Bessie Coleman - First African American Woman To Earn International Pilot's License

Bessie Coleman wouldn't be deterred. She spent her life following her dream and eventually died because of it, but she blazed a path that women aviators have followed ever since.

Born in 1803, she was one of twelve children of a dirt-poor Texas cotton-farming family. At a time when African Americans were regularly prevented from voting by literacy tests and denied even a basic education, Coleman managed to graduate from high school and then followed two of her brothers to Chicago.

Unfortunately, even the urban North offered only limited opportunities to women of color. Coleman worked as a manicurist, but airmen returning from World War I sparked her imagination. After that, there was no stopping her, even when she could find no one in the United States who would teach her to fly.

In November 1920, Coleman headed to France. Several months later, she became the first African American woman to earn an international pilot's license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.

She returned to the United States and became an immediate sensation. "Brave Bessie" traveled the country in a barnstorming tour, wowing crowds and inspiring African American men and women alike.

For the next five years Coleman used her notoriety to encourage African Americans to take up flying, reminding them nothing was impossible. She even refused to fly at venues that didn't allow blacks.

She repeatedly stated her dream was to save enough money to open her own flying school - this one solely for African Americans. By all accounts, she was rapidly approaching that goal.

Tragically, Coleman fell to her death April 30, 1926, while a passenger on a reconnaissance flight to find a site for an upcoming air show in Jacksonville, Florida. More than 10,000 mourners grieved at her funeral in Chicago.

"There is reason to believe that the general public did not completely sense the size of her contribution to the achievements of the race as such," an editorial in the Dallas Express stated.

In the years since her death, her exploits and achievements haven't been forgotten. In 1992 the U. S. Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor, and the Federal Aviation Administration named one of its downtown Washington Buildings the Bessie Coleman Conference Center.

Source: NASA

Bessie Coleman was taught to fly by Eugene Bullard, a fellow African American from Georgia. He went to France because of the prejudice he had experienced in America by white pilots who refuse to fly with him.

Photo Credit: National Museum USAF

Born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas to a family of sharecroppers, Bessie Coleman grew up in poverty. Her father abandoned the family when she was nine, and her elder brothers soon left as well, leaving her mother with the four youngest of her thirteen children. While taking care of her younger sisters, Bessie completed all eight available years of primary education, excelling in math. She enrolled at the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma in 1910, but lack of funds forced her to leave after only one term.

Five years later, she left the South and moved to Chicago to join two of her brothers, Walter and John, where she worked as a beautician for several years. An avid reader, she learned about World War I pilots in the newspaper and became intrigued by the prospect of flying. As a black woman, she had no chance of acceptance at any American pilot school, so she moved to France in 1919 and enrolled at the Ecole d'Aviation des Freres Caudon at Le Crotoy.

After returning briefly to the United States, she spent one more term in France practicing more advanced flying before finally settling back in her birth country. She did exhibition flying and gave lectures across the country from 1922 to 1926. While flying, she refused to perform unless the audiences were desegregated. She was test flying a new plane on April 30, 1926 when it malfunctioned, killing both her and the mechanic who was piloting it. Her career as the world's first African American pilot inspired many who followed.

Source: NASA