Quick Facts<\/h4>
| Nationality<\/td> | American \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8<\/td><\/tr> |
| Achievement<\/td> | First African American and Native American woman to hold a pilot’s licence<\/td><\/tr> |
| Licensed<\/td> | 15 June 1921, F\u00e9d\u00e9ration A\u00e9ronautique Internationale (France)<\/td><\/tr> |
| Aircraft<\/td> | Nieuport 82, Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny”<\/td><\/tr> |
| Born \/ Died<\/td> | 26 Jan 1892 \u2013 30 Apr 1926 (age 34)<\/td><\/tr> |
| Known As<\/td> | “Brave Bessie” \u2014 Queen Bess of the Air<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n![\"Bessie](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/3\/33\/Bessie_Coleman_in_1923.jpg\/960px-Bessie_Coleman_in_1923.jpg\") She enrolled at the \u00c9cole d’Aviation des Fr\u00e8res Caudron in Normandy. She flew in biplanes that had recently served as military trainers in the First World War. The French had no interest in her race or her gender \u2014 only whether she could fly. She could. On 15 June 1921, Bessie Coleman received her international pilot’s licence from the F\u00e9d\u00e9ration A\u00e9ronautique Internationale, becoming the first Black woman \u2014 and first person of Native American descent \u2014 in the world to hold one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n She returned to the United States a celebrity. Black newspapers celebrated her as a hero. White newspapers largely ignored her. She performed airshows across the American South \u2014 refusing to perform at venues with segregated entrances, insisting that Black and white spectators enter through the same gate. At a time when Jim Crow laws governed daily life in much of America, this was not a small gesture. She used the stage the sky gave her to push back against the world below.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n A Dream Bigger Than Airshows<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nColeman’s dream was to open a flying school for Black Americans \u2014 a place that would never turn away a student for their race. She saved money from her performances, lectured at churches and schools, charged audiences to hear her speak, and slowly accumulated enough to start planning. She needed one more big performance to put her over the financial threshold.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n On 30 April 1926, she was performing a test flight in Jacksonville, Florida, in a Curtiss JN-4 piloted by her mechanic and manager William Wills. Wills lost control of the aircraft when a wrench that had been left loose in the cockpit jammed the controls. At 3,500 feet, the Jenny lurched into a nosedive and rolled. Coleman \u2014 who was not wearing a seatbelt, preparing to survey the terrain for the next day’s parachute jump \u2014 was thrown from the aircraft. She was 34 years old. The school never opened.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\n \n \n\u201cThe air is the only place free from prejudices. I knew we had no Negroes flying, so I thought it would be up to me to start, as we have just as much need for aeroplanes as anyone else.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\u2014 Bessie Coleman, 1921<\/cite>\n<\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Her funeral in Chicago drew 10,000 mourners. Ida B. Wells \u2014 the great civil rights journalist \u2014 spoke at the service. The Bessie Coleman Aero Club, founded after her death, trained the next generation of Black aviators. Among those it inspired: the Tuskegee Airmen, the legendary fighter pilots who would go on to escort American bombers over Europe during World War II, and who never lost a bomber they escorted. The chain that Bessie Coleman started in a French flying school in 1921 reached all the way to the skies over Germany in 1944.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n |