Bessie Coleman

Every cotton harvest interrupted school. Bessie Coleman, tenth of 13 children, was born in Atlanta, Texas, and raised on a sharecrop in Waxahachie, where she walked four miles each way to a one-room segregated school and was its best math student. At 18 her savings bought one term at what is now Langston University in Oklahoma. Then the money ran out. She moved to Chicago in 1915 and took a manicurist's chair at the White Sox Barber Shop, listening to pilots back from the war. No American flight school would train a Black woman. Robert S. Abbott of the Chicago Defender told her to go to France, publicized the plan, and helped raise the money. She studied French at Berlitz and sailed on November 20, 1920.

She earned the license in France on June 15, 1921, from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale itself, the international body rather than a French national authority. That made her the first Black woman and the first Native American woman licensed to fly anywhere, and the first American of any kind credentialed directly by the FAI. She had learned on a Nieuport 82 biplane. A second European course followed in 1922, and she came home to barnstorm, opening in the United States on September 3, 1922, at Curtiss Field on Long Island.

The exhibitions were fundraising. Coleman wanted a flying school for Black students and stunt fees were the only way to pay for one, so she flew surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jennys, took the fees, and refused the engagements that came with conditions. She would not appear at events that barred Black spectators. Her biographer Doris Rich records a Texas date she held up until the organizers agreed to a single entrance for the whole crowd rather than separate gates. She also walked off a feature film, Shadow and Sunshine, financed by the Seminole Film Producing Company, when the opening scene required her to appear in rags with a pack on her back. The money would have gone toward the school. She turned it down anyway.

On April 30, 1926, in Jacksonville, her mechanic William Wills flew the Jenny she had just bought, with Coleman in the other seat. She was unbelted, leaning out to look over the field for a jump the next day. A wrench left in the engine jammed the controls. The plane spun, she was thrown out at 2,000 feet, and Wills died in the crash. She was 34. Ida B. Wells led the Chicago funeral and 10,000 people came. William J. Powell founded the Bessie Coleman Aero Club in 1929, Black pilots have flown over her grave at Lincoln Cemetery since 1931, a stamp followed in 1995 and a quarter in 2023. The school was never built.

Bessie Coleman's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Curtiss Field exhibition, Long Island other
  Her first American airshow, honoring the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment 1922
• Checkerboard Airdrome exhibition, Chicago other
  Figure eights, loops and near-ground dips for the 370th Infantry Regiment 1922
• A Curtiss JN-4D of her own other
  Bought from a Los Angeles Army depot with an OX-5 engine — it crashed at Santa Monica the following February 1922
• Speaking tours on aviation and race other
  Delivered across the country — never in a hall that excluded Black listeners 1923
• A flying school for Black aviators other
  The point of the exhibition fees. It was never built. 1926

• January 26, 1892 aged 0 Born in Atlanta, Texas, the tenth of 13 children The family moved to Waxahachie and sharecropped when she was two.
• 1910 aged ~18 Enrolls at the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma She left after one term, when her savings ran out.
• 1915 aged ~23 Moves to Chicago and works as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop Pilots home from the war talked about flying over the chairs.
• November 20, 1920 aged 28 Sails for France to learn to fly Robert S. Abbott publicized her plan in the Chicago Defender and helped raise the money.
• June 15, 1921 aged 29 Earns an international pilot license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale The first Black woman and the first Native American woman licensed to fly anywhere.
• September 3, 1922 aged 30 Flies her first American exhibition at Curtiss Field on Long Island The show honored veterans of the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment.
• February 4, 1923 aged 31 Crashes after takeoff from Santa Monica with a broken leg and fractured ribs The motor stalled. She asked to be patched up for the show and was grounded for months instead.
• April 30, 1926 aged 34 Killed near Jacksonville, Florida, at 34 A wrench left in the engine jammed the controls while her mechanic flew and she leaned out unbelted.
• 1929 aged ~37 William J. Powell founds the Bessie Coleman Aero Club in Los Angeles The school she wanted, built by someone else three years after her death.

• Ida B. Wells 1862–1931
  Journalist and anti-lynching crusader whose investigative reporting exposed racial terror in the South. eulogized by
• Mae Jemison b. 1956
  First African American woman in space, physician, and advocate for science education and global health. influenced
• Amelia Earhart 1897–1937
  Aviation pioneer and the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. preceded