Julian caught his first glimpse of an airplane on 3 January 1913, when Frank Boland performed an exhibition flight, ultimately crashing and dying.

On 3 September 1922, Julian performed his first parachute jump at Curtiss Field on Long Island; the event was headlined with a flight by Bessie Coleman.

Julian would make one more jump that year before teaming up with aviator Clarence Chamberlin who, in addition to teaching his new business partner how to truly handle an airplane, flew him up above Harlem where the Trinidadian parachuted several times, the most famous moment coming when he wore a crimson jumpsuit while playing "Runnin' Wild" on a saxophone.

[3] In 1924, Julian, along with Chamberlin, began toying with the idea of performing a transatlantic flight, with stops in Florida, the West Indies, Central America, Brazil, and Saint Paul's Rock (in the mid-Atlantic), from New York City to Liberia.

On 4 July, with a crowd of thousands gathered at the banks of the Harlem River to witness his takeoff, Julian boarded his plane, after having UNIA members help raise some last-minute funds to pay off his investors, and soared into the sky.

A few minutes would pass before Julian realized that one of his plane's pontoons had filled up with water, throwing the aircraft's weight off balance.

The second, and final, attempt saw New York State Senator A. Spencer Feld take the helm of the endeavor, but after Amelia Earhart crossed the Atlantic Ocean, Julian felt dismayed at the prospect of performing something that had now been done by more than a handful of others and canceled the project.

It was during his second visit when he crashed Haile Selassie's favorite plane, causing the emperor to ask Julian to leave his kingdom.

But the Black Eagle would return on the eve of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, gaining a military commission to help defend the African kingdom.

New York Supreme Court Justice Benedict E. Dineen and both parties eventually agreed to the $12,000 in warehouse receipts for whiskey presented by Julian with the intention of covering Divine's $6500 to $17,000 in claims.

[15][16] Upwards of twenty-five defrauded Angels came forward as a result insisting on being repaid, forcing Julian to quickly withdraw his offer on the grounds of fairness to all and an inability to pay them all.

[21] When Julian learned, from Giuseppe Bellanca, what Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring had been saying about peoples of color, the Black Eagle issued a challenge to the latter, offering the Nazi leader the chance to duel him in an aerial battle above the English Channel.