1. Ward, John W., “The Meaning of Lindbergh's Flight,” in Studies in American Culture: Dominant Ideas and Images, Mary C. Turpie and Joseph J. Kwiat (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1960), 27–40Google Scholar. Also see Davis, Kenneth, The Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh and the American Dream (New York: Doubleday, 1959)Google Scholar.

2. Goldstein, Laurence, “Lindbergh in 1927: The Response of Poets to the Poem of Fact,” Prospects 5 (1980): 293–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Gray, Susan M., Charles Lindbergh and the American Dilemma: The Conflict of Technology and Human Values (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

4. For this project, I read the following African American newspapers: the Baltimore Afro-American, the Chicago Defender, the Negro World, the New York Age, the New York Amsterdam News, the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the Palmetto Leader, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Richmond Planet, and the St. Louis Argus as well as the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I have included the first citation in the Notes; for the quotes that immediately follow from the same paper, I have put the date in parentheses.

5. Charles L. Jackson, June 15, 1927, Lindbergh Collection, Missouri Historical Society.

6. One week after Lindbergh's flight, the Chicago Defender suggested that his plane should be purchased by the American people and preserved as an inspiration for future generations. In particular, the Defender argued that “the youth of the country would feel a strong incentive toward achievement by actually seeing this record-making vehicle.” It was the Defender's hope that the plane could be housed in the Jackson Park Industrial Museum in Chicago or any other city “where laws of freedom and democracy are more than mere names.” In other words, a Southern city was to be avoided at all cost:

Certainly not anywhere near any southern city, is the hope of every dark citizen. For if such is the case, our boys and girls will be barred from the sight of the exhibit and almost afraid to discuss the worldwide event except on Emancipation day or some special “off day” set aside for a “private” showing to them, when herded in groups and corralled [sic] in mass formation, they may be allowed to view it. Such tactics, instead of awakening patriotism and inspiration, will crush out their ambition and arouse resentment. (Chicago Defender, May 28, 1927)

7. Joseph Corn has noted that

[w]ith considerably less hyperbole than the poets or preachers, the press had the most to say about the Lindbergh phenomenon. It was through the newspapers, after all, that most Americans followed the flight and its aftermath. On receiving confirmation that Lindbergh had landed safely in Paris, many papers rushed into print with special editions, thereby jumping their circulations by as much as half. Sensationalist tabloids quite naturally capitalized on the flight, but even conservative dailies like the New York Times, aloof from the era's tendency to ballyhoo and excess, dropped all restraints when faced with Lindbergh.

And yet, Corn gave no attention to the African American press (Corn, Joseph, Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation, 1900–1950 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1983], 24Google Scholar).

8. The Baltimore Afro-American noted that Lindbergh might have said

“Well, here I am,” — but he didn't. The simple salutation with which he greeted adoring thousands upon his arrival held not the slightest trace of inflated pride or exaggerated ego. Very much to the contrary, his “well, here WE are” expressed a definite recognition of the many, many elements that entered into and assured the success of his performance. Back of his marvelous feat were the men who had built the plane which carried him from New York to Paris…. Men who had conscientiously, painstakingly, intelligently formed and fashioned its every part. Back of these were those whose inventive genius and mechanical skill first made an air-plane possible…. Then, side by side with these mechanical and intellectual forces which made the plane were the spiritual factors which produced the MAN. The factors of courage, of sacrifice, of devotion to an ideal, of the formation of habits which enabled the man to function as perfectly as his plane. All of this, — and more, — was back of the marvelous exploit of which the world is talking.” (June 4, 1927)

9. Chicago Defender, May 25, 1927.

10. Richmond Planet, June 18, 1927.

11. New York Age, June 4, 1927.

12. Negro World, June 4, 1927.

13. Richmond Planet, July 2, 1927.

14. New York Amsterdam News, 05 25, 1927Google Scholar.

15. Along article in the Baltimore Afro-American celebrated the National Benefit Life Insurance Company of Washington, D.C., as “not only the largest of Negro insurance companies but the greatest Negro business enterprise of any kind in the United States, if not in the world.” After detailing its growth as a business (drawing parallels with the growth of the railroad) and a genealogical look at the founder and present president (drawing parallels between S. W. Rutherford and his son R. H. Rutherford and J. D. Rockefeller Jr. and Edsel Ford) the article drew parallels with the phenomenon of Lindbergh: “The world is running wild over Col. Lindbergh, who has accomplished the most spectacular human feat in the air. The Negro race is rightfully stimulated to high pride over the National Benefit Life Insurance Company, which is the greatest Negro business enterprise on earth” (Baltimore Afro-American, 06 18,1927Google Scholar).

16. Chicago Defender, May 28, 1927.

17. Negro World, May 28, 1927.

18. Powell, William J., Black Wings in Black Aviator: The Story of William J. Powell (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), xxxiv–xxxvGoogle Scholar. To help dramatize aviation, Powell also wrote a play, Ethiopia Spreads Her Wings, produced the documentary film Unemployment, the Negro, and Aviation, published the monthly aviation trade journal Craftsmen Aero-News, and organized the Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs.

19. Hardesty, Von and Pisano, Dominick, Black Wings: The American Black in Aviation (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983), 4Google Scholar.

20. William J. Powell made the most concerted effort to alert African Americans to the potential of aviation. As he wrote in the introduction to his book Black Wings.

This book is written to stimulate interest among Negroes in a new industry, aviation, which is destined to become the most gigantic of all industries, though still in its pioneer stages. It is a true story of the struggles of a few young Negroes bent on stirring up general interest in aviation among Negroes throughout America. There is a better job and a better future in aviation for Negroes than in any other industry, and the reason is this: aviation is just beginning its period of growth and if we get into it now, while it is still uncrowded, we can grow as aviation grows…. I trust also that my story may show the Negro schoolboy and girl a wide open field of industry, full of opportunities leading to fame and fortune, in which there is still a chance for the Negro to reach the highest pinnacles even in production and distribution…. Stimulating interest in aviation among Negroes would not be such an arduous task were it not for stumbling blocks which seriously menace the Negro's entry into any line of commercial endeavor. Skepticism, superstition, mistrust, jealousy, lack of co-operation, lack of preparation, race prejudice, and lack of finance have caused many a young Negro to turn away from some field of commercial endeavor with disgust. These form the basis for my story, and I trust and sincerely hope that this book will serve as a guide to those of my race whose ambition it is to become the flyers of the future, in order that they may know what to expect and be ready for it. (New edition of Powell, William J.'s, Black Wings [1934]Google Scholar, in Black Aviator: The Story of William J. Powell [Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994], xxxiv–xxxvGoogle Scholar)

21. Chicago Defender, May 28, 1927.

22. Baltimore, Afro-American, 05 28, 1927Google Scholar.

23. New York Amsterdam News, (06 22, 1927)Google Scholar.

24. “And let us hope that he [the Negro youth] will show the same stamina in the face of ridicule and the lack of interest in whatever project he may attempt to put across, and the same modesty in the face of success, if such is his, as did Lindbergh” (New York Amsterdam News, 06 22, 1927Google Scholar).

25. To the reporter at the American Club, the arc that Lindbergh had traced from the New World to the Old was not simply “a new symbol of an ancient friendship” but the completion of a circle begun many years earlier by French explorers who themselves had opened a new era by pushing deep into the interior of North America:

La hardiesse dirigée par la prudence, l'intrépidité raisonnée, l'habitude d' étre calme dans le danger, la promptitude et l'allégresse dans l'action préparée lentement, patiemment par la pensée, ce sont là, nous dissent les Américains, des qualités francaises…. Mais nous déclarons que ces forces morales, acclimatées dans un pays ouvert à la civilization par l'initiative de nos ancêtres, sont singulièrement multipliées magnifiquement, exaltées dans l'essor merveilleux qui vient d'élever au-dessus des plus hautes cimes le Spirit of Saint-Louis, . Le Temps (05 30, 1927)Google Scholar

26. A photo of Bessie Coleman inserted against a larger photo of the plane in which she had recently crashed (April 30, 1926) accompanied the article. It was also noted that Julian's attempt to fly to Liberia had wrecked “before he was outside the metropolitan area.”

27. Corn, , Winged Gospel, 26Google Scholar. As Corn goes on to write,

Faith in that mission, in flight as a veritable religious cause, energized not only fliers but also millions of other Americans during the first half of this century. Air minded men and women embraced what was often called the “gospel of aviation” or the “winged gospel.” Like the Christian gospels, the gospel of aviation held out a glorious promise, that of a great new day in human affairs once airplanes brought about a true air age. Lindbergh offered one version of this gospel, prophesying a future in which air travel would be commonplace and large transport planes shuttle from city to city unhampered by the weather. Other enthusiasts voiced even grander prophecies, looking to aircraft as a means of achieving perfection on earth or even immortality.” (26–27)

28. Negro World, June 4, 1927. Joseph Corn tells of the time when Lindbergh was in Mississippi and an “elderly black woman came up to him and, in total seriousness, asked him how much he would charge to fly her to heaven and leave her there…. Her linking of the spiritual with mechanical flight,” he adds, “was not unique” (Winged Gospel, 13).

29. Chicago Defender, June 11, 1927.

30. Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 25, 1927.

31. St. Louis Argus, June 20, 1927.

32. New York Amsterdam News, 05 25, 1927Google Scholar.

33. Chicago Defender, June 18, 1927.

34. Wright, Richard, Native Son (New York: HarperCollins Publ., 1993), 17Google Scholar.

35. Pittsburgh Courier, June 25, 1927.

36. Palmetto Leader, May 28, 1927.

37. In two follow-up articles, the Palmetto Leader continued to link transatlantic flight and lynching. On June 11, the Leader switched its attention to Clarence D. Chamberlain and Charles A. Levine, who had just flown all the way to Germany, stopping just 110 miles from Berlin, and establishing a new record for a nonstop flight — 3,905 miles. “Flying to Europe is fast becoming like the institution of lynching — an American pastime” (June 11). And, one month later, the Leader juxtaposed dramatic transformations taking place in space with more earthbound activities that continued at their own pace:

America continues to annihilate space. Byrd has flown to Europe, and is talking of flying to the South Pole. Army flyers have gone to Honolulu in twenty four hours. Your observer made the voyage from San Francisco in 1913 in seven days. Progress is being made. Lynching still goes on apace. And the great state of Mississippi has assigned the black folk all of its school buildings used by whites and the whites will now have brick edifices. Well, a frame school building in Mississippi is better than none at all. Second hand schools, hand-me-down education. (July 9)

38. Berg, A. Scott, Lindbergh (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1998), 141Google Scholar.

39. New York Times, May 25, 1927.

40. The Le Temps reporter wrote,

Il n'est pas un Parisien, sans doute pas un Français sachant lire, qui n'ait lu, dans le courannt de cette semaine, soit sur le fuselage du mono plan piloté par le traverseur solitaire de l'espace illimité, soit sur un écran cinématographique, soit sur le papier d'un journal, ces trois mots dont la splendeur a brillé en plein ciel, comme un nouveau symbole d'une amitié ancienne, mystérieux message apporté d'un coup d'aile par le Nouveau-Monde, à ces gens de France auxquels a pensé, d'une façon si touchante, le capitaine Charles Lindberg. (May 30, 1927)

While M. George Ponsot in L'Ere Nouvelle wrote of Lindbergh, who had “indissoluably linked the country of LaFayette with the land of Washington.”

41. New York Times, (May 24, 1927).

42. New York Age, June 4, 1927.

43. As Michele Fabre writes,

L'idylle intellectuelle entre la France libérale, héritière des grands principes de 1789, et les Noirs des États-Unis est déjà une vieille romance. Ses premiers accords furent composés par l'abbé Grégoire et les philanthropes de la Société des amis des Noirs… II n'empêche que, même si la France a généralement traité ses Noirs, ceux des Antilles et d'ailleurs, avec paternalisme, parfois avec violence, à partir du XLXe siècle naît, et se développe parmi les populations de couleur, aux États-Unis, le symbole d'une France terre des libertés. Pour les Noirs américanis, c'est d'abord le pays òu le mérite artistique d'un home peut être couronnê en dépit de la couleur de sa peau. Dans le meme temps, ceux des Noirs qui ont la chance de séjourner ou de vivre sur le sol français y font l'expérience d'une égalité dans les relations socials qui les ravit et, parfois, les déconcerte, habitués qu'ils sont, après les rigueurs de l'esclavage, à assumer les interdits et les tabous de la discrimination et de la ségrégation.

Au fil des années, le crédit libéral de la France diminuera ou augmentera selon les circonstances; néanmoins, et globalement, la fascination restera puissante et Paris brillera d'un éclat prestigieux tout au long du XIXe siècle. Ce même rayonnement perdurera jusque dans les années 1950, malgré des déconvenues plus ou moins graves. (Fabre, Michel, La Rive Noire [Paris: Lieu Commun, 1985], 23–24Google Scholar)

Although African Americans embraced France as the “Garden Spot of Europe,” there was sharp criticism of French colonialism. The St. Louis Argus, for example, reported the remarks of a delegate from Central Africa and a representative of the Defense Committee of the Negro Race before the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities:

When the French came to my countrymen in Africa, it was with this profession (of civilization) on their lips. But instead of teaching us the French tongue and giving us the education that they call “la lumiere universelle” they said, — Ah, no. We must not educate the blacks. — This was because, if we were educated, they could not use us as they wished. That is the way French imperialists have civilized the Negro…. We have been shown that when we are needed to be slaughtered or to perform heavy labor, we are Frenchmen, — But when it comes to giving us our rights, we are no longer Frenchmen — we are Negroes, . (St. Louis Argus, 06 10, 1927)Google Scholar

44. Chicago Defender, May 28, 1927.

45. Nathan Huggins writes,

The army's reluctance to permit black combat troops under its command resulted in this unit's [New York's 15th Infantry Regiment] being attached to the French Army as the 369th Regiment. Even so, white American anxiety about Negroes in the war was so acute that the United States Army had circulated among the French the famous document of August 1918: Secret Information Concerning Black Troops. The circular warned against black and white fraternization, lest Negroes rape French women. It also cautioned French officers and men against treating American Negroes in other than the most official and perfunctory way. Yet, … [the 369th] was awarded the Croix ale Guerre for its action at Maison-en-Champagne, and 171 officers and enlisted men were cited for the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor for exceptional bravery in action. Nevertheless, this regiment of New York Negroes was brutally harassed by American military police while they awaited ships to return to the United States. (Harlem Renaissance [New York: Oxford University Press, 1971], 54–55Google Scholar)

46. Baltimore, Afro-American, 06 4, 1927Google Scholar.

47. As Bois, Du wrote in The Souls of Black Folk, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line, — the relation of Souls — the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea” (W. E. B. Du Bois: Reader, ed. Sundquist, Eric J. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1996], 107)Google Scholar.

48. Baltimore, Afro-American, 06 4, 1927Google Scholar.

49. Negro World, May 28, 1927.

50. Marcus Garvey was profoundly critical of Alain Locke, but he singled out for special praise Locke's editorship of the Harlem issue of the Survey Graphic (1925) for not being “built around the needs of Negroes and their grievances but their contributions — around talents still half buried in napkins of prejudices and under privilege.” Garvey's comments are in a letter from Paul Kellogg to the trustees of the Kann Traveling Fellowship, wherein Kellogg mentions a telegram he had received from Garvey praising the Harlem Issue (University of Minnesota, April 19, 1925).

51. Joseph Corn also notes that after making a number of long-distance practice flights and consulting with Lindbergh about safety equipment, Dr. Albert Forsyth and C. Alfred Anderson sought to make a 12,000-mile flight around the Caribbean in their plane the Booker T. Washington so as to better race relations and fight racial prejudice at home and in the West Indies:

Forsyth believed Caribbean blacks held an even more negative opinion of American Negroes than did whites in the United States, thinking them all either “slaves or servants,” unable to vote, and incorrigibly “shiftless and lazy.” The Good Will Flight, he believed, would once and for all disabuse prejudiced observers of the idea that American blacks had “never done anything worthwhile.” By generating “favorable publicity” for the race, the flight would bring about a new era in inter-racial harmony.” (Winged Gospel, 59)

52. Soon, Steven Spielberg will begin work on the film Lindbergh.

53. In Lindbergh, A. Scott Berg does pay attention to Lindbergh's article in the Reader's Digest, but he makes no effort to address this writing in terms of African American opinion.

54. Lindbergh, Charles, “Aviation, Geography, and Race,” Reader's Digest 35 (11 1939): 66Google Scholar.

55. Ibid., 64.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid., 66.

58. Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, vol. 2: “The Negro Press” (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), 923Google Scholar.

59. Myrdal: “Most white people in America are entirely unaware of the bitter and relentless criticism of themselves, of their policies in domestic or international affairs, their legal and political practices; their business enterprises, their churches, schools and other institutions; their social customs, their opinions and prejudices; and almost everything else in white American civilization. Week in and week out these are presented to the Negro people in their own press” (ibid., 908).