Who was Bessie Coleman?

Bessie Coleman (1892–1926) was the first African American woman, and the first Native American woman, to earn a pilot's licence — and she had to leave the United States entirely to do it.

Her background. Born in Texas, one of thirteen children of sharecroppers, she worked picking cotton as a child while attending school when the harvest allowed. She completed a term at a college in Oklahoma before her money ran out, then moved to Chicago and worked as a manicurist.

Why she went to France. Hearing pilots' accounts of the First World War, she decided to fly. No American flight school would accept her — she was refused as a Black woman on both counts. Encouraged by Robert Abbott, the influential publisher of the Chicago Defender, she learned French at night, saved, and sailed for France.

She trained at the Caudron school in Le Crotoy and in 1921 was awarded a licence by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale — an international licence, which was more than most American pilots of the period held.

Her career. With no commercial aviation jobs open to her, she became a barnstormer, performing aerial stunts at air shows, where she was billed as "Queen Bess". She was a considerable draw, and she used the platform deliberately: she refused to perform at venues that segregated audiences or barred Black spectators, turning down engagements over it.

Her stated ambition was to open a flying school for Black students, and she lectured and raised funds toward it.

Her death. In 1926, during a rehearsal flight in Jacksonville, Florida, with another pilot at the controls, the aircraft went into an unrecoverable dive. Coleman, who was not wearing a harness so that she could lean out and survey the ground for a planned jump, was thrown from the aircraft and killed. She was 34.

Her legacy was carried forward by the Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs, and by the generation of Black aviators who cited her — including pilots who later trained at Tuskegee.