Seeing a Black woman with “aviation consultant” under her name on a nightly television news show caught my attention, but the moment was so fleeting that her name never registered, or if it did, I forgot it. What her appearance did remind of, however, was an unforgettable African-American aviatrix, Bessie Coleman.
Unfortunately, even in some of the best encyclopedias and dictionaries of Black notables, she is not included. We needn’t get into the rather obvious reasons for such an oversight, but the absolutely astonishing rarity of her feats may be one reason she doesn’t pop up on the radar screen of some writers and historians. At the top of her pioneering accomplishments—and the one thing cited more than any other—is the fact that in 1922, she was the first African-American woman to stage a public flight in this country. Of course, to complete this historic feat, she had to have a pilot’s license; she was the first Black woman to earn one.
But before her death-defying aerial stunts that left thousands of Americans in awe at air shows, Coleman had already performed these dives, loops and spins in the skies of France. As we know so well that when racism and discrimination place limitations on opportunity and possibility, many African-Americans go elsewhere, and Coleman took her dreams to France, where she perfected her French and entered one of the country’s most prestigious schools of aviation, Caudron Brothers. In less than a year, she performed both the requirements and many difficult maneuvers in the air, including a variety of aerial tricks that eventually qualified her for specialized stunt flying.
Coleman was born Jan. 26, 1892, in Atlanta, Texas. She was one of 13 children in a family of sharecroppers. Educational opportunities were very limited for a young girl from a farming community, especially one only one step from slavery. Nonetheless, she began attending the Missionary Baptist Church. After her father moved to Oklahoma, where he had rights because of three Indian grandparents, her mother, Susan, stayed in Texas with five of the children, including Bessie. Later, Bessie Coleman, with money earned from washing and ironing clothes—as her mother did—had enough savings, along with help from her mother, to attend the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University, now Langston University, but lacking the full tuition, she was there for only one semester.
She was 23 in 1915, the year Booker T. Washington died, when she moved to Chicago to live with her two brothers and, after training in a beauty school, found work as a manicurist. This job gave her contact with Chicago’s elite Black community. As she matured, her interest in world events increased, and she began listening and reading whatever was available about World War I, which the U.S. was not yet participating in. Even so, her desire to one day fly a plane was not diminished.
One of Chicago’s movers and shakers was the Chicago Defender’s founder Robert Abbott, who encouraged Coleman to take her dreams and aspirations to France since they were blocked here. But there was still the need for money for such a venture, and she found employment at a chili restaurant to pay the rent and to study French at the Berlitz School. With her savings and support from a number of believers, including Abbott, she left for France in 1920.
A year later, after a brief stint of study, she was back in America but received little fanfare for her achievements. She returned to Europe and resumed her studies in aerial stunts in Germany and the Netherlands, and then once more was back in Chicago in 1922.
According to Women’s History website, one of the best, Coleman flew in an airshow on Labor Day weekend on Long Island in an event sponsored by Abbott. “The event was held in honor of Black veterans of World War I. She was billed as ‘the world’s greatest woman flyer.’ Weeks later, she flew in a second show, this one in Chicago, where crowds lauded her stunt flying. From there, she became a popular pilot at air shows around the United States.”
Having acquired a bit of notoriety and publicity, Coleman announced her intention to start a flying school exclusively for African Americans. She went about the business of recruiting students for the proposed school and opened a beauty shop in Florida to raise the funds. In addition, she was often requested as a guest speaker at schools and churches, for which she received funds for the school. There was also the possibility of more funds from a movie project in which she was to be featured, but when she learned that her role would not be one of dignity, she refused to participate. Perhaps as a form of retribution, the investors in the film turned away from supporting her in her pursuits.
Everything was happening so fast in her life, and by 1923, she had secured enough money to purchase her own plane, one very similar to the ones she first heard about during World War I, but in reality a surplus training plane. Feb. 4, on a practice run with the plane, it nose-dived and crashed. She broke several bones and spent a considerable amount of time recuperating. But Coleman, typically undaunted and relentless in her determination to find backers and bookings to continue her stunt flying, was finally successful.
It was on Juneteenth, June 19, 1924, that she flew to Texas for an air show, possibly celebrating the African-American holiday. At this event, she showcased her new plane, an older model than the former but one she could afford.
Two years later, the intrepid pilot was in Jacksonville, Fla., to prepare for a May Day celebration sponsored by the Negro Welfare League. Before the April 30, 1926, event, she and her mechanic took the plane up for a test flight. On this flight, the mechanic was at the wheel, allowing an unbuckled Coleman to lean from the plane to observe the terrain below where she would land the next day.
Somehow, a loose wrench fell into the open gear box and the plane’s controls jammed. She was thrown from the plane at 1,000 feet and fell to her death. She was 33. Unable to regain control of the plane, the mechanic perished when it crashed.
A sizable crowd turned out for her memorial services May 2 in Jacksonville, and when her body was returned to Chicago, there was another memorial before her burial.
Each year on April 30, African-American aviators fly in formation over Lincoln Cemetery in southwest Chicago (Blue Island) and drop flowers in memory of the immortal pilot. In her honor, two Black pilot organizations were formed, the Bessie Coleman Aero Club and the Bessie Aviators organization, founded by Black women pilots in 1975, which is open to women pilots of all races.
Travelers who have taken flights from O’Hare International Airport are familiar with a road there named in tribute to her. This was commemorated in 1990, the same year a mural honoring her was unveiled at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport titled “Black Americans in Flight,” with Coleman prominently featured.
Five years later, a stamp with her image was issued by the U.S. Postal Service. In October, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in New York.