ROBINSON BECAME A PROFESSIONAL PILOT DURING THE GOLDEN 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.”
Coffey usually went along with John’s decisions, but on this occasion, he disagreed. “We don’t need to be adding a hundred pounds on this short field.”
“Well.” John said, “You can stay here and take a bus to Tuskegee. That will more than make up for the extra fuel weight.”
“Like hell, I will.” Coffey replied. “But this is how we’ll do it.” He walked off the fairway into the rough, found a suitable stick, came back to the plane and paced off down the field to a point where he figured a takeoff run could be aborted and still have enough room to stop before they reached the fence. He tied his handkerchief to the stick and stuck it in the ground at the side of the fairway. Satisfied, Coffee walked back to where Robinson was finishing a pre-flight check of the biplane. This included oiling and greasing the valve rocker arms and springs by hand since the OX5 engine had no other means of lubricating these parts. This hand oiling and greasing had to be done prior to every flight. They paid four caddies fifteen cents apiece to help turn the biplane around and push it back to the base of the fairway tee. They did the same for the Buhl Pup. A small crowd of club members and caddies gathered to watch the intrepid airman. One was heard to say, “I ain’t never seen no airplane crash before.”
Grover Nash got in the Buhl. John propped his engine. Nash gave the Pup full throttle. It rapidly gained speed down the smooth fairway. Robinson and Coffey watched as the small plane lifted off. It cleared the fence and cabins with no problem. Nash put the Pup in a climbing turn to circle above until John and Coffey could takeoff and join up with him.
John got in the rear cockpit. Coffey said, “Remember, if we aren’t off by the time we reach my marker yonder, you cut the throttle and stop this thing.” He walked around front and propped off the engine, climbed into the front cockpit, fastened his seat belt, and signaled with a thumb up that he was ready.
John gave it full throttle. Coffey leaned his head out the left side of the front cockpit to look for the marker he had placed down the fairway. The plane quickly gained enough speed for John to lift the tail. Now he could see ahead and concentrated on keeping the roll straight. The plane was accelerating nicely on the smooth turf. The controls came alive in John’s hand. No sweat, he thought. She’s going to fly us out of here with room to spare. John began to ease back on the stick. The plane was on the verge of lifting into the air.
Just at that moment, Coffey saw his marker fly past. He reached for the throttle and closed it just after the plane lifted into the air.
Startled, John immediately rammed the throttle all the way forward, wondering how in the hell the thing had slipped back to idle. The plane momentarily lost altitude, bounced on the turf, and struggled into the air again as full power was restored. They crossed the fence at the end of the fairway. Directly in front was one of the sharecropper cabins with its little brick chimney sticking about three feet higher than the roof.
John was careful to maintain best angle of climb airspeed. He was sure the wheels had cleared the roof of the cabin when there was a sharp bump. Immediately, John could feel a terrific vibration through the control stick. Cornelius, whose vision was blocked by the lower wing, thought the main gear must have struck the cabin. He turned around to see John’s reaction. That’s when he stared past John at the tail empennage. It was missing most of the right horizontal stabilizer and elevator, torn off when they struck the brick chimney. He motioned wildly at John, pointing toward the tail.
John snapped his head around and saw what Cornelius was pointing at. He very gently eased back on the stick, testing to see if the plane would respond to what was left of the elevator. It did so, but very sluggishly. This time it was John who closed the throttle, anxious to get the plane down before they lost what was left of the tail. He hoped there was enough of it left to flare the plane for a landing. The biplane began to settle toward earth. From the back cockpit, when a pilot eases the stick back to flare for landing, he can see very little of what lies directly ahead. John was not too concerned since they would be landing parallel to the cotton rows. The plane, shaking from nose to tail, was about twenty feet off the ground when the very top branches of a tree climbed into Coffey’s view from the front cockpit. Startled, he shoved the throttle forward and grabbed the control stick in an effort to bank the plane to avoid the tree. By this time, John could see the top of the tree and was already taking evasive action.
They almost made it. Only a few feet off the dry, sun-baked cotton field, the right upper wingtip brushed tree branches. There was a sickening crack as the wingtip and aileron were torn off.
Nash, circling above waiting for the two pilots to take off and join him, watched in horror as the biplane spun around and crashed tail first onto the field. A huge grey explosion grew into a cloud obscuring the plane and its crew from his view. Flying above the frightening scene, Nash thought the plane had exploded and surely killed his two friends. A few minutes later, he was astonished to see both Robinson and Coffey walk out of the grey cloud and wave up at him.
As he continued to circle, Nash realized there had not been an explosion. The frightening cloud had been an enormous swirl of dust thrown up by the plane whirling onto the dust-choked cotton field. As the dust drifted off downwind, Nash was sure he had witnessed a miracle. His two friends had walked away from all that was left of Janet Bragg’s 1928 OX5 biplane: a fuselage bereft of the better parts of its wings and tail. At least there had been no fire.
As he continued to circle above, Nash could see his two friends engaged in a lot of gesturing, stomping, and walking around one another. John took his flying helmet off, threw it on the ground, and kicked it toward Coffey. Gordon Nash decided he better land. A storm was raging below.
Robinson and Coffey were furious with one another.
“It’s your fault, Coffey, for chopping the power on takeoff.”
“Well it’s your fault, Robinson, for cutting the power for the emergency landing without clearing the area in front of us. You should have ‘S’ turned to see what was ahead.”
“I didn’t dare do that. What was left of the elevator may have torn away. I didn’t know how much longer the control cable would hold. If either had failed, we would’ve nosed down and gone straight in. Who the hell would leave a tree in the middle of a cotton field anyway? You ever seen a cotton field with a tree in the middle of it? Damnit! If you hadn’t put that stupid flag out there and cut the power as we lifted off, we would have made it with altitude to spare.”
“Well, we didn’t make it, did we?”
By the time Nash once again landed on Fairway Six, a crowd of golfers and their caddies had climbed over the fence to see the crash.
With a crowd gathered, Robinson and Coffey calmed down and decided not to kill each other. They had both made mistakes, but by some miracle they were alive and unhurt. That was enough, they decided, until a new, more pressing argument arose between them. As Nash walked up the two were going at it again.
“You call her! You’re the one who sweet-talked her into loaning us the plane. Maybe you can sweet-talk her into not killing us.”
“Not me, Coffey. You call her. You’re the one who pulled the throttle on takeoff and caused us to hit the chimney.”
“I ain’t gonna.”
“The hell you ain’t.”
Just who was to call Janet to inform her that her airplane was scattered all over a cotton field in Alabama was a serious matter, not to mention the cost of buying her another airplane.
It was Gordon Nash that negotiated a truce. He reminded them of the purpose of the trip. The most important thing was for John to continue the trip in pursuit of their goal: establishing a school of aviation at Tuskegee. To prevent bloodshed, Nash took on the fearful task of informing Janet Waterford of what had happened to her pride and joy. “She can’t yell at me too much. I didn’t have anything to do with borrowing her plane.” He was wrong, of course. She was not amused. She entered into what is referred to in the South as a genuine hissy fit.
“What did she say?”
“She’s gonna kill all three of us just as soon as we get back to Chicago.”
The trio calmed down enough to agree that John would continue on to the reunion celebration at Tuskegee in Nash’s Buhl Pup. That was the moment another problem, in the form of an irate cotton farmer, showed up. He was not amused either. He insisted that his crop had been damaged to the tune of one hundred and twenty-five dollars, including the cleanup of “all them pieces of airplane scattered out yonder.” He further indicated that if they didn’t like the price, or couldn’t pay, they could take up the matter with the sheriff.
Coffey had been raised in Arkansas, Robinson in Mississippi. They definitely did not want to settle things with a white Alabama sheriff.
“All right. John, you go on right now. Get in the Buhl and fly out of here,” Coffey said.
“We don’t have a hundred and twenty-five dollars between the three of us,” Robinson replied.
“I’ll call some of the Air Challenger members. They’ll get up the money and wire it to us at Western Union. In the meantime, Nash and I will salvage the engine and whatever else we can from the wreck. Now you go on to Tuskegee.”
It was a beautiful afternoon when the sound of an aircraft circling in the blue sky overhead caused eyes to look skyward from the campus of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. John had called from Birmingham to ask Captain A. J. Neeley, the registrar of the college, for permission to land on one of the Institute’s farm fields adjacent to the campus. Now, as he made several low passes over the campus, students and faculty poured out of the buildings and rushed to the field to witness the very first visit to Tuskegee by an aircraft, and not just any aircraft, but one flown by a graduate of the institution. John brought the plane down smoothly to settle on the pasture and taxi over to the gathered crowd. When the flight-helmeted and parachute-attired Robinson climbed from the open cockpit, he was somewhat embarrassed by the cheers that rang from the crowd. The welcome given was that for a returning hero: He was Tuskegee’s own intrepid aviator.
Robinson enjoyed the festivities but wasted no time in discussing the possibilities a school of aviation with Tuskegee’s president, Dr. Robert R. Moton, and his visitor, Dr. Frederic D. Patterson. John told them about the first all-Negro airfield he had helped establish at Robbins, Illinois, and the flying and aviation mechanics school he had established with his partner Cornelius Coffey, and the organization of the Challenger Air Pilots Association. He pointed out the prestige such a school would give to the Institute, and how it could be the first college to exclusively and formally open the field of aviation to black youth. He went on to lay out the details of how all of it could be accomplished and what they would need: a classroom, a grass landing strip, a plane, a hangar, an instructor, a mechanic’s shop, and tools. His arguments in support of establishing a school of aviation at Tuskegee were enthusiastically received.
Before he left to return to Chicago, Dr. Moton assured Robinson that Tuskegee would establish a department of aviation as soon as necessary funds could be obtained, hopefully within the next two to three years. They also stated that they would engage him to head the department. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, he found the sky brighter and the earth greener as he flew northward toward Chicago. With an occasional roll or loop, he danced with the clouds. It was his sky that day.
Upon his return to Chicago, he sent the news to his parents and his sister. He informed Coffey and Curtiss-Wright of Tuskegee’s plans. News got around and the local press began to seek him out for interviews. All seemed right with his part of the world. Unfortunately, it was not with the rest of the world.