Bessie Coleman

Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman
Born	(1892-01-26)January 26, 1892 Atlanta, Texas
Died	April 30, 1926(1926-04-30) (aged 34) Jacksonville, Florida
Known for	Aviator

Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926) was an American civil aviator. She was the first female pilot of African American descent and the first person of African American descent to hold an international pilot license.

Early life

Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children to sharecroppers George, who was part Cherokee, and Susan Coleman. When Coleman was two years old, her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where she lived until age 23.Coleman began attending school in Waxahachie at age six and had to walk four miles each day to her segregated, one-room school, where she loved to read and established herself as an outstanding math student. She completed all eight grades of her one-room school. Every year, Coleman's routine of school, chores, and church was interrupted by the cotton harvest. In 1901, Coleman's life took a dramatic turn: George Coleman left his family. He became fed up with the racial barriers that existed in Texas. He returned to Oklahoma, or Indian Territory as it was then called, to find better opportunities, but Susan and the children did not go with him. At age 12, she was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church. When she turned eighteen, Coleman took her savings and enrolled in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now called Langston University) in Langston, Oklahoma. She completed one term before her money ran out, and returned home.

Career

Chicago

In 1915, at age 23, she moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with her brothers and she worked at the White Sox Barber Shop as a manicurist, where she heard stories from pilots returning home from World War I about flying during the war. She could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her either. Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, encouraged her to study abroad. Coleman received financial backing from a banker named Jesse Binga and The Defender.

France

Coleman's aviation license

Coleman took a French language class at the Berlitz school in Chicago, and then traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920. Coleman learned to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane, with "a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot's feet." On June 15, 1921, Coleman became not only the first African-American woman to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, but the first African American woman in the world to earn an aviation pilot's license. Determined to polish her skills, Coleman spent the next two months taking lessons from a French ace pilot near Paris, and in September 1921, sailed for New York. She became a media sensation when she returned to the United States.

Airshows

Coleman quickly realized that in order to make a living as a civilian aviator—the age of commercial flight was still a decade or more in the future—she would need to become a "barnstorming" stunt flier, and perform for paying audiences. But to succeed in this highly competitive arena, she would need advanced lessons and a more extensive repertoire. Returning to Chicago, Coleman could find no one 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, then left for the Netherlands to meet with Anthony Fokker, one of the world's most distinguished aircraft designers. She also traveled to Germany, where she visited the Fokker Corporation and received additional training from one of the company's chief pilots. She returned to the United States with the confidence and enthusiasm she needed to launch her career in exhibition flying.

"Queen Bess," as she was known was a highly popular draw for the next five years. Invited to important events and often interviewed by newspapers, she was admired by both blacks and whites. She primarily flew Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplanes and army surplus aircraft left over from the war. She made her first appearance in an American airshow on September 3, 1922, at an event honoring veterans of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I. Held at Curtiss Field on Long Island near New York City and sponsored by her friend Abbott and the Chicago Defender newspaper, the show billed Coleman as "the world's greatest woman flier" and featured aerial displays by eight other American ace pilots, and a jump by black parachutist Hubert Julian. Six weeks later she returned to Chicago to deliver a stunning demonstration of daredevil maneuvers—including figure eights, loops, and near-ground dips—to a large and enthusiastic crowd at the Checkerboard Airdrome (now Chicago Midway Airport).

But the thrill of stunt flying and the admiration of cheering crowds were only part of Coleman's dream. Coleman never lost sight of her childhood vow to one day "amount to something." As a professional aviator, Coleman would often be criticized by the press for her opportunistic nature and the flamboyant style she brought to her exhibition flying. However, she also quickly gained a reputation as a skilled and daring pilot who would stop at nothing to complete a difficult stunt. In Los Angeles, she broke a leg and three ribs when her plane stalled and crashed on February 22, 1923.

File:1coleman portrait 5 1000.jpg

Bessie Coleman, c.1922

Through her media contacts, she was offered a role in a feature-length film titled Shadow and Sunshine, to be financed by the African American Seminole Film Producing Company. She gladly accepted, hoping the publicity would help to advance her career and provide her with some of the money she needed to establish her own flying school. But upon learning that the first scene in the movie required her to appear in tattered clothes, with a walking stick and a pack on her back, she refused to proceed. "Clearly ... [Bessie's] walking off the movie set was a statement of principle. Opportunist though she was about her career, she was never an opportunist about race. She had no intention of perpetuating the derogatory image most whites had of most blacks", wrote Doris Rich.

Coleman would not live long enough to fulfill her dream of establishing a school for young black aviators, but her pioneering achievements served as an inspiration for a generation of African American men and women. "Because of Bessie Coleman," wrote Lieutenant William J. Powell in Black Wings 1934, dedicated to Coleman, "we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream". Powell served in a segregated unit during World War I, and tirelessly promoted the cause of black aviation through his book, his journals, and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club, which he founded in 1929.

Death

On April 30, 1926, Coleman, was in Jacksonville. She recently purchased a Curtiss JN-4 (Jenny) in Dallas and had it flown to Jacksonville in preparation for an airshow. Her friends and family did not consider the aircraft safe and implored her not to fly it. Her mechanic and publicity agent, William Wills, was flying the plane with Coleman in the other seat. Coleman did not put on her seatbelt because she was planning a parachute jump for the next day and wanted to look over the cockpit sill to examine the terrain. About ten minutes into the flight, the plane did not pull out of a dive; instead it spun. Coleman was thrown from the plane at 2,000 ft (610 m) and died instantly when she hit the ground. William Wills was unable to gain control of the plane and it plummeted to the ground. Wills died upon impact and the plane burst into flames. Although the wreckage of the plane was badly burned, it was later discovered that a wrench used to service the engine slid into the gearbox and jammed it. She was 34 years old.

Legacy and honors

Her funeral in Jacksonville, Florida on May 2, 1926 was attended by 5,000 mourners. Many of them, including Ida B. Wells, were prominent members of black society. Three days later, her remains arrived in Orlando, Florida, where thousands more attended a funeral at the city's Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church. Three days later her remains went to Chicago's Pilgrim Baptist Church. An estimated 10,000 people filed past the coffin all night and all day. After funeral services, she was buried in the Lincoln Cemetery.

Her impact on aviation history, and particularly African Americans in aviation, quickly became apparent following her death. In 1927, Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs sprang up throughout the country. On Labor Day, 1931, these clubs sponsored the first all-African American Air Show, which attracted approximately 15,000 spectators. That same year, a group of African American pilots established an annual flyover of Coleman's grave in Lincoln Cemetery in Chicago. Coleman's name also began appearing on buildings in Harlem. In 1989, First Flight Society inducted Coleman into their shrine that honors those individuals and groups that have achieved significant "firsts" in aviation's development.

A second-floor conference room at the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, D.C., is named after Coleman. In 1990, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley renamed Old Mannheim Road at O'Hare International Airport "Bessie Coleman Drive." In 1992, he proclaimed May 2 to be "Bessie Coleman Day in Chicago".

Mae Jemison, physician and former NASA astronaut, wrote in the book, Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator (1993): "I point to Bessie Coleman and say without hesitation that here is a woman, a being, who exemplifies and serves as a model to all humanity: the very definition of strength, dignity, courage, integrity, and beauty. It looks like a good day for flying."

In 1995, she was honored with her image on a U.S. postage stamp, and was inducted into the Women in Aviation Hall of Fame. In 1999 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.

In November 2000, Coleman was inducted in The Texas Aviation Hall of Fame.

She is the subject of Barnstormer, a musical that debuted October 20, 2008 at the National Alliance for Musical Theater Festival in New York; the book and lyrics are by Cheryl Davis and the music is by Douglas Cohen.

In 2004, a small park in the Southside Chicago Hyde Park neighborhood was named "Bessie Coleman Park." Additionally, the Bessie Coleman park council was formed in 2005 as one of many responses to a serious increase in crime, shootings, and disorderly loitering around the park, at 54th St. and Drexel Ave.

In 2007, a street in Gateway Gardens, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, was named after her.

The 90th anniversary of her first flight, July 23, 2011, was commemorated by a reading of parts of her biographies and an exhibition of model aircraft at Miller Field (Staten Island, New York), a former United States Air Force facility.

See also

• Military history of African Americans

Further reading

• Bilstein, Roger. Aviation in Texas, Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1985
• King, Anita. Brave Bessie: First Black Pilot, Parts 1 and 2, Essence Magazine, May, June 1976
• Fisher, Lillian M., Brave Bessie: Flying Free, Hencrick-Long, 1995
• Freydberg, Elizabeth Hadley. Bessie Coleman: The Brownskin Lady Bird, Garland, 1994
• Hart, Philip S. Up in the Air: The Story of Bessie Coleman, First Avenue Editions, 1996
• Holway, John R. (2102). Bessie Coleman: Pioneering Black Woman Aviator. ISBN 9780985738914. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)
• Johnson, Dolores. She Dared to Fly: Bessie Coleman, New York: Benchmark Books, 1997
• Plantz, Connie. Bessie Coleman: First Black Woman Pilot, Enslow Publishers, 2001

External links

• Bessie Coleman: Late Bloomer
• "Bessie Coleman". Find a Grave. Retrieved August 11, 2010.
• Bessie Coleman website at the Atlanta Historical Museum
• Black Wings: Online Biography
• Bessie Coleman Action Figure
• PBS, The American Experience: Bessie Coleman
• Bessie Coleman Historical Marker
• Bessie Coleman Wax Figure @ National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, Maryland