The history of John Charles Robinson presented herein has been gathered by the author during an often difficult trail of investigation and original research stretching some thirty years. It is difficult to resurrect the history of any long forgotten hero. It is particularly challenging to piece together the history of a forgotten hero whose story never appeared in history books, an American hero who successfully pursued his seemingly impossible dream only to have his extraordinary achievements lost in chaos as war followed war in terrible succession, a hero who was black in the age of segregation.
Scores of the details within this book came from the contributions of individuals who knew John Robinson firsthand—while some of them are now deceased, I wish to pay tribute to them here. I am ever grateful to the following: Miomi Godine (who was the first to confirm to me that an African American pilot of the 20s and 30s named Robinson grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi—it was the beginning); Mrs. Bertha Stokes, Col. Robinson’s sister of Queens, New York, an essential source; John Stokes and Andrew Stokes, Robinson’s nephews whose recollections, photographs, and priceless recorded interviews with his contemporaries contributed greatly to this work; Al Key, record-setting Mississippi aviator; Cornelius Coffey, a partner in Robinson’s school of aviation; Harold Hurd and Janet Waterford Bragg, both students and friends of Robinson; Inniss Ford and her son, Yosef Ford, who first met Robinson in Ethiopia; “Chief ” Alfred Anderson, head of the school of Aviation at Tuskegee Institute; Harry Tartt and Katie Booth, who looked up to Robinson during school days in Gulfport; General Noel F. Parrish, Ret.; Curtis Graves of NASA who arranged interviews that otherwise might not have been open to me; Pick Firmin, former editor of the Sun Herald newspaper; and Tyrone Haymore, who helped organize the Robbins Illinois Historical Society and Museum.
Of special recognition is Jim Cheeks, a pilot who served with Robinson training Army Air Corps aviation mechanics at several bases in the United States and later flew with him in Ethiopia. Jim’s input and photographs were primary sources for recording Col. Robinson’s return to Ethiopia during World War II at Haile Selassie’s request.
My friend and fellow flyer, Roland Weeks, retired publisher of the Sun Herald newspaper, arranged unlimited access of the microfiche archives of Robinson’s hometown newspaper, the Gulfport/Biloxi Sun Herald, for the years 1935 and 1936. It was necessary to scan every page of every day of the paper for those years to find articles on Robinson. Though the paper did provide, with some pride, articles of his adventures during the Italo-Ethiopian War and his homecoming, one had to search the back pages to find them.
Additional institutions that supported my research include the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (special thanks to Von Hardesty and Dominick Pisano); the National Archives; the Library of Congress; the Tuskegee University Library; the Chicago Defender Archives; the libraries of Harrison County and the University of Southern Mississippi.
No author’s finished work stands as his or hers alone. The idea, the words, the style are more or less his or hers. But the finished book—tidy, free of awkward structure, grammatical errors, lapses in syntax, all the things that make a book acceptable to the reader—is aided by editors whose work often goes unsung. I hereby sing the praises of my editors, Jennifer McCartney and Herman Graf. Finally, this work may well have languished unread without the faith and hard work of my agent and friend, Jeanie Pantelakis.
I owe a debt of thanks to all the individuals and institutions listed above. I also thank my wife Kay, the love of my life, for her support and patience in putting up with cantankerous me and two no-account dogs.