Bessie “Queen Bess” Coleman was a pioneer in the field of aviation. She was the first black female pilot, the first black woman to earn an international pilot’s license and the first black woman to fly a plane in a public airshow in the U.S.
Coleman was born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas to sharecroppers George, who was part Cherokee, and Susan Coleman. At the age of 2, Coleman and her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas as her father had bought a quarter-acre of land on which he built a three-room house. At the age of six, Coleman began attending the one-room, segregated school four miles from her home. She loved reading and was an outstanding student of maths, despite the fact that she often had to miss school to help in the cotton fields or watch her younger siblings as in 1901, George Coleman had left the family and moved to Indian Territory, Oklahoma to search for better opportunities. Susan Coleman supported her children by picking cotton, taking in laundry and ironing. Coleman quickly became the leader of the family and would read aloud to her siblings and mother, who was illiterate due to being denied access to education as a child. Coleman was determined that she would be successful in life, at 12 years old, she began attending the Missionary Baptist Church in Texas. After graduating from eighth grade she worked as a laundress to save up enough money to continue her education. In 1910, Coleman used her own savings and some money saved by her mother to enrol in the Oklahoma Coloured Agricultural and Normal University (now called Langston University) in Langston, Oklahoma. She completed one year before returning home due to a lack of funds.
After returning home to Waxahachie, Coleman worked as a laundress until 1915 when she moved to Chicago, Illinois to live with two of her older brothers. She began working as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop where she would hear stories from pilots returning from World War I. Her brothers added to her interest in aviation when regaling her with stories of the French women who were flying planes in the war. Inspired, she tried to enrol in aviation school but was turned down from all schools due to her race and gender. Coleman had built up friendships with several leaders in South Side Chicago’s African American community, including Robert Abbott, publisher of the nation’s largest African American weekly, the Chicago Defender. Abbott suggested that she go to France, insisting that the french, who were the world’s leaders in aviation, would teach her to fly. Coleman found a job managing a chilli restaurant and began studying French at the Berlitz school in preparation for her move to France. In 1920, Coleman had enough money to leave for France, helped by several sponsors including Abbott himself.
Coleman was accepted to the Caudron Brother’s School of Aviation, which was the best flight school in France. She learnt to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane and in 1921, she became the first woman of African-American descent 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 (F.A.I.). Coleman then spent the next couple of months taking lessons from a French pilot near Paris to gain further flying experience. In September that year, she returned to New York and became a media sensation in the black press, although she was largely ignored by the mainstream press. Coleman knew that the best way to make a living as a pilot was to become a stunt flier, for which she would need advanced lessons. In Chicago, she faced the same racial discrimination as before and was denied all opportunities to further her skills.
In 1922, Coleman returned to Europe and trained in France, the Netherlands, and Germany before once again returning to the U.S. On Labor Day weekend that year, Coleman flew in an air show sponsored by Abbott and the Chicago Defender on Long Island in New York. The show was in honour of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment veterans of World War I. Coleman was billed as “the world’s greatest woman flyer” and she became the first black woman in America to complete a public flight. She specialised in stunt flying and parachuting and would stop at nothing to complete a trick.
Her second show, weeks later in Chicago helped to build an interest in her and she soon became a popular pilot at air shows in the U.S. The black press began calling her “Queen Bess” and in interviews she spoke about her desire to open a flying school for African Americans. She opened a beauty shop in Florida to help raise funds for her venture, and would regularly lecture at schools and churches to inspire others to follow in her footsteps. Due to her success, she was offered a film role but after learning that the film would require her to pay a role that perpetuated the derogatory image that white people had about black people she walked away. The move meant that her backers who were also part of the entertainment industry abandoned her.
In 1923, Coleman bought her own small plane, a World War I surplus Army training plane. Days later, she crashed on the way to her first West Coast air show when the plane stalled and nose-dived. The plane was destroyed, and Coleman took almost two years to recover from the accident and find financial backers for a series of air shows. Coleman booked a series of shows in Texas and her flights and theatre appearances during 1925 were so successful that she was able to buy a new plane. Her new found fame brought her steady work, and she wrote to one of her sisters to tell them that she was finally going to be able to finance her aviation school.
In 1926, Coleman was in Jacksonville, Florida to perform in a May Day Celebration sponsored by the local Negro Welfare League. Her plane had been flown to Florida by her mechanic and publicity agent, 24-year-old William D. Wills. He had been forced to stop three times due to the poor condition of the plane. After learning of the condition of the plane, Coleman’s family urged her not to fly it but she didn’t listen. On April 30th, Coleman and Wills went up in the plane so that she could plan her parachute jump for the next day. 10 minutes into the flight, the plane dived unexpectedly and spun, throwing Coleman from the plane. She died instantly when her body hit the ground, Wills also died after being unable to regain control of the plane. The plane had been brought down by a wrench which had slid into the gearbox and jammed it. On May the 2nd, a memorial service for Coleman was held in Jacksonville, following which she was buried in Chicago. Both event drew large crowds. Every year on the 30th of April, African American aviators fly in formation over Lincoln Cemetery in southwest Chicago (Blue Island) and drop flowers on Coleman’s grave.
Coleman was a pioneer in aviation, earning her pilot’s license two years before the better known Amelia Earhart. She challenged the barriers of racial discrimination and refused to participate in segregated events. Unfortunately, she was unable to accomplish her dream of establishing a school for young black aviators, but her pioneering accomplishments inspired a generation of African American men and women. Following her death, Black flyers founded the Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs and in 1975 the Bessie Aviators organisation was founded by black women pilots, the organisation was open to women pilots of all races. A number of roads are named after Coleman, including Bessie Coleman Boulevard in Waxahachie, Texas and roads at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Oakland International Airport in Oakland, California, Tampa international airport in Florida, and at Frankfurt International Airport. In addition to this, a public library in Chicago was named in Coleman’s honour, as in the Bessie Coleman Middle School in Cedar Hill in Texas and the B. Coleman Aviation, a Fixed Base Operator based at Gary/Chicago International Airport.
There are memorial plaques at the Chicago Cultural Center at the location of her former home, 41st and King Drive in Chicago, and by custom black aviators drop flowers during flyovers of her grave at Lincoln Cemetery. Coleman was celebrated in 1995 when the U.S. Postal Service issued a 32-cent stamp featuring her, The Bessie Coleman Commemorative is the 18th in the U.S. Postal Service Black Heritage series. In 2001 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame followed in 2006 by an induction to the National Aviation Hall of Fame. In 2012 a bronze plaque with Coleman’s likeness was installed on the front doors of Paxon School for Advanced Studies located on the site of the Jacksonville airfield where Coleman’s fatal flight took off. There are also several Bessie Coleman Scholarship Awards have been established for high school seniors planning on careers in aviation.