Black History Heritage Profile: Bessie Coleman

Bessie Coleman
Aviator

-Bessie Coleman became the first black woman to receive a pilot’s license and the first woman to get an international pilot’s license. Born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, Bessie was one of thirteen children. She picked cotton as a child, but her mother was determined that all her children would get an education. Graduating from high school, Bessie went to Chicago and worked in a barbershop, ran a chili parlor, and discovered airplanes at an air show. The barnstorming stunts performed by the pilots inspired her to learn to fly. When she couldn’t find an aviation school in the United States that would instruct a black woman to fly, she learned French and traveled to Paris.

Bessie learned to fly in Nieuport biplanes in Paris. After receiving her pilot licenses in only seven months from Caudron Brother’s School of Aviation in France, she returned to the United States where she lectured and specialized in stunt flying and parachuting. Bessie tried to establish a flight school for blacks, believing "the air is the only place free from prejudices." She never raised enough money for the school, and died during a rehearsal at a Florida air show when her plane crashed in 1926. She was only 33 years old.