James Herman Banning

James Herman Banning was born on the fifth of November 1899 at Canton, in what was then Oklahoma Territory, a son of Riley and Cora Banning. He came of age on the family homestead near the Cimarron country of Kingfisher County, and was schooled first in a small country schoolhouse before graduating from high school in Guthrie in 1918. The wide prairie sky above that homestead would prove the making of him.

In 1919 Banning moved to Ames, Iowa, where he studied electrical engineering at Iowa State College and ran his own auto-repair shop, the J. H. Banning Auto Repair Shop. A single ride at a barnstorming air circus in 1920 set his course for the air. Turned away from flight schools because of his color, he was finally taught to fly by an Army aviator, and became one of the earliest African American pilots to hold a license from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

His name is written into history for the autumn of 1932. With his mechanic and co-flier Thomas C. Allen, in a patched-together biplane, Banning flew from Los Angeles to Long Island, New York — arriving on the ninth of October — becoming the first Black aviator to complete a transcontinental flight across the United States. They crossed some 3,300 miles over roughly twenty-one days, pausing town to town to raise money for fuel and repairs, and were affectionately remembered as "the Flying Hoboes."

On the fifth of February 1933, at a San Diego air show, Banning was killed in a crash — riding as a passenger, for even then he was not permitted to pilot the plane. He was little more than thirty years old. May the sky he opened to those who followed keep his name aloft, an honored ancestor who flew a coast to coast that had been closed to his people, and left it open forever.