Bessie Coleman (January 26,
1892 – April 30, 1926) was an American civil aviator. She defied all odds to become the first female
pilot of African American descent and was also the first woman of Native
American descent to hold a pilot license and an international pilot
license.
In 1916 at the age of 23, Bessie moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she worked as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop. There she heard stories
from pilots returning home from World War I about flying during the war. She
took a second job at a chilli parlour to procure money faster to become a
pilot herself.
American flight schools admitted neither women nor blacks, and no
black U.S. aviator would train her. Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of
the Chicago Defender, encouraged her to study abroad. Coleman received
financial backing from banker Jesse Binga and the Defender and took a
French-language class at the Berlitz school in Chicago before travelling to
Paris in 1920 to earn her pilot license. She 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, Bessie became
the first woman of African American and Native American descent to earn an
aviation pilot's license, and the first person of African American and Native
American descent to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération
Aéronautique Internationale. Determined to polish her skills, she spent the
next two months taking lessons from a French ace pilot near Paris, and in
September 1921, she sailed for New York becoming a media sensation and stunt pilot.
She died aged 36 when, as a passenger of a plane flown by her mechanic and publicity agent William D. Wills crashed. Although the wreckage of the
plane was badly burned it was later discovered that a wrench used to service
the engine had slid into the gearbox and jammed it.
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