Thursday, July 24, 1919. A "Quiet and uneventful day" on the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy, Cedar Rapids to Marshalltown, Iowa. 75 miles in 9.5 hours. The Round The Rim flight takes off from Washington D.C. National Association of Negro Musicians meets in Chicago..

A typical day for the Motor Transport Convoy.

Breakdowns, rescues by the Militor, lunch and with the Red Cross.  The Knights of Columbus, in this instance, provided refreshments and dinner at Marshalltown, Iowa.

A "Quiet and uneventful day".

The Knights of Columbus were one of the many U.S. service organizations that responded to World War One.  As we addressed earlier, an organization like the USO didn't exist during the Great War, and service organizations filled that roll instead.  The war was now over, of course, but many of them were still acting in that role as mobilization wound down, and of course they would have responded to events like this in any event.  The KoC is a Catholic service organization.

It wasn't as quiet at Bolling Field at Washington D.C. where the U.S. Army commenced a second transcontinental expedition, this time by air.

A single Martin GMB bomber with five crewmen took off to circumnavigate the rim of the U.S. border, counter clockwise in what was billed the Round the Rim Flight.

The country had been crossed by air before, as indeed the country had been driven across before, but a giant flight around the periphery of the country was new.  That the air branch of the Army would commences this while the Army was driving across the center of the country is a bit of an odd coincidence, if it is.

The flight by a single aircraft was about 10,000 miles in length, and it took until November to complete.  Completion, we'd note, was a returning to Bolling Field.

Stealing thunder?  The Round The Rim Flight made the front page of the Casper paper.

The National Association of Negro Musicians commenced its first meeting in Chicago.  It's the nation's oldest organization of black musicians and had formed that prior May.

African Americans had a strong presence in American music since it became a thing of its own.  The Great Migration had brought, and was very much then bringing, African American musicians and forms of music north, and into the American mainstream at the time, with jazz and blues influenced musical forms very much on the rise.  That the conference was held in Chicago, a northern city, cannot be regarded as an accident.