Bessie Coleman: The Black Female Pilot History Forgot

When you truly have a dream, nothing matters but achieving it. And for young Bessie Coleman, that dream was taking to the sky, free as the birds soaring above her under the Texas sun. But becoming a pilot isn't easy — and when you're a young mixed-race woman at the turn of the 20th century, it's pretty much impossible. But you should never count out determination, grit, and pure, hard-headed attitude. Yes, Charles Lindburgh and Amelia Earhart may have gotten all the press, but Coleman broke barriers — all while stunning audiences with spectacular feats of aerial derring-do.

Bessie Coleman was the first American — and definitely the first Black woman and person of Native descent — to earn an international pilot's license, all the way back in 1921, as the website in her honor details. She went on to have a rip-roaring career as a stunt pilot before her untimely death in 1926. Fiercely independent from a young age, Coleman had no interest in working on the farm where she was raised. As her grand-niece relates, Coleman was brought up to believe she could do anything she put her mind to. Neither race, nor gender, nor poverty would stop her from achieving her goals. Despite everything stacked against her, she powered through and secured her place in aviation's history books. In fact, she earned her pilot's license a full two years before Amelia Earhart, America's most famous female aviator, would get hers, as Carnegie Mellon University notes.

At the Chicago barbershop where she worked, returning World War I veterans often regaled the staff with tales of their exploits in Europe. The pilots' stories particularly sparked Coleman's imagination — she, too, wanted aerial adventures. But what really cemented her determination was teasing from her brothers. When one, who had served in the war, commented that in France, even women got to fly planes, as the National Women's History Museum recounts, Coleman instantly knew what her future held. She immediately started applying to flight schools ... but none would take her, as detailed by the Cradle of Aviation Museum. After all, how could a woman in the early 1920s — and a Black and Cherokee woman, at that — possibly become a pilot? 

But the blatant racism and sexism didn't stop Coleman's pursuit of airtime. After an encouraging meeting with a local newspaper publisher who would become a lifelong mentor and supporter, according to The National Aviation Hall of Fame, Coleman realized that if she wanted to achieve her dreams of taking to the skies, she needed to head for France. Saving her pennies from working two jobs, she enrolled in French classes, became rapidly fluent, and soon moved abroad to attend flight school in postwar France.

Back in the US, Bessie Coleman couldn't get work as a commercial pilot — she was shut out yet again by her gender and race, as Texas Monthly points out. But minority journalists and the air industry alike were fascinated by the young aviatrix and hailed her arrival in New York. As biographer Thelma Rudd recounts, Aerial Age Weekly reported, "Miss Coleman, who is having a special Nieuport scout plane built for her in France, said yesterday that she intended to make flights in this country as an inspiration for people of her race to take up aviation." 

That plane became her signature: It was a prototype Nieuport 82.E2 biplane she named "La Grosse Julie." As France-Amérique notes, it could be easily identified in the sky by its distinctive black wings. Unfortunately, after a single demonstration flight in New York and a lot of disappointment, Coleman concluded that she wasn't going to find work as an ordinary pilot in the US ... she would have to become an entertainer.

Despite her fearless nature and incredible flying skills, however, she didn't know how to do the stunts that would pay the bills, as her US Air Force biography details. So she returned to Europe to retrain as a stunt pilot.

In 1922, Coleman arrived back in the US, ready to take up her new career as a "barnstormer" — an aerial daredevil. Unlike her last attempt at an airborne career in the US, this time, she was an instant sensation. Thanks to her popularity in France and time spent with the hoi polloi there, the media fawned over the dashing young aviatrix from the moment she returned. As her online biography notes, "The New York Times declared that she was designated by 'leading French and Dutch aviators as one of the best flyers they had seen.'" And she certainly wowed crowds, quickly earning the nicknames "Dapper Bess," "Queen Bess," and "Brave Bessie," as her New York Times obituary enumerates

But despite her indisputable skills, Coleman was hampered by the questionable air safety and plane tech of the time. The National Women's History Museum details a chilling incident in 1923 when her plane stalled. Coleman plunged 300 feet to the ground in front of a crowd of spectators. She survived ... but went straight to the hospital with several broken bones. She sent a telegram to her admiring fans to reassure them: "Tell them all that as soon as I can walk I'm going to fly!" It took a year of intensive therapy, but as the Texas State Historical Association notes, she was back in the air as soon as she could operate the heavy controls.

With her dashing appearance, long leather coat, military-style apparel, and gorgeous good looks, Bessie Coleman was tailor-made for fame. The fact that she was completely fearless and knew how to work a crowd sure didn't hurt, either. 

From her time in Europe, she knew that playing up her supposedly "exotic" appearance helped with drawing a paying audience — she had quickly become the talk of the town in rural France, where many people had never seen a Black person, let alone a Black-Cherokee woman, as France-Amérique points out. In Germany, she had wined and dined with royalty including the Kaiser, as her biography relates, and she used that fame to fit herself into the upper echelons of American society — both Black and white — as seamlessly as possible for a mixed-race woman in the 1920s. 

According to the National Women's History Museum, she parlayed her glamorous appearance into speaking engagements, dinner party invites, and nights on the town in Chicago. Many of those were spent with famous entertainer Josephine Baker, whom she'd met in Paris, as Entrée to Black Paris highlights – and whom, incidentally, she would inspire to earn her own international pilot's license later on.

Just as her career was really firing up and she was nearing her goal of raising enough cash to open her own permanent flight school, tragedy struck. On April 30, 1926, Bessie Coleman was in Jacksonville, Florida, to prep for a show, according to Biography.com. She had just bought a refurbished plane, which was delivered by fellow pilot William Wills ... but only after he encountered serious mechanical problems along the way. The "new" plane was in terrible condition, and other barnstormers, friends, and family all warned her not to fly, but, always mindful of her bank account and the delight of her audience, Coleman insisted on making a test flight.

Her first stunt the next day was to be a parachute jump, so Coleman went up with Wills at the controls, scouting for the best jump and landing points. To better lean out of the open cockpit while scanning for sites, she left herself unbuckled — a critical mistake. As the National Women's History Museum relates, a loose wrench somehow got into the engine and caused the plane to start accelerating and bucking erratically. Coleman was ejected and plummeted 500 feet to her death. Wills crashed and died beside her.

Bessie was just 34 at the time.