Banning 1324

White’s Hummingbird – Barnstormer J Herman Banning

Hummingbird 1926
engine: 90hp Curtiss OX-5
span: 33’2″
length: 23’6″
load: 1000#
range: 375
cost: $2,150

In the book, Black Eagles, by Jim Hastings, on page 60, J H Banning states: “In 1924 Des Moines, I found WW1 ace [?] Raymond Fisher to teach me to fly.” Banning then buys his own Hummingbird biplane, naming it Miss Ames.

Banning attended Iowa State College, and became the first black to receive a CAA pilot’s license, #1324. He bought the Hummingbird to use in the 1928 Iowa Goodwill Air Tour.

In the early 1920s J. Herman Banning (originally from Oklahoma) went to Chicago with the dream of becoming a pilot. When he tried to enter aviation school, no school would admit him because of his race. So he took lessons from Ray Fisher of Des Moines and moved to Ames to attend Iowa State College. Banning became the first black citizen to receive a pilot’s license from the government – number 1324.

Banning’s claim to fame is first that he was the nation’s first licensed black male pilot. Banning and another black pilot, Thomas C. Allen became the first black pilots to fly coast-to-coast from Los Angeles to Long Island, NY, in 1932. Using a plane pieced together from junkyard parts, they made the 3,300 mile trip in less than 42 hours aloft. However, the trip actually required 21 days to complete because the pilots had to raise money each time they stopped. Banning was a passenger in a biplane, sitting in the front open cockpit without controls, during a San Diego air show. The Navy pilot at the controls, trying to impress his more accomplished passenger, pulled the nose of the tiny plane up into a steep climb. The plane stalled and fell into a fatal spin in front of hundreds of horrified spectators.

James Herman Banning operated the J. H. Banning Auto Repair Shop in Ames from 1922 to 1928.

Flyers In Search of a Dream Video

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles has a Box of Stuff (1228 Sam Moore Papers, 1931-1936)