Historic Highlights: Bessie Coleman was first Black woman to earn pilot’s license

She was called “Brave Bessie” or “Queen Bess.” Decades after her death, aviators still remembered her name.

Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman in world history to earn a pilot’s license and became a national sensation as a barnstormer in the early 1920s. Though she tragically died just a few years later, she was an inspiration to minority aviators for decades.

Born in a one-room cabin in Atlanta, Texas, there is a discrepancy on her actual birthdate, though several sources list the date as Jan. 26, 1892. Bessie was the product of a mixed-race household. Her father was part African American and part Native American, while her mother was Black. The family split up when Bessie was 9 as her father returned to present-day Oklahoma.

Bessie and the rest of the family settled in Waxahachie, Texas. Her childhood was full of responsibility, as she helped raise her siblings and, like many other Blacks in the South, picked cotton to earn more money.

When she could, she attended a one-room schoolhouse for Blacks, 4 miles away from her home. The school frequently had no paper or pencils for the students. Bessie also furthered her education with books from a traveling library.

She earned enough money by doing laundry to briefly attend present-day Langston University but was forced to return to Texas and her old work as a laundress. In 1915, she moved to Chicago’s south side in search of better opportunities.

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In Chicago, Coleman kept trying to earn money, first as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop and then as a manager of a chili parlor. During her years there, she lived with two brothers, who later served in World War I.

One of those brothers, John, reportedly taunted Bessie that French women were, in the words of one source, “superior to African American women because they could fly.”

Flight was still relatively new to the world, as the Wright Brothers had successfully lifted off at Kitty Hawk just a few years before, in December 1903. Coleman, though, developed a keen interest.

Sources vary on the origin of Coleman’s fascination with flight. A NASA publication writes that Coleman was “engrossed with the challenge of emulating these daring female flyers” that her brother had described. Another source states that she was inspired by “soldiers returning from World War I with wild tales of flying exploits.”

Still, another account declares that Coleman “first considered becoming a pilot after reading about aviation and watching newsreels about flight,” but was particularly motivated by John’s “jostling” and “incessant teasing.”

However, there were countless barriers in her quest to fly. She was rejected by every flying school she contacted, based on her race and gender.

Angered but still undaunted, Coleman discussed her situation with Robert Abbott, publisher of the famed Chicago Defender, a foremost Black newspaper. Abbott advised Coleman to enroll in flying school in France to avoid the countless obstacles she faced in the United States.

Coleman studied French at a school in the Chicago Loop at night and kept working to save money. In November 1920, with some additional money from Abbott and another Black entrepreneur, Coleman sailed for France.

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There, things weren’t much easier for Coleman. The only person of color in her flight school, she had to walk 9 miles each day from her residence to class. She also witnessed the death of a fellow student in a crash. But after a seven-month course, she earned her license on June 15, 1921.

She continued her flying studies in Paris, then returned to the U.S. that September. The NASA history notes that she was “received … as a curiosity; her accomplishment was interpreted in both the Black and white communities as significant primarily due to her race and gender.” Abbott and the Defender would constantly celebrate Coleman and her achievements. The Black communities of America viewed Coleman as not just a novelty, but a “political and social landmark.”

Coleman hoped to make a career from flying and to create a flight school for African Americans. However, she was not skilled enough to become a barnstormer, one of the best ways for fliers to earn money in that era. American flight schools rejected her once again, so she returned to France in February 1922 for additional training.

She crisscrossed Europe as part of her training and studies, meeting noted airplane designer Anthony Fokker in Holland and flying numerous times in Germany. Coleman returned to the U.S. later that year and flew in her first air show on Sept. 3, 1922, at Glenn Curtiss Field (named for a prominent air designer) in Garden City, New York. The Defender, always ready to help, hyped her appearance.

Though the organizers of the show did not allow Coleman to fly stunts, the appearance made her a celebrity. She began booking air shows across the nation, including one in her hometown of Chicago several weeks later. There, one account writes that she “performed a display of takeoffs, glides, turns, and figure eights for a crowd of about two thousand, including her mother, sisters, and other relatives.”

Meanwhile, the Defender positioned Coleman as “the personification of progress through self-help, education, and persistence.” Black newspapers dubbed her “Queen Bess” and the “Bird Woman.”

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Coleman wanted to accumulate enough income to start her flying school, but racial bias again limited her endorsement and sponsorship opportunities. She suffered another major setback at a fair in Los Angeles on Feb. 22, 1923, when she appeared in a used Curtiss Jenny that she had recently purchased.

The engine on the Jenny stalled in mid-flight, causing her to crash. Coleman suffered broken ribs and a fractured leg. Later that year, she resumed her flying, but could not land many bookings outside the Midwest.

On June 19, 1925, in Houston, she performed at her first show in her native state of Texas. One account writes she “dazzled thousands as she ‘barrel-rolled’ and ‘looped-the-loop.’”

Shortly after, Coleman gave an exhibition in her old hometown of Waxahachie. Organizers expected seating to be segregated, even though Blacks and whites would enter through separate gates. Coleman, however, threatened to boycott unless only one gate was used. The organizers gave in on the gate issue but still had segregated seating.

It was one of several stands Coleman took at her shows, though she was continually victimized by racial injustice. Though she was a celebrity, she had to carefully plan her travel and day-to-day life around social barriers.

Coleman also continually struggled with finances and often had to borrow or rent planes at local venues. By 1926, she was working to pay off another used Curtiss Jenny, another example of her inferior equipment. Early that year, she lived with a reverend and his wife in Orlando, where she opened a beauty shop for extra income.

But she thrilled Black and white spectators alike, especially when she added parachute jumps to her repertoire. She also performed plenty of “barrel rolls, loops, and steep slides,” in the words of one account. On the ground, Coleman presented a “fashionably accentuated” persona that emphasized, as one source writes, “her graceful petiteness” and “smart personal appearance.”

Like other barnstormers, she often sold rides for $3 to $5 each. Coleman frequently connected with her African American fans, as she was “particularly interested in sharing the experience of flying with Black passengers.” She delivered numerous lectures in Black churches theaters and other venues.

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Sadly, it was all about to end. Coleman was scheduled to fly in Jacksonville, Florida, on May 1, 1926, at a benefit for the Negro Welfare League. She enlisted a white mechanic, William Wills, to fly her used Jenny from Texas to Florida, but Wills made two unplanned landings when the plane’s worn engine gave out.

On April 30, the day before the event, Coleman made a flyover of the venue at Jacksonville to familiarize herself with the area and figure out the best location for her parachute jump. Wills was at the controls as Coleman sat behind with her seat belt unfastened, possibly to lean out to view the field.

Various sources list the altitude as anywhere from 3,000 feet to a mile. A few minutes into the flight, the Jenny suddenly sped up, nose-dived, and rolled over, ejecting Coleman as she fell to her death.

Wills struggled to maintain control before crashing, losing his own life. It was later determined that a wrench, left under the hood, had caused the engine to stall.

Bessie Coleman was buried in Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, one of the foremost African American graveyards in the nation and the final resting place for countless luminaries. The Dallas Express, a leading Black paper of the South, lamented that “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.”

In 1929, William Powell, one of many Black fliers inspired by “Queen Bess,” founded the Bessie Coleman Aero Club and School, finally providing a home for African Americans seeking to learn the practice of flight. On Labor Day 1931, the first all-Black air show was held in Chicago, an event that attracted 15,000 spectators.

Coleman’s incredible legacy is felt today in the remarkable number of landmarks worldwide that are named in her honor.

Roads at major airports in Chicago, Oakland, Tampa and Frankfurt, Germany, carry her name, as does a branch location of the Chicago Public Library, an elementary school in Corvallis, Oregon, a middle school in Cedar Hill, Texas, and streets in the French cities of Nice and Paris. The street on which she resided in Orlando was renamed for her in 2015, while there is a Bessie Coleman Boulevard in her old hometown of Waxahachie.

Her name also graces numerous scholarship awards, and her likeness adorned an American Women quarter from the U.S. Mint in 2023. In 1995, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor.

In 1931, Black pilots began an annual tradition of flying over Lincoln Cemetery to drop flowers on Coleman’s grave, which continued intermittently for decades.

Powell summarized her legacy best in 1934, writing “Because of Bessie Coleman, we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream.”

• Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Illinois. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.