by Phil Keith
After a promise to the captain that he would work hard and obey the orders of the men, Bullard was put to work in the galley, cleaning up, toting and tossing the garbage, and helping the cook. He also did a few shifts down in the engine room shoveling coal into the ship’s hungry boiler.
During the next two weeks, the crew came to enjoy the lad’s cheerful company as the Marta Russ toiled across the choppy Atlantic, headed toward her first port of call. Bullard, always a quick learner, soaked up a passable acquaintance with the German language which was the native tongue of most of the men aboard. His facility with German would be an important aspect of his life in the coming years, and this was where he began to learn the language.
After a slow but uneventful crossing, the plodding steamer chugged into Aberdeen Harbor. Captain Westphal told Gene he would have to leave, as the “law of the sea” required stowaways to be deposited at the next port of call. The crew, who had come to like their guest, took up a collection of clothes and toiletries for Bullard and a small valise to carry the items. Captain Westphal generously paid him about $25 in earned wages, and Bullard and his new friends said their goodbyes.
He was not in France, but a new and confusing place called “Scotland.” The people spoke English, which was helpful, but they employed a lot of long, rolling Rs with a strange accent that Bullard found difficult to grasp: “Their talk made me feel hard of hearing,” he later wrote in his autobiography. He was, however, able to recognize that by reading signs like “England” and “Europe,” he was getting closer to his goal. He eagerly looked for ways to take the next steps, the first one being to survive in a strange, new land.
* * *
Very few Scots, in 1912, had ever seen a black person in the flesh. They invariably referred to Bullard as “Darky” or “Jack Johnson,” the heavyweight boxer who was, without question, the most famous African American on earth at that time. Bullard was not a boxer and certainly no heavyweight, but he seemed to enjoy the association with the well-known Johnson. Perhaps the comparison influenced his thinking because a boxer is exactly what Bullard would become during the next important phase of his life.
He was treated well by the Scots, much as he had hoped he would be treated in France. He stayed in Aberdeen for only a few days, then bought a train ticket for Glasgow where he had heard work was more readily available. Despite the cordiality of the Scottish people, Bullard was still yearning for France, which he finally learned was hundreds of miles away and across one more stretch of water.
By the time he reached Glasgow, he had just enough money to get himself a cheap but clean room in a downtown boardinghouse. His uniqueness as a black-skinned man was of immense curiosity to the Glaswegians and that, combined with his usual upbeat disposition, made it easy for him to make friends and acquaintances who could be beneficial to him. Being somewhat in the public eye also availed him of the opportunity to take on a few gigs singing and dancing with the street entertainers common to downtown Glasgow.
Part of the vibrant street scene were the card sharks who plied their three-card monte scam and the universal shell gamers of find-the-pea fame. These itinerant gamblers would set up a card table on a street corner at a moment’s notice. Their schemes were decidedly less than legal, however, and Gene quickly discovered he could make some pretty good money acting as a lookout for these manipulators. Whenever the bobbies were about to turn the corner, or come down the street, it was Bullard’s sharp whistle and running feet that would alert the con men to hurriedly shut down and scurry away.
He stayed in Glasgow, happily making money, for about five months. Toward the end of August 1912, he was ready to take the next step toward France. Stuffing his earnings in his socks, he bought yet another train ticket, this one to Liverpool, England, one more country closer to his goal.
Liverpool was then and still is one of the world’s great seaports. Bullard, seeking something a little more profitable than working scams on the streets, decided to try his hand at becoming a longshoreman. It was, after all, a task with which he had some familiarity, having loaded crates of cabbages in Newport News and sailed across the broad Atlantic. Although treated with respect, and not the racial discrimination he had been used to in America, he spent too many days at the hiring hall without landing a single assignment. Finally, a new friend told him he’d have better luck if he joined the union, which Bullard promptly did.
He was picked up by a job foreman immediately after returning with his new union card and assigned to a crew unloading huge sides of frozen mutton. It was back-breaking work for a youth as slender as Bullard, but after a few weeks he noticed that his muscles were filling out, his shoulders broadening and his legs getting stronger. That was a plus, but the work was not to his liking, so he switched to becoming a helper on a fish wagon.
During the Christmas holiday in 1912, Bullard, with a little time off, wandered down to Birkenhead. At the time, this was the site of Liverpool’s primary amusement park. He came across an attraction that both tickled him and ignited possibilities in his brain. One of the popular games allowed patrons to pitch soft rubber balls at someone poking their head through a large canvas sheet—a type of dodge ball, for a penny a throw. Three hits won you a prize. Bullard went straight to the game’s owner and offered his services, suggesting that the man could make a lot more money if the targeted head was uniquely black instead of white. The tactic worked like a charm. The game’s popularity soared with Bullard’s noggin and bright smile protruding through the sheet. He made enough money to quit his aromatic job on the fish wagon and he only had to work weekends, to boot, to triple his income.
With a great deal of time on his hands, and real money in his pocket, Gene had the luxury of being able to explore Liverpool and further expand his options. What he found most appealing was Baldwin’s Gym, the nexus for boxer training and the scheduling of local matches in Liverpool.
The owner, Chris Baldwin, was a burly man of booming voice who was widely respected as a trainer. One day in late December, a thin but wiry black youth showed up and stared at the boxers and other gym rats working out. In this particular location, dark faces and skin were not novelties: a number of black boxers trained at Baldwin’s, many of them expatriate Americans.
It took a while, but Baldwin finally noticed the unfamiliar, wide-eyed face. He was not happy to see a freeloader hanging around his gym and growled at the boy that he was not welcome and that he should leave immediately. Undeterred, Bullard immediately offered to help out, to work at whatever the cantankerous owner might need. No job was too small, too menial. Impressed by the teenager’s spunk, Baldwin grinned and put him to task.
For the next several weeks, while still working his weekend job at the fair, Bullard cleaned out slop buckets, lugged pails of water, wiped down the canvas rings, swept the floors, fetched towels, and ran any errand Baldwin needed done.
His persistence and work ethic paid off. One day, in February 1913, Baldwin called Bullard into his office.
“Listen, Bullard. You seem like a bright lad. I wasn’t sure at first, but you’ve been working hard. I have an idea for you.”
“Sure thing, Mister Baldwin. I’m game for anything.”
“How would you like to start sparring with the lads? A few rounds at a time?”
Gene could hardly believe what he was hearing. It was exactly what he had decided he wanted to do.
“Yes, sir, Mister Baldwin! I’d be very delighted!”
“You’re likely to get your crown knocked about, you know,” Baldwin chuckled.
“Don’t make no never mind, sir. I can duck!”
Baldwin burst out laughing, “Well, now, that black noggin of yours is going to be an easy target to spot!”
“Maybe so, but I can fly like a bird, too.”
“We’ll see there, ‘Mister Bird.’ We’ll just see.”
His smallish stature put him in the welterweight class, bu
t he was totally unafraid to take on anyone who wanted to go a few rounds, even the heavyweights. He was also a very quick learner. Before long, Baldwin realized he had much more than a live punching bag: he had a young boxer with some impressive natural talent.
Early in March 1913, and after much pestering by his eager pupil, Baldwin arranged a real match for Bullard: a ten-round fight with an Irish boxer from Wales, Bill Welsh. The fight was on the undercard headed by the welterweight Aaron Lister Brown, more famously known as the “Dixie Kid,” one of the more popular fighters in Europe.
Bullard boxed, at first, under the nickname of “The Sparrow.” Like the bird he had joked about, he was on the small side, but could flit gracefully around the ring, picking and choosing the most advantageous moments to “peck” away at his opponents. “Sparrow” was also a nickname he had picked up in Georgia from one of his boardinghouse landladies who told him, “Like the sparrow, you were born to fly!”
Like Jack Johnson, Bob Scanlon, and other black boxers, Aaron Brown was an American who had come to Europe to make a living and, as they all hoped, to get the type of title shots that had been denied to them in America because of their race. Brown had been born in 1883 in Missouri and while still a teenager had fought professionally in California, where he became a real contender. His big opportunity came in April 1904, when he challenged “Barbados Joe” Walcott for the World Welterweight Championship. Walcott had the upper hand for much of the fight, and by the twentieth round the Dixie Kid was tiring. Suddenly, the referee, “Duck” Sullivan, disqualified Walcott, giving the title to the challenger. Soon after, the title was taken away when it was discovered that Sullivan had bet on the Dixie Kid to win. The “Kid’s” name was nonetheless secured, and he went on to much bigger and better bouts.
Brown continued to fight black boxers, winning more than he lost, but opportunities grew scarce. He sailed to Europe in 1910 and scored an impressive victory the following year, in Paris, against George Carpentier, a major sports hero in France who would become a fighter pilot in World War I.1 By the time Brown retired in 1920, he had fought over one hundred fifty bouts, and his new occupation was as a jazz drummer for an orchestra in Berlin. Musical fame would elude the Dixie Kid but he would be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2002. At the time that Eugene Bullard met the Dixie Kid, the latter had just lost to Harry Lewis, the World Welterweight Champion.
A scrappy and determined Gene Bullard went the full ten rounds with Welsh and was awarded the fight on points. Looking on, awaiting his turn, was the Dixie Kid, who came away impressed with Bullard’s form and raw skill. The Kid won his scheduled twenty-round bout with a second-round knockout, and afterward he invited Bullard to dine with him. They talked about “possibilities.”
The net result was that Brown offered Bullard a position in his company of fighters, a group of about a dozen pugilists in various weight classes who toured as a group. Baldwin, who was Bullard’s unofficial manager, agreed to the deal after extracting from Brown a promise to “take care” of the young man—and, no doubt, some immediate compensation or a small percentage of future purses. That being settled, the troupe prepared to leave for London in two days. Bullard was eager to go, but he had some very important unfinished business to attend to first.
* * *
It was during his Liverpool days that Bullard became involved in his first serious, intimate relationship. In his autobiography, he refers to her as “Cherie.” She was, as the naive young man discovered only after some weeks with her, a local prostitute.
In 1913, there were approximately five thousand expatriate African Americans living in England. Nearly all, like Bullard, had fled America in the hopes of a better life, which meant one free of racial prejudice. Many were among the most skilled in their professions: musicians, vaudeville performers, craftsmen, boxers, athletes and, yes, even “ladies of the night.” Attractive African American girls were considered intriguing and many Englishmen were willing to pay a high price for their company.
Cherie was, according to Bullard, one such intoxicating distraction. The following paragraphs, about Cherie, are taken from All Blood Runs Red, Bullard’s own account of their love affair:
Promoters came [to Baldwin’s Gym] to judge boxers for possible matches. But there were others, more interesting: the women and girls who came to watch. They seemed to be attracted to men in good physical condition, wearing shorts, sweating and breathing hard. Mon dieu, the women were pretty and friendly. One group came almost every day, and this one time there was a new girl. Wow! She was slim, her skin almost teak, her deep dark eyes reminded me of my mother. From the minute she arrived, she stared at me. I was in the ring, and turned to take a good look and our eyes met.
She nodded her head. I was entranced and didn’t notice my sparring partner’s left cross to my head. Bam! Down I went. Went down but got up with a smile.
“Damn Sparrow, you weren’t concentrating!” yelled Mr. Baldwin. At the end of the evening session, she winked, waved, walked over and said, “S’il vous plait (please) meet me when you are done.” I showered quickly, my hair was still wet, rushed to dress and headed out wondering, “Will she be there?” Miracle! She was waiting. We reached out and took each other’s hand, walked, chatted. “I hear you are called Sparrow and you are an American. Why are you here?”
“Because this is the way to Paris,” I told her. She listened as I explained my dream of France.
She took me to a small pub, where we had dinner. I looked into those eyes and this Sparrow listened to a nightingale’s voice. The sweet smell of her perfume was captivating. When her palm caressed my face, fires burned inside of me. “You are so young, so strong and untouched. Why do they call you Sparrow? Were you a slave?”
“No, never a slave and never will be. My name was given to me a long time ago by a wonderful woman who was sure I would fly,” I answered. Didn’t know what she meant about being young and strong, but untouched. Being with her was breathtaking. I knew I was in love.
Cherie was a little older than I. She told me she did special hairdressing and cosmetics for wealthy customers. She knew so much about everything. Dinner ended. It was after midnight. Don’t remember what I ate. At her boarding house I started to say goodnight. She put her fingers to my lips, whispered, “Hush, hush. The night is not over, little bird.” With her leading the way, we walked quietly up the stairs and Cherie unlocked the door to her room. “S’il vous plait, come in.” I was never in a woman’s room before and was shy. She started to hum and slowly undressed. Her naked body was like a goddess, soft, maple-teak color, smooth and gleaming clean...
“My Sparrow, now let me show you love.” It was my first time. I became a man and it was wonderful!2
Within days, the two of them moved in together and Bullard spent several blissful yet exhausting weeks working the gym by day and enjoying his partner’s ministrations by night. Sometimes he would rush home only to find Cherie absent. She would, however, always leave a note, usually indicating she was with a client.
“I never suspected or realized why her ‘special assignments’ were at odd hours, afternoons and some nights,” Bullard wrote. “Alas, it is true that love is blind, especially for a first time love.”
As he tells it, when he came back to the flat he shared with Cherie to pack his bag for London, he found all of his belongings neatly stowed in his valise, sitting outside the door—which was locked. Bullard thought he heard Cherie softly crying behind the door, but no amount of coaxing or knocking would get her to open up. With the time for his departure at hand, he picked up his belongings and sadly trudged away. The two star-crossed lovers would never see each other again.
* * *
In London, Bullard moved into Mrs. Carter’s Boarding House at Number 2 Coram Street, Holborn, not far from Soho. Holborn was the epicenter of expatriate African American London. The borough was chockablock with entertainers, musicians, singers
, actors, aspiring athletes, and boxers. The Dixie Kid lived close by, with his wife and infant daughter. The Kid, as he had promised Chris Baldwin, took Bullard under his wing and made sure he was trained properly and scheduled for any fights for which he was qualified.
In this large and close-knit community Bullard found opportunities to do more than box. With his natural talent and winning personality, he soon found himself employed as a slapstick performer in the wildly popular Belle Davis’s Freedman’s Pickaninnies.3 “Belle’s Picks” toured around Europe and presented, in vaudeville format, a complete revue of Southern black culture in song, dance, and comedy routines. Over the course of the next year, in addition to his boxing matches, Bullard toured with the troupe from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Berlin to Paris. The group offered him his first views of France, and these teasing trips only sharpened his desire to end up there.
Bullard’s career as a fighter provided him with a very good income. The work was also steady. During the years before the Great War, the average Englishman was doing quite well financially. The long decades of Queen Victoria’s reign had been mostly peaceful and economic possibilities had exploded, giving rise to incomes that offered money for discretionary spending. The economic boom had continued during the reign of her son, Edward VII, who had ruled 1901-1910, and under the then-reigning king, George V, Victoria’s grandson, who would rule until 1936.
Football (soccer, as we know it in America) had not then risen to the heights of frenzied fandom it enjoys today among the British general public. Boxing was all the rage. Gentlemen’s clubs and major boxing venues, like the fabled Blackfriar’s, were packed nearly every night of the week, tightly scheduled with bouts offering the spectacle of men pummeling each other with abandon.
From early 1913 until mid-1914, Bullard could always find a spot on someone’s fight card or get an invite to box privately at a gentleman’s club. He was popular and had a good record. He was clearly tenacious and always entertaining. In an era when fights went twenty rounds or more, lasting several hours, he was seldom knocked out of a bout. He most often fought in the middle or welterweight classes which routinely set him below the “premier” heavyweight level. His limitations were that he was a good fighter, but not a great one, and his size, which always tended toward the lower weight of his class. He had the stamina and courage needed, but he never developed the finesse and technical expertise necessary to make it to the top level. He was not going to be the next Jack Johnson of his weight class—although while in London he did get to meet that legendary boxer and participated in several fights on a card where Johnson was the main attraction.
