Quantcast

Bessie Coleman: The First African American Female Pilot

Terry Mcginnis

Team Owner
Joined
Jun 25, 2013
Messages
21,458
Reaction score
Reactions
86,532 1,577 910
86,313
Alleybux
135,420
Bessie-Coleman-36928-1-402.jpg


Bessie Coleman, the first African American female pilot, grew up in a cruel world of poverty and discrimination. The year after her birth in Atlanta, Texas, an African American man was tortured and then burned to death in nearby Paris for allegedly raping a five-year-old girl. The incident was not unusual; lynchings were endemic throughout the South. African Americans were essentially barred from voting by literacy tests. They couldn't ride in railway cars with white people, or use a wide range of public facilities set aside for whites. When young Bessie first went to school at the age of six, it was to a one-room wooden shack, a four-mile walk from her home. Often there wasn't paper to write on or pencils to write with.

When Coleman turned 23 she headed to Chicago to live with two of her older brothers, hoping to make something of herself. But the Windy City offered little more to an African American woman than did Texas. When Coleman decided she wanted to learn to fly, the double stigma of her race and gender meant that she would have to travel to France to realize her dreams.

It was soldiers returning from World War I with wild tales of flying exploits who first interested Coleman in aviation. She was also spurred on by her brother, who taunted her with claims that French women were superior to African American women because they could fly. In fact, very few American women of any race had pilot's licenses in 1918. Those who did were predominantly white and wealthy. Every flying school that Coleman approached refused to admit her because she was both black and a woman. On the advice of Robert Abbott, the owner of the "Chicago Defender" and one of the first African American millionaires, Coleman decided to learn to fly in France.

Coleman learned French at a Berlitz school in the Chicago loop, withdrew the savings she had accumulated from her work as a manicurist and the manager of a chili parlor, and with the additional financial support of Abbott and another African American entrepreneur, she set off for Paris from New York on November 20, 1920. It took Coleman seven months to learn how to fly. The only non-Caucasian student in her class, she was taught in a 27-foot biplane that was known to fail frequently, sometimes in the air. During her training Coleman witnessed a fellow student die in a plane crash, which she described as a "terrible shock" to her nerves. But the accident didn't deter her: In June 1921, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale awarded her an international pilot's license.

When Coleman returned to the U.S. in September 1921, scores of reporters turned out to meet her. The "Air Service News" noted that Coleman had become "a full-fledged aviatrix, the first of her race." She was invited as a guest of honor to attend the all-black musical "Shuffle Along." The entire audience, including the several hundred whites in the orchestra seats, rose to give the first African American female pilot a standing ovation.

Over the next five years Coleman performed at countless air shows. The first took place on September 3, 1922, in Garden City, Long Island. The "Chicago Defender" publicized the event saying the "wonderful little woman" Bessie Coleman would do "heart thrilling stunts." According to a reporter from Kansas, as many as 3,000 people, including local dignitaries, attended the event. Over the following years, Coleman used her position of prominence to encourage other African Americans to fly. She also made a point of refusing to perform at locations that wouldn't admit members of her race.

Coleman took her tragic last flight on April 30, 1926, in Jacksonville, Florida. Together with a young Texan mechanic called William Wills, Coleman was preparing for an air show that was to have taken place the following day. At 3,500 feet with Wills at the controls, an unsecured wrench somehow got caught in the control gears and the plane unexpectedly plummeted toward earth. Coleman, who wasn't wearing a seat-belt, fell to her death.

About 10,000 mourners paid their last respects to the first African American woman aviator, filing past her coffin in Chicago South's Side. Her funeral was attended by several prominent African Americans and it was presided over by Ida B. Wells, an outspoken advocate of equal rights. But despite the massive turnout and the tributes paid to Coleman during the service, several black reporters believed that the scope of Coleman's accomplishments had never truly been recognized during her lifetime. An editorial in the "Dallas Express" stated, "There is reason to believe that the general public did not completely sense the size of her contribution to the achievements of the race as such."

Coleman has not been forgotten in the decades since her death. For a number of years starting in 1931, black pilots from Chicago instituted an annual fly over of her grave. In 1977 a group of African American women pilots established the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club. And in 1992 a Chicago City council resolution requested that the U.S. Postal Service issue a Bessie Coleman stamp. The resolution noted that "Bessie Coleman continues to inspire untold thousands even millions of young persons with her sense of adventure, her positive attitude, and her determination.

1560758_691061160937789_1126382138_n.jpg
 

honeyG

General Manager
Joined
Jan 17, 2014
Messages
4,313
Reaction score
Reactions
2,825 8 3
3,761
Alleybux
520
Thank you for sharing this information. It's inspiring to see such bravery and determination -- i'd never heard of her before this.
 
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
873
Reaction score
Reactions
139 6 2
138
Alleybux
0
Coleman took her tragic last flight on April 30, 1926, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Together with a young Texan mechanic called William Wills, Coleman was preparing
for an air show that was to have taken place the following day. At 3,500 feet
with Wills at the controls, an unsecured wrench somehow got caught in the
control gears and the plane unexpectedly plummeted toward earth.
Coleman, who
wasn't wearing a seat-belt, fell to her death.

I always wondered if that wrench was purposely placed in the control gears
 

Sforza

Mme-de-Mme
Joined
Feb 14, 2014
Messages
1,637
Reaction score
Reactions
3,056 154 9
3,259
Alleybux
2,001
She earned her International Aviation License in 1921, 2 years before Amelia Earhart!

Bessie_Coleman_and_her_plane_%281922%29.jpg


Today's Google Doodle commemorated what would have been the 125th birthday, of the first black, female, pilot Bessie Coleman.


Coleman, who was repeatedly turned away from American aviation schools for being a black woman, was told by an associate that if she wanted to learn to fly, she would have to move to France. So she learned French and prepared to head overseas.

In 1920, she relocated to Paris to learn how to fly. Despite being the only black person in her class and witnessing one of her classmates die in a plane accident, Coleman persisted through seven months of aviation school and was awarded with an international pilot’s license in 1921.

"She was offered a role in a feature-length film titled Shadow and Sunshine. But upon learning that the first scene in the movie required her to appear in tattered clothes, with a walking stick and a pack on her back, she refused to proceed. 'Clearly ... [Bessie's] walking off the movie set was a statement of principle. Opportunist though she was about her career, she was never an opportunist about race. She had no intention of perpetuating the derogatory image most whites had of most blacks'".

For five years, Coleman stunned audiences at air shows and only performed at locations that admitted black people. At 34-years-old, Coleman’s prosperous life was abruptly cut short after mechanical errors caused her to fall from a plane in April of 1926. Nearly 10,000 people attended her funeral. Coleman’s legacy continues to live on.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...s_588a1765e4b0737fd5cbdba8?8szz7yg7qk2dibe29&
 

liyahsluv23

Team Owner
Joined
Mar 15, 2011
Messages
17,385
Reaction score
Reactions
84,892 2,116 1,477
92,094
Alleybux
290,142
this morning i was like... save google header and come back later for explanation & LSA delivered.
thanks OP!
 

Evee

General Manager
Joined
Jul 25, 2016
Messages
1,296
Reaction score
Reactions
7,627 112 4
8,970
Alleybux
410
I remember the Viceland channel doing one of their mini black history segments about her a few months ago. They were talking about how no one knew she existed and for some reason it was damn near impossible to find pictures of her anywhere.
 

Violet Trace

General Manager
Joined
Feb 21, 2014
Messages
3,694
Reaction score
Reactions
54,752 833 210
56,969
Alleybux
14,524
I loved reading about her as a kid, and would be eager to see a Bessie Coleman biopic. I cried the first time I read how she died.
 

Butterflyj82

Team Owner
OLDHEAD
Joined
Apr 7, 2006
Messages
76,020
Reaction score
Reactions
441,572 29,005 1,300
481,466
Alleybux
4,650,355
I saw the doodle this morning!! I'm soo glad they honored her!! I was sad to learn what happen to her
 

Mrs Mathers

“I get gay”-Ayden Davis
Joined
Apr 25, 2010
Messages
8,344
Reaction score
Reactions
50,079 1,077 216
68,793
Alleybux
9,500
I listened to her story on the History Chicks podcast yesterday great story, sad scary ending. She was gorgeous!
 

Custard Tart

Team Owner
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
12,638
Solutions
1
Reaction score
Reactions
24,488 2,384 2,970
23,423
Alleybux
446,575
IMG_5765.JPG
Description

Bessie Coleman was an early American civil aviator. She was the first woman of African-American descent, and also the first of Native-American descent, to hold a pilot license. Wikipedia
Born: January 26, 1892, Atlanta, TX
Died: April 30, 1926, Jacksonville, FL
Full name: Elizabeth Coleman
Education: Langston University (1910–1911)
Siblings: Elois Coleman Patterson, Isaiah Coleman, Georgia Coleman, Walter Coleman, Nilus Coleman, More
Parents: Susan Coleman, George Coleman

This was in my office weekly newsletter.
 

jaceandrejones

Fighting The Golden Lords.
Joined
Aug 31, 2018
Messages
3,299
Reaction score
Reactions
50,213 2,024 133
89,673
Alleybux
110,000
I love her! I did a project on her during BHM in elementary school. I played R-Kelly's I believe I can fly at the end and nobody could tell me sh!t when I received that A.
 

CarmenJonesGal

Team Owner
Joined
Feb 27, 2014
Messages
52,708
Solutions
1
Reaction score
Reactions
367,530 10,220 2,157
438,254
Alleybux
165,347
I want a film about her soooo bad.
I think the actress who played Queen Latifah’s daughter in the aids film would be perfect as her!
 

YUNGJUDAH

Team Owner
Joined
Jul 3, 2014
Messages
10,748
Reaction score
Reactions
35,213 3,766 3,804
32,385
Alleybux
513,920
I would love to see a comprehensive documentary on Bessie I dont think one has been made to date.
 

usernamusernam

General Manager
Joined
May 6, 2017
Messages
2,846
Reaction score
Reactions
41,571 1,796 240
44,383
Alleybux
76,974
I went on a tour at a airport for private charters and I could've sworn the lady told me that Bessie Coleman was actually the first woman to fly not Amelia Earhart but I can't find that info anywhere.
 

Frost

Team Owner
Joined
Jul 24, 2017
Messages
7,462
Reaction score
Reactions
81,708 3,049 895
86,309
Alleybux
22,818
Thanks, OP. It's always good to see how forwarding thinking Black women have always been.
 

Sanitamuse

Escaping rough side of the mountain...
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
11,791
Reaction score
Reactions
34,926 710 380
36,164
Alleybux
275,105
She was a determined lady. There is so much to like about her. One of the things that stood out for me about her was her get up and go.

When American aviation schools would not allow her to attend because she was AA and a woman, she learned French on her own and moved to France to attend aviation school, since she was not barred in France.
 

Mikhail Bakunin

Team Owner
Joined
Aug 16, 2012
Messages
69,035
Reaction score
Reactions
154,038 19,672 18,910
161,065
Alleybux
852,369
Bessie Coleman, the Black Cherokee Female Pilot Who Made Aviation History

When no aviation school in America would teach her to fly, Bessie Coleman sailed to France and became the first African American and the first Native American woman to earn a pilot’s license.
Mental Floss
  • Michele Debczak
Read when you’ve got time to spare.

5ea7203931a0d.jpg

Photo illustration by Riccardo Zagorodnez, Mental Floss. Plane / landscape, iStock via Getty Images. Portrait, New York Public Library / Public Domain.

Early 20th century America didn’t offer many career paths to people like Bessie Coleman. It was a time when women were discouraged from working outside domestic spheres, and opportunities for women of African American and Native American descent were even more limited. When Coleman fell in love with the idea of flying planes, she knew that realizing her dream would be impossible in the United States—but instead of giving up, she moved to France to enroll in flight school. Less than a year later, she returned home as the first African American and the first Native American female pilot in aviation history.

A Determined Beginning
Bessie Coleman was born to sharecroppers in Texas on January 26, 1892. She was one of 13 siblings, and like the rest of Coleman clan, she was expected to help pick cotton on the farm as soon as she was old enough. At 6 years old, she started walking to school: a one-room wooden shack located four miles from her house. Her classroom often lacked basic supplies like paper and pencils, and, like all schools in the region, it was segregated.

Despite less-than-ideal conditions, she excelled in class and continued her studies through high school. In 1901, her father, who was part black and part Cherokee, relocated to Native American territory in Oklahoma to escape discrimination in Texas, leaving Bessie and the rest of his family behind. She knew she couldn’t depend on her now single-parent family to contribute money toward her education, so to save for college, she went to work as a laundress.

After a year at the Colored Agricultural and Normal University—now Langston University—in Langston, Oklahoma, she dropped out when her tuition fund ran dry. Even though she was more educated than many women of the time, there were few opportunities for her in the South. At age 23, she followed her brothers to Chicago, which, though racially segregated, was slightly more welcoming to people of color than Texas had been. In Chicago, Coleman was able to mingle with influential figures in the African American community. She went to beauty school and became a manicurist in a local barbershop.

Chicago was also where she decided she wanted to learn how to fly.

Dreams of Flight—and France
Around the same time Coleman moved up north, World War I erupted in Europe. The conflict quickened the pace of technological advancement, including in aviation. For the first time in history, people around the world could watch fighter planes soar through the skies in newsreels and read about them in the papers. Coleman fell in love.

When her brother John returned home to Chicago after serving overseas, he gave her more material to fuel her daydreams. In addition to regaling her with war stories, he teased her about her new fantasy, claiming that French women were superior to local women because they were allowed to fly planes, something Bessie would never be able to do. He may have said the words in jest, but they held some truth: Female pilots were incredibly rare in the U.S. immediately following World War I, and black female pilots were nonexistent.

Coleman quickly learned that American flight instructors were intent on keeping things that way. Every aviation school she applied to rejected her on the basis of her race and gender.

Fortunately for Coleman, her brothers weren't her only source of support in Chicago. After moving to the city, she met Robert Abbott, publisher of the historic black newspaper The Chicago Defender and one of the first African American millionaires. He echoed John’s idea that France was a much better place for aspiring female pilots, but instead of rubbing it in her face, he presented it as an opportunity. Abbott viewed France as one of the world’s most racially progressive nations, and he encouraged her to move there in pursuit of her pilot's license.

Coleman didn’t need to be convinced. With her heart set on a new dream, she quit her job as a manicurist and accepted a better-paying role as the manager of a chili parlor to raise money for her trip abroad. At night she took French classes in the Chicago loop. Her hard work paid off, and with her savings and some financial assistance from Abbot and another black entrepreneur named Jesse Binga, she boarded a ship for France in November 1920.

The First Black Aviatrix
Coleman was the only non-white person in her class at the Caudron Brothers' School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. Students were taught to fly using 27-foot-long biplanes that were known to stall in mid-air. One day, she even witnessed one of her classmates die in a crash. Describing the incident later on, she said, "It was a terrible shock to my nerves, but I never lost them."

Despite the risks, she pressed on with lessons, and after seven months of training, she received her aviation license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. She became both the first African American woman and the first Native American woman in the world to earn a pilot’s license.

Coleman completed some extra flight lessons in Paris and then boarded a ship bound for the United States. American news outlets were instantly smitten with the 29-year-old pilot. The Associated Press reported on September 26, 1921 that "Today [Coleman] returned as a full-fledged aviatrix, said to be the first of her race."

In the early 1920s, an aviatrix, or female aviator, was still a fairly new concept in America, and many of the most famous women flyers of the 20th century—like Laura Ingalls, Betty Skelton, and Amelia Earhart—had yet to enter the scene. Coleman's persistence helped clear the path for the next generation of female pilots.

But her success in France didn’t mark the end of her battle with racism. Bessie needed more training to learn the airshow tricks she now hoped to do for a living, but even with her international pilot's license and minor celebrity status since returning home, American flight schools still refused to teach her. Just a few months after landing in the U.S., Bessie went back to Europe—this time to Germany and the Netherlands as well as France to learn the barnstorming stunts that were quickly growing into one of the most popular forms of entertainment of the 1920s.

Upon her second homecoming in 1922, newspapers praised her once again, reporting that European aviators had dubbed her "one of the best flyers they had seen." Finally, she would be able to show off her skills in her home country. Robert Abbott, the newspaperman who helped fund her dream, sponsored her first-ever American airshow at Curtiss Field, Long Island, on September 3, 1922. She spent the next few years touring the country, thrilling spectators by parachuting, wing-walking (moving atop the wings of her biplane mid-flight), and performing aerial figure-eights.

Coleman had become a real celebrity, and she tried to use her prominence to help black people. She gave speeches on aviation to predominantly black crowds and planned to open her own flight school for African American students. She only performed for desegregated audiences—the one notable exception being a show in Waxahachie, Texas, the town where she lived for most of her childhood. Event organizers planned to segregate black and white guests and have them use separate entrances. Coleman protested and threatened to cancel the exhibition unless a single entrance was set up for everyone. Officials eventually agreed, though audience members were still forced to sit on separate sides of the stadium once they entered.

Just when it seemed her career was reaching new heights, it was cut short by tragedy. On April 30, 1926, she was riding with her mechanic William Wills in Jacksonville, Florida, in preparation for a show scheduled for the next day, when a wrench left in the engine caused the plane to spin out of control. Coleman hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt, and she was tossed from the passenger seat at 3000 feet above the ground. She died at age 34.

Bessie Coleman never achieved the same level of name recognition as some of her peers, but the impact she left on aviation history is undeniable. Even if they’ve never heard her name, Chicagoans living near Lincoln Cemetery have likely heard the sounds of jets flying overhead on April 30. Every year on the anniversary of her death, black pilots honor Coleman by performing a flyover and dropping flowers on her grave.

Michele Debczak is a Senior Staff Writer for Mental Floss. Some of her favorite subjects include defunct theme park rides, weird-looking sea creatures, and fast food history. When she's not writing, she's probably watching Bon Appetit test kitchen videos or reading about unsolved mysteries on Wikipedia.
 
Joined
Jun 6, 2018
Messages
899
Reaction score
Reactions
6,856 274 235
6,665
Alleybux
15,945
She was called "brave Bessie" by everyone. She needs a movie. Writers, producers, funders, where are you??
 

Mikhail Bakunin

Team Owner
Joined
Aug 16, 2012
Messages
69,035
Reaction score
Reactions
154,038 19,672 18,910
161,065
Alleybux
852,369
Bessie Coleman, the Black Cherokee Female Pilot Who Made Aviation History

When no aviation school in America would teach her to fly, Bessie Coleman sailed to France and became the first African American and the first Native American woman to earn a pilot’s license.
Mental Floss
  • Michele Debczak
Read when you’ve got time to spare.

5ea7203931a0d.jpg

Photo illustration by Riccardo Zagorodnez, Mental Floss. Plane / landscape, iStock via Getty Images. Portrait, New York Public Library / Public Domain.

Early 20th century America didn’t offer many career paths to people like Bessie Coleman. It was a time when women were discouraged from working outside domestic spheres, and opportunities for women of African American and Native American descent were even more limited. When Coleman fell in love with the idea of flying planes, she knew that realizing her dream would be impossible in the United States—but instead of giving up, she moved to France to enroll in flight school. Less than a year later, she returned home as the first African American and the first Native American female pilot in aviation history.

A Determined Beginning
Bessie Coleman was born to sharecroppers in Texas on January 26, 1892. She was one of 13 siblings, and like the rest of Coleman clan, she was expected to help pick cotton on the farm as soon as she was old enough. At 6 years old, she started walking to school: a one-room wooden shack located four miles from her house. Her classroom often lacked basic supplies like paper and pencils, and, like all schools in the region, it was segregated.

Despite less-than-ideal conditions, she excelled in class and continued her studies through high school. In 1901, her father, who was part black and part Cherokee, relocated to Native American territory in Oklahoma to escape discrimination in Texas, leaving Bessie and the rest of his family behind. She knew she couldn’t depend on her now single-parent family to contribute money toward her education, so to save for college, she went to work as a laundress.

After a year at the Colored Agricultural and Normal University—now Langston University—in Langston, Oklahoma, she dropped out when her tuition fund ran dry. Even though she was more educated than many women of the time, there were few opportunities for her in the South. At age 23, she followed her brothers to Chicago, which, though racially segregated, was slightly more welcoming to people of color than Texas had been. In Chicago, Coleman was able to mingle with influential figures in the African American community. She went to beauty school and became a manicurist in a local barbershop.

Chicago was also where she decided she wanted to learn how to fly.

Dreams of Flight—and France
Around the same time Coleman moved up north, World War I erupted in Europe. The conflict quickened the pace of technological advancement, including in aviation. For the first time in history, people around the world could watch fighter planes soar through the skies in newsreels and read about them in the papers. Coleman fell in love.

When her brother John returned home to Chicago after serving overseas, he gave her more material to fuel her daydreams. In addition to regaling her with war stories, he teased her about her new fantasy, claiming that French women were superior to local women because they were allowed to fly planes, something Bessie would never be able to do. He may have said the words in jest, but they held some truth: Female pilots were incredibly rare in the U.S. immediately following World War I, and black female pilots were nonexistent.

Coleman quickly learned that American flight instructors were intent on keeping things that way. Every aviation school she applied to rejected her on the basis of her race and gender.

Fortunately for Coleman, her brothers weren't her only source of support in Chicago. After moving to the city, she met Robert Abbott, publisher of the historic black newspaper The Chicago Defender and one of the first African American millionaires. He echoed John’s idea that France was a much better place for aspiring female pilots, but instead of rubbing it in her face, he presented it as an opportunity. Abbott viewed France as one of the world’s most racially progressive nations, and he encouraged her to move there in pursuit of her pilot's license.

Coleman didn’t need to be convinced. With her heart set on a new dream, she quit her job as a manicurist and accepted a better-paying role as the manager of a chili parlor to raise money for her trip abroad. At night she took French classes in the Chicago loop. Her hard work paid off, and with her savings and some financial assistance from Abbot and another black entrepreneur named Jesse Binga, she boarded a ship for France in November 1920.

The First Black Aviatrix
Coleman was the only non-white person in her class at the Caudron Brothers' School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. Students were taught to fly using 27-foot-long biplanes that were known to stall in mid-air. One day, she even witnessed one of her classmates die in a crash. Describing the incident later on, she said, "It was a terrible shock to my nerves, but I never lost them."

Despite the risks, she pressed on with lessons, and after seven months of training, she received her aviation license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. She became both the first African American woman and the first Native American woman in the world to earn a pilot’s license.

Coleman completed some extra flight lessons in Paris and then boarded a ship bound for the United States. American news outlets were instantly smitten with the 29-year-old pilot. The Associated Press reported on September 26, 1921 that "Today [Coleman] returned as a full-fledged aviatrix, said to be the first of her race."

In the early 1920s, an aviatrix, or female aviator, was still a fairly new concept in America, and many of the most famous women flyers of the 20th century—like Laura Ingalls, Betty Skelton, and Amelia Earhart—had yet to enter the scene. Coleman's persistence helped clear the path for the next generation of female pilots.

But her success in France didn’t mark the end of her battle with racism. Bessie needed more training to learn the airshow tricks she now hoped to do for a living, but even with her international pilot's license and minor celebrity status since returning home, American flight schools still refused to teach her. Just a few months after landing in the U.S., Bessie went back to Europe—this time to Germany and the Netherlands as well as France to learn the barnstorming stunts that were quickly growing into one of the most popular forms of entertainment of the 1920s.

Upon her second homecoming in 1922, newspapers praised her once again, reporting that European aviators had dubbed her "one of the best flyers they had seen." Finally, she would be able to show off her skills in her home country. Robert Abbott, the newspaperman who helped fund her dream, sponsored her first-ever American airshow at Curtiss Field, Long Island, on September 3, 1922. She spent the next few years touring the country, thrilling spectators by parachuting, wing-walking (moving atop the wings of her biplane mid-flight), and performing aerial figure-eights.

Coleman had become a real celebrity, and she tried to use her prominence to help black people. She gave speeches on aviation to predominantly black crowds and planned to open her own flight school for African American students. She only performed for desegregated audiences—the one notable exception being a show in Waxahachie, Texas, the town where she lived for most of her childhood. Event organizers planned to segregate black and white guests and have them use separate entrances. Coleman protested and threatened to cancel the exhibition unless a single entrance was set up for everyone. Officials eventually agreed, though audience members were still forced to sit on separate sides of the stadium once they entered.

Just when it seemed her career was reaching new heights, it was cut short by tragedy. On April 30, 1926, she was riding with her mechanic William Wills in Jacksonville, Florida, in preparation for a show scheduled for the next day, when a wrench left in the engine caused the plane to spin out of control. Coleman hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt, and she was tossed from the passenger seat at 3000 feet above the ground. She died at age 34.

Bessie Coleman never achieved the same level of name recognition as some of her peers, but the impact she left on aviation history is undeniable. Even if they’ve never heard her name, Chicagoans living near Lincoln Cemetery have likely heard the sounds of jets flying overhead on April 30. Every year on the anniversary of her death, black pilots honor Coleman by performing a flyover and dropping flowers on her grave.

Michele Debczak is a Senior Staff Writer for Mental Floss. Some of her favorite subjects include defunct theme park rides, weird-looking sea creatures, and fast food history. When she's not writing, she's probably watching Bon Appetit test kitchen videos or reading about unsolved mysteries on Wikipedia.
 

Teddy Rux

General Manager
Joined
Dec 4, 2008
Messages
2,155
Reaction score
Reactions
6,525 16 4
6,882
Alleybux
1,000
I’m so shocked nobody is clambering to tell her story. As much as I love Dorothy Dandridge and Josephine Baker, it’s always crickets for women like Miss Coleman and Zara Neale Hurston
 

kour

General Manager
Joined
Mar 13, 2013
Messages
1,328
Reaction score
Reactions
10,979 857 35
11,041
Alleybux
479,970
I’m so shocked nobody is clambering to tell her story. As much as I love Dorothy Dandridge and Josephine Baker, it’s always crickets for women like Miss Coleman and Zara Neale Hurston

I agree! Her life story while tragic is inspiring. Maybe someone is getting funding for a project. I hope so.
 

Miel007

General Manager
Joined
May 30, 2020
Messages
2,532
Reaction score
Reactions
21,698 650 329
26,592
Alleybux
211,564
i can't believe they made these black american pilots pay tribute to Amelia Earheart in A Night in the Museum and not Ms. Coleman.
it's like hollywood worked overtime to erase African-Americans.
We should make her dream a reality
 

SaLiLi

Team Owner
Joined
Jul 11, 2013
Messages
39,596
Reaction score
Reactions
261,890 7,386 9,336
286,296
Alleybux
3,611
funny how they ALLOW her, rosa parks and others to claim native roots when convenient, but if people say that today then they're lying
 

Similar Threads

Trending Threads

News Alley

Ask LSA

General Alley

Top Bottom