Bessie Coleman

(1892-1926) (also see The Legacy of Bessie Coleman)

The story of aviation traditionally begins with the brief, but historic 1903 flight of the Wright Brothers' plane, the Flyer, at "Kittyhawk, North Carolina. The story of Blacks in aviation can he traced to the brief, but historic service of Eugene Bullard, a Georgia native, who left the United States and went to France before World War I started.

He joined the French Foreign Legion and was initially an infantryman until a call went out and he was sworn into France's flying corps, the Lafayette Escadrille in 1917, thus given the chance to fight the enemy from the air.

This drive would lead her to finish high school and fuel a ambition to attend college. Bessie managed only one semester at then Langston Industrial College (now Langston University) in 1910 before a lack of money forced her to drop out of school. She returned to Waxahachie, but would move to Chicago in 1915 where she took a course in manicuring and started working at the White Sox Barber Shop on State Street. Later Coleman would mange a chili restaurant on 35^th street to help finance her trip to France to learn the art of flying. Her decision to become a pilot was influenced in part by a teasing discourse her brother John had directed at her, claiming that French women already flew airplanes and that Bessie and others of her race and sex would never take to the skies.

With her interest in flying growing, Bessie set certain goals for herself. The first was to learn to Fly and earn a pilot's license. Her initial search for an adequate teacher proved fruitless due to the racism and sexism of the time. All of her applications for admission to aviation schools were rejected. The world was not ready for Black fliers, period, let alone a Black female. However, with the encouragement and aid of Robert Abbott, the publisher of the powerful Chicago Defender newspaper, Bessie took French lessons and took off for France in November, 1920. She was taught at the French Flight School- Ecole d'Aviation des Freres Caudron at Le Crotoy in the Somme, and trained on a Nieuport, a craft made of wood, wire, steel, aluminum, cloth, and pressed cardboard.

Coleman returned to the United States in 1921, a pilot at last. She had earned her coveted Federation Aeronautique International (FAI) license which granted her the right to Fly anywhere in the world. Bessie Coleman had become the first Black woman to earn a pilot's license and the first African American to do so in peacetime. Her feat came just ten years after the first American woman had earned a license and less than twenty years after the Wright brothers had made the first successful airplane flight in 1903. Bessie was later to return to France and also went to Germany to receive advance training in order to become an accomplished and daredevil stunt pilot, known at that time as a "barnstormer ".

Thus Bessie had set her sights on goal number two, to become a recognized stunt and exhibition flier. Barnstorming was popular in the era of the Roaring'20s and was the main avenue available for female aviators in America. During the Labor Day weekend of 1922, Bessie made her first US. appearance in an air show at Curtis Field near New York City and six weeks later repeated her performance in Chicago at the Checkerboard Airdrome (today known as Midway airport). Both of her events were sponsored by Robert Abbott. With her daring aerial feats attracting crowds of blacks and whites alike, Coleman soon became known as "Brave Bessie", doing breath taking, often dangerous stunts which kept the audience glued to their seats and their eyes to the sky. Audiences watched her every move even so closely that a young boy walked up to her after one shorten demonstration and asked, "Lady, didn't your plane stop up there for a little while?" Bessie answered "yes", for indeed her engine had shut off or faltered. Bessie would participate in air shows in many cities in the South as well as the North, including her hometown of Waxahachie, Texas.

Coleman always thrilled the crowds with feats of daring, coming through her show without a scratch. But. even the best of pilots have accidents and Bessie was no exception. Her first crash came in California while flying advertisements for the Firestone Rubber Co. Despite breaking several ribs and a leg, she proclaimed from her hospital bed that "as soon as I can walk I'm going to fly! And my Faith in aviation and the useful(ness) of it will serve in fulfilling the destiny of my people isn't shaken at all." Bessie Coleman's desire to fly was matched only by her desire to see her people join her in the
skies. Her third goal was to establish a flying school where young Black Americans could receive training. She took to raising funds for this project through lectures in schools and churches, in addition to flying once again in air shows. She claimed in a letter to her sister Elois that she was on the threshold of achieving this goal when tragedy struck. Coleman was in Jacksonville, Florida at the invitation of the local Negro Welfare League (forerunner to the Urban League) to perform in an air show for the Memorial Day celebration. The day before the event, April 30, 1926. Coleman and her mechanic, William D. Willis, took her craft up for a test run. Willis had flown the plane from Texas and Was forced to land twice because of engine trouble. During one of the maneuvers. it is reported that a wrench became jammed against the controls of the plane. The aircraft rolled over, catapulting Bessie out and to an untimely death. Her mechanic was also killed when the plane crashed.

Coleman's funeral took place in three cities, starting with Jacksonville then Orlando, and finally Chicago. She was buried in Lincoln Cemetery in Southwest Chicago. Bessie Coleman's life was brief, but her influence spanned many years. Within years after her death, Black fliers were perpetuating her memory through the Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs and by flying in formation over Lincoln Cemetery, dropping flowers on her grave every Memorial Day. She helped pave the way for other Black female pioneers like Willa Brown and Janet Bragg. She was named as one of 50 Black women who made a difference by Ebony magazine in 1993. Bessie's memory and accomplishments are today being recognized anew through books and the efforts by students From the Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; a group of aviators known as the Bessie Coleman Foundation; Bessie's niece, Marion Coleman, Charles and Odessa Horn and others.

Their labors bore fruit when Coleman was honored with a U.S. postage stamp of her likeness in the April of 1995. Students, aviation buffs, historians and avid readers may want to read these publications to find out more about the life and times of Bessie Coleman: "Queen Bess - - Daredevil Aviator" by Doris Rich available through the Smithsonian Institution Press and "Bessie Coleman: The Brownskin Ladybird", a dissertation by Elizabeth Hadley Freydberg available through the U.M.I. Dissertation Services in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Bessie Coleman's life is also told in the following short story publications designed for secondary school students: "The Empak Heritage Kids: Kumi and Chanti Tell the Story of Bessie Coleman; "A Gift of Heritage; Historic Black Women, Volume I" and "A Salute to Historic Black Women", all available through the Empak Publishing Company in Chicago. "I point to Bessie Coleman and say without hesitation that here is a woman, a being, who exemplifies and serves as a dignity, courage, integrity, and beauty. It looks like a good day for flying." Mae C. Jemison, M. D., Former Astronaut.