Bessie Coleman

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Bessie Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 196) was an early American civil aviator.

She was the first woman of African-American descent and the first of Native-American descent to hold a pilot license.

Coleman obtained her pilot's license from Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in 1921, becoming the first black person to obtain a foreign pilot's license in Texas at a young age, while still attending a small segregated school and going on to attend one term of college at Langston University.

She got an early interest in flying, but African Americans, Native Americans, and women were not able to receive flight instruction in the United States, so she saved up and got sponsorship to go to France for flight school.

She then became a well-known pilot in early but also dangerous air shows in the United States.

Queen Bess and Brave Bessie, and she had hoped to establish a school for African-American fliers.

Coleman died in a 1926 crash while building a new aircraft.

Her pioneering work inspired early pilots and the African-American and Native American populations.

Early life

Elizabeth Coleman (sometimes Bessie) was born in Atlanta, Texas, tenth of thirteen children of George Coleman, a mixed African American with Cherokee roots, and Susan Coleman, who was African American. Nine of the children survived childhood, which was normal for the time. Coleman and her family immigrated to Waxahachie, Texas, where they lived as sharecroppers while others were two years old. Coleman began attending Waxahachie at the age of six. She walked four miles a day to her segregated one-room school, where she loved to read and established herself as a top math student. She completed her elementary education at the same school.

The cotton harvest interrupted Coleman's regular schedule of school, washing, and church every year. George Coleman's family moved to Cornwall in 1901. He returned to Oklahoma, or Indian Territory, as it was then called, to seek better opportunities, but his wife and children did not follow. Bessie was accepted on scholarship into the Missionary Baptist Church School at the age of 12. When she turned eighteen, she took her savings and enrolled in Langston, Oklahoma, at the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now called Langston University). She served one term before her money ran out and she returned home.

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Career

Coleman and her siblings immigrated to Chicago, Illinois, in 1915, at the age of 23, where she and her brothers resided. She worked as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop in Chicago. There she heard tales of pilots returning home from World War I. To save money, she took on a second job as a restaurant manager of a chili parlor. Both black and black students were accepted by American flight schools at the time, so Robert S. Abbott, the founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender newspaper, encouraged her to study abroad. Coleman's quest was chronicled in his newspaper, and she and banker Jesse Binga and the Defender funded his campaign.

Bessie Coleman took a French-language class at the Berlitz Language Schools in Chicago and then travelled to Paris on November 20, 1920, in order to obtain her pilot license. "She learned to fly in a Nieuport 564 biplane with "a control scheme that consisted of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot's feet."

Coleman became the first black woman and first Native American to obtain an aviation pilot's license on June 15, 1921, and the first black person and first Native American to obtain a foreign aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Coleman spent the next two months learning from a French ace pilot near Paris, and in September 1921, she sailed for America, determined to honing her skills. When she returned to the United States, she became a media sensation.

Coleman soon discovered that in order to survive as a civilian aviator, she'd have to become a "barnstorming" stunt flier, doing dangerous tricks on the air with the then-new technologies of airplanes for paying viewers. However, she will need advanced lessons and a more extensive repertoire to thrive in this highly competitive market. Coleman, who was returning to Chicago, was unable to find someone willing to teach her, so in February 1922, she sailed again for Europe.

She spent the next two months in France completing an advanced course in aviation. She then travelled to Anthony Fokker, one of the world's best aircraft designers, in the Netherlands. She also travelled to Germany, where she visited Fokker Corporation and received additional training from one of the company's chief pilots. She then migrated to the United States to begin her exhibition flying career.

For the next five years, "Queen Bess," as she was known, would have been a very popular draw. Both blacks and whites admired her as she was invited to significant occasions and often interviewed by newspapers. She mainly flew Curtiss JN-4 Jenny biplanes and other aircraft that had been left over from the war. On September 3, 1922, she made her first appearance in an American airshow, honoring veterans of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I. Coleman was billed as "the world's highest female flier" and featured aerial performances by eight other American ace pilots, as well as a jump by black parachutist Hubert Julian at Curtiss Field near New York City, and supported by her sister Abbott and the Chicago Defender newspaper.

Six weeks later, she returned to Chicago for a show, this time to commemorate World War II's 370th Infantry Regiment's 370th Infantry Regiment. To a large and enthusiastic audience at the Checkerboard Airdrome, Coleman displayed a spectacular display of daredevil maneuvers, including figure eights, loops, and near-ground dips, which included figure eights, loops, and near-ground dips, including figure eights, loops, and near-ground dips.

Coleman's dream was only part of the adrenaline of stunt flight and the admiration of cheering audiences. Coleman had never lost sight of her childhood promise to one day "amount to something." Coleman, a professional aviator, would often be chastised by the media for her opportunistic appearance and her flamboyant style to her exhibition flying. She quickly established herself as a proficient and daring pilot who would refuse to complete a difficult feat. When her plane stalled and crashed in Los Angeles on February 22, 1923, she fractured a leg and three ribs.

Coleman, who pledged to supporting aviation and combating bigotry, addressed audiences around the country about the search for aviation and African American goals. She has officially declined to attend aviation functions that barred the attendance of African Americans.

She met the Rev. in the 1920s. Hezakiah Hill and his partner Viola are on a speaking tour in Orlando, Florida. The community activists invited her to attend Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Parramore's parsonage. In her honour in 2013, a local street was renamed "Bessie Coleman" Street. Coleman, a mother who treated her as a daughter, persuaded her to stay, and Coleman opened a beauty store in Orlando to make extra money to buy her own plane.

She was offered a role in a feature-length film called Shadow and Sunshine, which would be funded by the African American Seminole Film Producing Company through her media connections. She gratefully accepted, wishing that the coverage would help to advance her career and provide her with some of the funds she needed to start her own flying school. However, she refused to proceed after finding out that the first scene in the film called on her to be dressed in tattered clothes, with a walking stick, and a backpack on her back. "Well, [Bessie's] walking off the movie set was a statement of principle." Despite being focused on her work, the Opportunist was never an opportunist about race. Doris Rich wrote that she had no intention of promoting the derogatory image that most whites had of the most blacks.

Coleman would not live long enough to found a black aviator academy, but her pioneering efforts inspired a generation of African-American men and women. "We have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers," Lieutenant William J. Powell, was devoted to Coleman in Black Wings (1934), dedicated to Coleman. We've crossed the boundaries we've set ourselves and dared to imagine." Powell served in a segregated unit during World War I and tirelessly advocated for black aviation through his books, journals, and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club, which he founded in 1929.

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