The Black Pioneer Who Had To Fly

September 27, 1988|By Reviewed by Cyrus Colter, an author whose collected stories, ``The Amoralists,`` will be published in the fall.

The Brown Condor: The True Adventures of John C. Robinson

By Thomas E. Simmons

Bartleby Press, 198 pages, $14.95

``Most people who love the sky can`t be as happy on the ground as are other people,`` says the aviator-author of this book. It was certainly true of the man he was writing about. The book is meant to be a biography but too often lapses into sketchy history as well as attempts at outright fiction, whose dialogue frequently ends up sophomoric. The biographical story, though, is seriously researched and good indeed, because of the undisguised admiration of the author, a white Mississippian, for his subject, a black Mississippian and aviator-one John C. Robinson-whom he never met.

Robinson (1903-1954), as a child in a poor black family in Gulfport, Miss., one day saw in the sky his first airplane. He never recovered. Yet this was a time when American aviation was lily-white.

Later Robinson went to Alabama`s Tuskegee Institute, where he majored in automotive mechanics; after graduating he went to Detroit, where he had heard there were flight schools. He soon found, though, that they were not open to him. Robinson next tried Chicago, where he was finally, provisionally, allowed to enroll in a flight school. He eventually graduated and got his pilot`s license. In time he founded a flight school of his own where eager blacks, male and female (and soon many whites), could get flight training. Before long he was a success. By nature soft-spoken and reflective, he acquired a following of admirers and became widely known for his stubborn accomplishments against enormous odds.

In the mid-1930s, he was invited by Emperor Haile Selassie, whose country was about to be invaded by Mussolini, to go to Ethiopia as aviation adviser. Robinson, highly flattered, also full of burning patriotism for the beleaguered black nation, soon found himself in Africa. Mussolini launched his massive attack in October, 1935, and Robinson, already flying daring reconnaissance missions, was wounded twice and also gassed. The Ethiopians`

antiquated weapons were no match for the Italians` modern arms, and Selassie sorrowfully ordered withdrawal. He escaped to England and Robinson back to the U.S., where cheering crowds of blacks hailed him as ``the Brown Condor.``

After the war Selassie was restored to his throne and invited Robinson to return. Robinson complied without hesitating. One day while flying a mission of mercy (delivering blood to an injured Ethiopian peasant) in a single-engine plane, his engine malfunctioned. He died in the crash. His funeral cortege extended a mile through the capital, Addis Ababa, thousands lining the route.