Janet Harmon Bragg: Mother to Ethiopian Students in America
By Andrew Laurence - andrew@ethiopianculture.org
When Emperor Haile Selassie returned from exile in England and noticed that the Italian attempt to colonize Ethiopia had massacred the majority of the most educated Ethiopians, he decided to send many promising students to America for study in US colleges. Many of the colleges that accepted these students were located around the Chicago area. The students had little knowledge of university life in America or of the sharp racial tensions that existed at that time. Fortunately for these students, the African American commander of the Ethiopian Air Force at the time, Col. John Robinson, put these students in contact with a dear friend of his in Chicago. That person turned out to be Ms. Janet Harmon Waterford Bragg, a very successful nursing home entrepreneur and aviation partner of Col. Robinson.
Janet Bragg was born in 1907 in Griffin, Georgia. She graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta with a registered nursing degree. Faced with racial discrimination in the Deep South, she moved to Chicago, Illinois and after acquiring advanced graduate school training in nursing she worked as a Chicago health inspector for many years. Noticing the horrible conditions in the local hospitals, she opened her own chain of nursing homes. Despite her success, she always wanted to learn to fly airplanes and enrolled in the new Aeronautical School that was founded by Col. John Robinson of Ethiopian aviation fame. With Janet’s help, an airfield for interested blacks in aviation was established outside Chicago and she actually purchased the first plane for the organization. Ms. Bragg became the first female graduate, and although she was denied admission into the segregated US Women’s Air Force Service Pilots program, she became the first black women in America to receive a fully accredited commercial airline pilot’s license.
It was this relationship with Col. John Robinson, who was in Ethiopian training Ethiopian military pilots at the time, which led to Janet Bragg coming in contact with Ethiopian students who began to attend schools in the Chicago area. Throughout the 1940’s and 50’s, many students were given her phone number and address by Col. Robinson before they left for the US. She would become their mentor and helped them to enroll in courses, find housing, see a doctor and even get haircuts. On holidays, they would be so many coming to join her she opened up her nursing homes for them to stay. She often intervened on their behalf when they were having trouble in school or with the law. “I think I saw thirty-five or more graduations with these boys. When I look through my scrapbooks seeing their photographs, I remember how good those days were. Many of them flew with me in my Piper Cub, the first time they had flown in a small plane,” states Janet in her autobiography.
When H.I.M. Emperor Selassie visited Chicago in 1954 for a diplomatic mission, he invited Janet to visit him at the Drake Hotel where he gave her a gold Lalibela cross, made her honorary consul general to issue visas to Ethiopia, and invited her to visit him at his palace in Ethiopia. The following year, Janet would make her all expenses paid trip to visit the Emperor for the twenty-fifth anniversary of his coronation. On her way, she would be fettered throughout Europe by former students, staying at the Ethiopian Embassy in London, and greeted in Addis Ababa by six of her former students who escorted her to the Ras Hotel.
Ms. Bragg would be taken by her former student artist Alle Felege to the palace where a military guard who had stayed at her home in Chicago saluted her. The Emperor offered her a place to stay on the compound but she preferred to stay with her students. She was given a Fiat car, joined in a parade and escorted to numerous parties where she was introduced to the entire royal family. Ms. Bragg was invited to dinner by H.I.H. Prince Makonnen, Duke of Harar, and Abuna Theophilus, Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church among others.
As word of Ms. Bragg’s visit was mentioned in the Ethiopian newspapers on a daily basis, the US Ambassador to Ethiopia, H.E. Joseph Simonson, invited her for lunch. Ethiopian cabinet minister and former Chicago student Mulatu Debebe escorted her to the US embassy where the ambassador questioned Janet on how she was able to visit the many homes of prominent Ethiopian people. Minister Mulatu explained to the ambassador “She was our American mother while we were at school in the United States. She did everything for us, came to the schools to check our progress, and helped us get what we needed, kept us at her house, when the rest of the people didn’t do anything. We were segregated. We will never be able to repay her for her thoughtfulness and love.”
On her departure from Ethiopia, the Emperor offered her a lion cub, which she refused, but he accepted her request to offer scholarships to women of Ethiopia to study in the United States, many of whom Janet also mentored. Ms. Bragg would go on to lead tour groups for African Americans throughout Africa and Europe in the 1970’s always receiving helpful assistance from former students who were now Ethiopian diplomats and businessman along the way.
In her later years, Ms. Bragg was invited to appear and lecture at many aviation events throughout the United States, and she received many awards and honors. Janet was active in many civic organizations including a chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen Association, and died in 1993 in a suburb of Chicago. Although she had no children of her own, she was a great mother to the many Ethiopian students she came across in her lifetime. We are very grateful for her support to these students and recognize Ms. Janet Harmon Bragg for her wonderful humanity and dedication to Ethiopia.
(Primary Source: “Soaring above Setbacks: The Autobiography of Janet Harmon Bragg, African American Aviator” – The Smithsonian Institution History of Aviation Series)