DID YOU KNOW THAT... With Robert Green: Emory Conrad Malick

Did You Know... with Robert Green and Black Aviators Historian Guy E. Franklin

Emory Conrad Malick
In 2004, Pennsylvania native Mary Groce was going through a box of family papers with her cousin Aileen when she found a sheet of old letterhead for an “Emory C. Malick, Licensee: Pilot No. 105.” Included on the letterhead was a photograph of a handsome young man in a Curtiss pusher-type airplane.

Groce handed the letterhead to her cousin, asking: “Have you ever seen this photo of our great-uncle Emory?” She recalls her cousin’s surprise: “Aileen looked at the paper and replied, ‘Oh my God. He’s black.’

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Emory C. Malick, Curtiss Aviation School, 1912
Emory Conrad Malick (1881-1958) was the first licensed African American aviator, earning his International Pilot’s License (Federation Aeronautique Internationale, or F.A.I., license), #105, on March 20, 1912, while attending the Curtiss School of Aviation on North Island, San Diego, California. Mr. Malick was also the first African American pilot to earn his Federal Airline Transport License, #1716, in 1927. But his name is as yet unknown.
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Black Aviators, Hubert Fauntleroy, William Powell, Dorothy E. Tate, John C. Robinson Coleman Young, George Washington,