Coleman, Bessie

January 26, 1892
April 30, 1926

Bessie Coleman was the first African-American female aviator. She was born in Atlanta, Texas, but her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, when she was still an infant. When she was seven, her parents separated. Her father, who was a Choctaw Indian, returned to the reservation in Oklahoma, and her mother supported the large family by picking cotton and doing laundry, jobs in which her children aided her. Because she wanted Coleman to attend college, her mother allowed her to keep her income from her laundry work, but this money only financed one semester at the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma (now Langston University). After this semester, she returned to Waxahachie briefly; and between 1915 and 1917, she went to Chicago, where she took a course in manicuring and worked at the White Sox barbershop until the early years of World War I. She then managed a small restaurant.

Coleman became interested in the burgeoning field of aviation, which had entered the national consciousness as a consequence of its role in World War I, but aviation schools rejected all her applications on the basis of her race and/or gender, until Robert S. Abbott, founder and editor of the Chicago Defender, advised her to study aviation abroad. She took a course in French, went to Paris in November 1920, and attended an aviation school in Le Crotoy. She returned to the United States in September 1921 with a pilot's license and went back to Europe in 1922, this time obtaining an international pilot's license, the first African-American woman to earn these licenses. When she returned to the United States after her second sojourn in Europe, Coleman made a name for herself in exhibition flying, performing at shows attended by thousands. She barnstormed throughout the United States and became known as "Brave Bessie." She lectured in schools and churches on the opportunities in aviation wherever she performed, and she saved the money she earned from these lectures and performances in the hope of opening an aviation school for African Americans. On April 30, 1926, during a practice run in Jacksonville. Florida, Coleman's plane somersaulted out of a nosedive, and Coleman fell 2,000 feet (610 meters) to her death.

See also Abbott, Robert Sengstacke

Bibliography

Gates, Henry Louis, and Cornel West. The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

King, Anita. "Brave Bessie: First Black Pilot." Essence (May 1976): 36; (June 1976): 48.

Rich, Doris L. Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.

Smith, Jessie Carney, ed. Notable Black American Women. Detroit: Gale Group, 1992.

siraj ahmed (1996)
Updated bibliography