And warm memories!

The latest fall fashions and decorations are filling up window displays, website pages, and social media ads. Fall festival season in Atlanta kicks off right after Labor Day, when it still feels like summer, and continues till mid-November — and then it’s winter festival season!

Hubert Fauntleroy Julian was a Trinidadian born African American Aviation pioneer. He was nicknamed The Black Eagle of Harlem. Hubert was born the son of a cocoa plantation manager in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in 1897. He migrated to Canada in 1914, Force. In 1921 he patented the airplane safety appliance a combination parachute and propeller.

Hubert migrated from Montreal to Harlem in 1921. His first flight above Harlem occurred during the 1922 Universal Negro Improvement Association Convention (UNIA), when he flew over the parade in a plane decorated with UNIA slogan. That flight led to his appointment as head of the organization’s new Aeronautical Department. He made his first Parachute jump on September 3, 1922, at an airshow at Curtains Field on Long Island headlined by black pilot B Coleman, several more jumps followed in the next year, at Curtiss Field and at Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. During one jump in New Jersey in June 1923, Julian played I’m playing wild on his saxophone.

Julian’s most famous parachute jumps were into Harlem itself. On April 29, 1923, He flew from an airfield in Hasbrouck Heights to Harlem, circled city college, dropping two noise bombs to attract residents’ attention. He then jumped from the plane, dressed in a bright red suit, the wind carried him away from the target. A vacant lot on 140^th street near Seventh Avenue, to the roof of a tenement at 301 West 140^th street. A large crown followed him, and after a police officer charged him with disorderly conduct, they carried Julian to the UNIA’s Liberty Hall. Addressing the crowd, he spoke about aviation, promoted a parachute he had designed, and urged them to support A. Hart, a black owned department store under threat from white competitors.

On November 5^th, 1923, Julian again flew to Harlem planning to parachute into Saint Nicholas Park. On this occasion, wind carried him instead to the police station on West 123^rd St., as a huge crowd followed. After he became stuck between the station and the next building, two officers pulled him into the second floor.

In 1924 Julian shifted his focus from parachuting to piloting and raising funds to buy a sea plane for a transatlantic flight from New York to Liberia. He named the plane Ethiopia 1, decorated its tail with red, black, and green colors of the UNIA. On July 4, 1924, a crowd of about one thousand gathered on the banks of the Harlem River at 139^th St. to see Julian depart. His take off was delayed for several hours when the owners of the plane appeared and declared that Julian still owed the $1,400. His supporters, with the help of the UNIA members, eventually collected the money from the crown. However, soon after Julian took off one the Pontoons feel off the plane, and it crashed in the Flushing Bay.