Bessie "Queen Bess" Coleman: The 1st Female African American To Get Her International Pilot's License

We're filing this under #BlackExcellence!

Throughout history, there have been numerous attempts to slow, or down right eliminate, the narrative of black men and women across the United States. With so many institutions against the advancement of African Americans, many were forced to go against the grain and fight to blaze their own trails. They had no choice! The only way to go was up!!

Bessie Coleman is one of those people. After being denied the opportunity to obtain her pilot's license in America, she traveled all the way to France, where in 1921, according to Wikipedia, she became the first African American female to obtain an international pilot's license. 

Born January 26, 1893 into a family of sharecroppers, Bessie was the tenth of thirteen children. Her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas when she was two. Sadly, her father left in 1901. But that didn't stop Bessie. You see, at a young age, Bessie quickly established herself as the leader of her family. She stepped right up, taking care of her younger siblings, even reading to them and her mother nightly. Bessie and her siblings would help their mother by picking cotton every year to help ends meet. Determined from a young age, Bessie was known for assuring her mother she would make something of herself. 

She was not easily deterred. Despite her living situation, family obligations, and daily four mile walk to and from school, she persevered and defied the odds. Unlike many Americans in the 1900's, Bessie not only finished high school, but she also attended college. After saving her money from washing and ironing, in 1910, she left Texas to attend Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University, now Langston University (an HBCU!). She completed one semester before she ran out of money and had to return home. 

Undeterred by her financial set back, Bessie moved to Chicago to stay with one of her older brothers in 1915. In Chicago, she enrolled in Burnham School of Beauty Culture to take a course in manicuring. Within a year, Bessie began working at the  White Sox Barber Shop and was known as one of the best manicurists in black Chicago. 

However, Bessie still sought more for herself. Around 1920, when pilots really began to make headlines and pictures of WWI airplanes began to appear more regularly in magazines, Bessie began to toy with the idea of flying as a way to establish herself and find a way out for not only her, but others like her. 

With determination in her heart. Bessie took a second job at a chili parlor to save money towards a pilot's license and began applying to almost every American flying school. She was quickly turned down. American flight schools at the time admitted neither women nor blacks -- land locking the ambitious young Coleman. Bessie confided in friend, Robert Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender, who encouraged her to study in France. He insisted the French were not racist and were the leaders in aviation. After enrolling in a French language class and obtaining financial backing from the Defender, in late 1920, Coleman headed to France. 

She was accepted to France’s most famous flight school - Ecole d’Aviation des Freres Cadron et Le Crotoy. Aircrafts back then were fragile and flying was hazardous. It wasn't uncommon for nervous students to be killed during training with Coleman watching more than one of her fellow students die. The shock was not enough to deter Bessie, who went on to sign a waiver of relief in case of her own death and then continued moving towards her goal. After seven months, on June 15, 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first African-American woman to earn an aviation pilot's license and the first person of African-American descent to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
 
Bessie planned on being a leader in aviation for her race and focused much of her energy on her dream of opening an aviation school for African Americans. Making sure her goals were clearly outlined when she spoke to reporters upon her return to New York in September of 1921. 

The air is the only place free from prejudices.  I knew we had no aviators, neither men nor women, and I knew the Race needed to be represented along this most important line, so I thought it my duty to risk my life to learn aviation and to encourage flying among men and women of our Race who are so far behind the White race in this modern study. - Bessie Coleman

It didn't take long for Coleman to realize that to make a living as an aviator, she would have to work as a barnstorming stunt flier and perform for paying audiences. Coleman managed to captivate and dazzle crowds with her stunts and electric showmanship. It wasn't long before the African American press proclaimed her " Queen Bess."  She drew audiences from all over, and would speak at churches, schools and theaters in an effort to draw African Americans into the new, expanding technology of flight. 

Sadly, Queen Bess would not live long enough to establish her school for black aviators but her pioneering achievements have served as an inspiration for generations of young African-Americans. According to Biography.com, on April 30, 1926, Bessie Coleman's life and career came to a tragic end. Ten minutes into a test flight, with her mechanic William Wills at the controls and Bessie in another cockpit, their plane went into a nosedive maneuver at 3,000 feet. Since she was scouting sites to parachute jump for her show the next day and needing to lean over the side of the plane, the normally safety conscious Coleman, wasn't wearing a seatbelt at the time of the test flight. At 2,000 feet, the plane flipped over and Coleman fell to her death. Wills was unable to regain control of the aircraft and died during the impact of the crash. It was later discovered that a loose wrench got caught in the gearbox and jammed the plane's controls. She was 34-years-old at the time of her death. 

Queen Bess's dream of a flying school for African Americans became a reality in 1929, when Lieutenant William J. Powell established the Bessie Coleman Aero Club in Los Angeles. Every year, on the anniversary of her death, members of the club, together with pilots from the Chicago American Pilots Association and the Negro Airmen International, fly low and drop flowers on her grave. 

Bessie Coleman went against the grain, created a way for herself when there wasn't one, and refused to let the narrow minded racism that ran through America's core define the narrative she had planned for herself. #BlackHistoryMonthMoment #Salute #QueenBess