their disastrous end, plunging the world's economies into depression. Aviation suffered serious setbacks, but the strongest companies held on. One of those was Curtiss-Wright that retained, among its best employees, a black commercial pilot and aviation mechanic named John Robinson. And while the Robinson School of Aviation he and Coffey had established was hurt, it was not wiped completely out.

Determined to keep alive his own aviation career, Robinson was driven toward two unselfish dreams: One was to find a better way to open the field of aviation to black men and women; the other was to find an opportunity to prove to the world beyond doubt that Negroes could not only handle the mental, physical, and technological demands of flight, but could also excel in them. The timing of world events would offer him one or the other, but not both.

Unknown to John Robinson, there were two other men who had dreams, conflicting dreams, that would draw John Robinson into harm's way.

One was named Ras Tafari and served as regent to Empress Zauditu, ruler of an ancient, unconquered Christian nation. His dream was to bring his people into the modern world. In 1930, upon the death of Empress Zauditu, her cousin and regent, Ras Tafari, became emperor of Ethiopia, formerly called Abyssinia. As was the custom, Ras Tafari took a new name, Haile Selassie, which translates as “Power of the Trinity.” Besides the title of Emperor he was also given the traditional titles Neguse Negest (King of Kings), Seyoume Igziabeher (Elect of God), and Moa Anbessa Ze Imnegede Yehuda (Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah).

After his coronation, Emperor Selassie opened the doors of his country to Western influence. His nation had chosen Christianity in the fourth century ad and had been isolated by the rise of Islam in Africa in the seventh century ad. Ethiopia was the only nation in Africa not to fall before Islamic swords or Western imperial powers. When Haile Selassie was made head of Ethiopia, it was comprised of five different peoples and numerous tribes. Four major languages were spoken. There were few schools. The country had never been fully mapped, never had a nation-wide census. Slavery was common; the highland Ethiopians often raided the Negroid Abigars and Annuaks of the Sudan area for manpower.

As regent, he had guided Ethiopia to membership in the League of Nations in 1923. As emperor, he implemented a new constitution that set up two houses of parliament. He appointed the members of the senate, not unlike the House of Lords in England, while the provincial leaders chose the members of the chamber of deputies. One of the many difficult changes in rule and policies assigned to the new parliament was the abolishment of slavery. He knew that to obtain respect and true recognition among the member states of the League, he would have to abolish slavery. The new government and its ambitious programs were not always well received by some of the tribal leaders. Nonetheless, Haile Selassie was determined to bring his nation into the twentieth century. This dignified African leader, small in physical stature, was growing tall in terms of world respect.

The second of the two men with a dream that would affect John Robinson was a school dropout, an atheist, and a former Italian corporal during the Great War. His name was Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. Fancying himself a modern Caesar, his dream was to restore the “Glories of Rome” to Italy. Dubbed Il Duce (the leader) by his followers, he invented a new dictatorial form of government called Fascismo and seized power over Italy in 1922 using the brutal force of his black-shirt Fascist thugs to intimidate opposition. For a while it looked as though he might have his dream of a new Roman Empire. With the total power of a dictator, he did much to modernize Italy beginning with war machinery. By 1930 Italy was a leader in terms of modern tanks, planes, and guns. Mussolini built roads and bridges. He decreed that the trains would run on time. They did. He strutted out on balconies to tell his people what a great man he was. The problem was his spending. Italy was already under great stress when world depression threatened to collapse its economy altogether and Mussolini with it. He had promised a new Italian Empire. At great expense, he had built a war machine. His only choice now was to use it. But where?

Back in Chicago, John Robinson was too busy chasing his own dreams to pay attention to world affairs. In his quest to open the field of aviation to America's black youth, he hit upon an idea. Why couldn't his old school, Tuskegee Institute, create a school of aviation? His inquiry to Tuskegee's officials raised interest. He received an invitation to visit the school for the tenth reunion of his graduation class. It was 1934. John accepted.

What better way to present Tuskegee with his idea for a school of aviation than to arrive by air? John invited his partner, Cornelius Coffey, and Grover C. Nash, a black pilot Robinson had taught to fly, to make the flight with him.

The immediate problem was what plane to use. The Robinson School plane was heavily scheduled by student pilots. Considering the times, it would not be prudent to turn away paying customers. Nash owned a small Buhl Pup monoplane with a forty-five horsepower, three-cylinder Szekely radial engine, but it had only one seat. What John needed was a two-place plane to fly himself and Cornelius to Tuskegee. John turned to Janet Waterford Bragg, a former flying student of his and member of the Chicago Challenger Air Pilots Association. It was no secret that John Robinson had a certain attraction to the ladies. Janet Waterford Bragg could not only fly, she was the proud owner of an OX5 biplane. In 1934 that was extraordinary. Bragg was a registered nurse with a steady job that paid well by Depression standards.

It took all of John's considerable charms to persuade Bragg to lend him her plane to fly all the way to Tuskegee, Alabama, and back. She was not enthusiastic, but finally agreed with the stern warning, “I paid all my savings, $600, for that plane. Don't you put a scratch on it!” (As a registered nurse she made, on average, $936 a year at a time when an average doctor's income was $3,382.)

The flight took careful planning. Gordon Nash's Buhl Pup carried only ten gallons of fuel and burned a little over three gallons per hour at a cruise speed of seventy miles per hour. Some of the planned legs of the flight would stretch the little Buhl's range to the maximum. The ninety horsepower OX5 in the International biplane burned nine gallons per hour, but had considerably more range with its fifty-gallon tank. Although the biplane could cruise at eighty-five miles an hour, they would fly at the Buhl's slower speed to keep Nash in sight.

The flight went well until they left Tennessee heading toward Birmingham, Alabama. On this leg of the flight they encountered twenty mile per hour headwinds. Checking his progress over the ground and watching his fuel indicator, Nash began to doubt he could reach Birmingham. An hour later, he was sure of it. He was running out of fuel.

Nash looked back at the trailing biplane, waggled his wings, and pointed at his gas tank. Coffey nodded acknowledgment. While Robinson flew the plane, Coffey got out a chart to search for the nearest airfield. Trying to unfold a map and read it in an open cockpit biplane takes concentration. When unfolding it to the section needed, one slip and the whole thing will blow out of the cockpit. Coffee held onto the chart, but couldn't find a nearby airfield marked on it. They remained on course toward Birmingham while looking for a field, any field suitable for a safe landing. Twenty minutes later, Nash waggled his wings again and began pointing with more gusto at his nearly empty fuel tank.

Not quite to Decatur, Alabama, where there was an airport, Nash signaled that he had to land, airport or not. He turned and began to descend toward the only available landing area he could see, the Decatur Country Club, about two miles to the west of their course. The nearest suitable fairway was smooth and straight but pretty short. Nash landed with only a few drops of fuel left in his tank. Robinson, who had circled above while Nash landed, now brought Janet Bragg's biplane around and slipped it nicely onto the short, smooth fairway.

To say that the few golfers out that day were surprised is hardly adequate. Not one, but “two airplanes landed right there on number six fairway!” If the golfers were startled at seeing the two planes land, they were utterly astonished when three black pilots climbed down from the cockpits. No less awed were their Negro caddies who couldn't have stared more wide-eyed if some ghostly apparition had suddenly appeared.

Only one of the golfers recovered sufficiently to draw attention to his game. “By God! I should be allowed a free shot. That damn airplane nearly took my head off!” There was some merit to his argument. He had been engaged in putting just as Nash flew close overhead for a landing. The golfer's ball shot clear off the green to the next fairway.

It was such an amazing event that once things calmed down, the foursome and their caddies led the intrepid pilots to the clubhouse, but stopped short of inviting them into the all-white establishment. They did have a colored locker room attendant bring them glasses of ice water on a silver tray while one of the members volunteered to go in and call for a gas truck.

He returned to say that he had the gas supplier on the line and he wanted to know how much fuel was needed.

John knew the fairway offered only minimum takeoff distance. On the other side of a fence at the far end there was a row of sharecroppers' cabins and beyond them a cotton field. John decided he didn't need any extra weight in getting the biplane out of the short field. They would refuel only the little Buhl Pup. The OX5 had enough fuel to reach Birmingham.

“Tell him we need ten gallons.”

The man disappeared into the clubhouse only to return again.

“The fuel man says he can't afford to drive all the way out here from town for less than the price of twenty-five gallons plus two dollars each way to make the trip. What do you want me to tell him?”

It was 1934, the depth of the Depression. Money was not wasted by anyone, certainly not by a struggling black flying partnership. Still, John had little choice.

“Tell him okay.”

The fuel truck arrived some forty-five minutes later but wasn't allowed to drive onto the fairway. John had to pay cash for twenty-five gallons at ten cents per gallon plus four dollars for “hauling the truck clear out here”—a total of six dollars and fifty cents—before they could have any fuel. They had to carry fuel from the truck using a five-gallon bucket and and a funnel to fill Nash's plane. When they had finished filling the Buhl Pup, it took a little over nine and one-half gallons, the fuel deliveryman asked what he was to do with the remaining fifteen and one-half gallons they had paid for.

John thought a moment. “Let's go ahead and put it in the OX5.”

Coffey spoke up. “John, that will add almost a hundred pounds to our takeoff weight. Let's think about that a minute. That field looks mighty short to me and we got to clear those cabins.”

It would be tight, but John was confident he could clear the fence and cabins with room to spare. “We'll make it,” John said. “We'll push it as far back as we can to use every bit of the fairway.”