BLACK HISTORY MONTH: “Hate Lurked in The Skies”
February 5, 1933
James Herman Banning, the first licensed Black male pilot and the first Black pilot to fly coast to coast, was killed in a plane crash during an air show. Banning was born November 5, 1899 in Blaine County, Oklahoma. He studied electrical engineering at Iowa State College for a year. Wanting to fly since his youth, Banning was repeatedly rejected by flight schools because of his race.
He eventually was privately taught by an army aviator. From 1922 to 1928, he operated J. H. Banning Auto Repair Shop. He moved to Los Angeles, California in 1929 and was a demonstration pilot and the chief pilot for the Bessie Coleman Aero Club. In 1932, Banning and another Black pilot, using a plane put together from junkyard parts, flew coast to coast from Los Angeles to Long Island, New York. They made the 3,300-mile trip in 41 hours and 27 minutes in the air. The trip actually took 21 days because they had to raise money for the next leg of the trip each time they stopped.
