Black inventor Charles Frederick Page created airship in Louisiana before the Wright brothers

The Wright Brothers are known as history's flying pioneers, the first to invent, build and fly the world's first successful airplane.

The legendary test flight of their plane, called the Wright Flyer, took place on Dec. 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. These days, that same plane hangs from the rafters of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.'s National Mall.

What you won't see in that same museum is Charles Frederick Page's airship. The Black inventor applied for a patent eight months before the Wright brothers took flight.

But why isn't it there? Well, that's part of the question posed by Abigail Miller, of Slaughter.

Miller noticed a display about Page in the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in New Orleans. She was returning from a trip and time was short, so she didn't have time to stop and read the exhibit's panels.

But she did take note of Page's name, as well as a model of his airship in a glass display case.

"He was a Louisiana inventor," Miller said. "Why didn't his invention receive more attention? And what happened to it?"

Well, first of all, Michael Wynne said, note the year: 1903. Page was African American, and the Jim Crow era was alive and well in the United States.

"Charles Frederick Page was an African American born in 1864," the Pineville historian said. "There is no census record with his name on it, but he was born in either Rapides or Caddo parish. He was actually born enslaved."

He eventually married his wife, Ida Kelso, in 1880. The couple settled in Pineville, where the couple raised 13 children.

"He dug coal for a living in, in Pineville, and by the 1890s, according to an interview with his daughter in The Alexandria Daily Town Talk in the 1930s, he saw a mosquito hawk flying, and he said to himself, 'If a mosquito hawk can fly, I can fly,'" Wynne said. "He built a two-story, wooden house in Pineville."

A state historical marker indicates the location of his home on what is now La. 28 East in Pineville — and it was there that he invented an airship.

"It was more of a balloon type plane, but it's now being heralded in a major exhibit in the Black Inventors Hall of Fame in Wharton, New Jersey," said Wynne, who self published the book, "Charles Frederick Page and Leo Ortego: Heroes in the Birth of Aviation in America" in 2022. "This is the story of a Black man who patented a version of the airplane before the Wright Brothers."

Wynne also was the catalyst behind the unveiling of the historical marker in Pineville.

The Louisiana State Museum and the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum collaborated in a July opening of an exhibit commemorating Page's achievement, titled "Pioneer Skies: From Freedom to Flight, the History of Charles Frederick Page," near the baggage claim at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

The exhibit is an overview of the story Wynne documented through newspapers and governmental records in his book, which also includes blueprint drawings of the airship.

"Page's aircraft was a complicated mechanical balloon device that actually had propulsion forward, up and down and forward," Wynne said. "And he built it in his barn behind his house."

Again, Page submitted a patent application for his invention months before the Wright Brothers' demonstration at Kitty Hawk.

"Now, these patents took a long time," Wynne said. "Page's patent actually took three years to process, but that was normal back then. And the Wright Brothers' patent took about three years, too. Page built a life-size model of his aircraft, and The Town Talk interviewed Page about it."

Which surprised Wynne, because newspapers didn't often highlight Black southerners for their accomplishments during Jim Crow.

"I think The Town Talk did four lengthy articles on Page," Wynne said. "And, let's just be honest, The Town Talk's highlighting the accomplishments of a Black man in the South at that time is worthy a medal. They saw everything and got the story. So, we have a contemporaneous article right there on everything, so it wasn't rumor — it was news happening."

The patent was finally awarded to Page on April 10, 1906, but in the meantime, Page wanted the world to know about his invention.

"Page sent his aircraft to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis," Wynne said.

This edition of the World's Fair celebrated, as indicated by its name, the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase.

"The Louisiana Purchase was signed in 1803, and it was never clear to me why they decided to celebrate the centennial one year later in 1904, but they did," Wynne said. "And they had an aeronautic competition in which the prize, which was well documented, was half a million dollars. It was the total prize, and there were various other prizes that could be won. So, Page shipped his aircraft to St. Louis, and from there, we don't know exactly what happened it."

All that is known is Page's airship disappeared, which answers the second part of Miller's question as to what happened to Page's invention: He sent it to the fair, and it never came back.

Eva Page, Page's daughter, later told The Town Talk that the airship had been stolen.

"It was stolen and destroyed, probably due to the prejudice of the day," he said. "Well, that heavily discouraged Page. He'd gotten one offer for $30,000 for the patent. I have the actual letter, but he was so discouraged after the airship was destroyed that he basically gave up on it."

Meanwhile, Page's patent came through two years later.

"This was one of the earliest patents that any Black man had ever gotten," Wynne said. "It was the first patent on an airship — it was granted one month before the Wright Brothers patent was approved. Again, Page's aircraft was a different mechanism, but it was still an amazing accomplishment."

Now comes the most important question: Though the patent was approved, did Page's aircraft actually fly?

"According to the family, Charles Frederick Page did fly it, but the story is based on family tradition," Wynn said. "But I respect family tradition, and I have no reason to doubt it. Family tradition is not exactly the movie somebody took of the Wright Brothers flying the (Wright Flyer), but Page's family was there, and they passed down the story." 

Page's story doesn't end there. He moved past the loss of his invention and devoted his life to helping his fellow man.

"His life was amazing," Wynne said. "In 1911, a White student at Louisiana College — now Louisiana Christian University — was walking down Main Street in Pineville, going across the Murray Street Bridge to go to Emmanuel Baptist Church. A Black man took a part of a picket fence and used the wood to kill him and rob him. Things were escalating into a race riot, but Page helped create a group of mediators between the White and Black people to stop this race war. They met in Emmanuel Baptist Church, the White people and the Black people, the mayor, the chief of police, everybody."

Tempers cooled, and the conflict was peacefully resolved.

"And it was all due to Page," Wynne said. "He also built coffins for people who could not afford coffins, and he set up a business organization for Black men so they would understand how to set up their own businesses. It was the first of its kind in central Louisiana."

Page also practiced amateur dentistry.

"I know that sounds terrible, but it was for people who could not afford dentistry," Wynne said. "And he worked at Greenwood Memorial Park cemetery, where he developed new tools on handling coffins and digging graves. He then realized that Black people did not have a cemetery of their own, so he founded Lincoln Memorial Cemetery right off of Melrose Street in Pineville."

Page died at age 73 on Nov. 18, 1937. He is buried in Lincoln Cemetery, the same cemetery he founded in Pineville.

The exhibit on Page and his airship will continue through Sept. 30 at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport with a coinciding satellite exhibit on Page showing at the Louisiana Civil Rights Museum Inaugural Experience in the Hall A entrance of the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.