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Things Historical
AIR PIONEER
by Bob
Bowman
Texas Aviation Hall of Famer
In 1921 she became the only black pilot in the world. A year later
she became the first black woman to fly over American soil. |
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This
month, as America commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Wright
brothers' first powered flight, East Texas is quietly remembering
another pioneer who set an aviation milestone.
Born at Atlanta
in Cass County, Bessie
Coleman was an unlikely trend-setter for her time. She was a woman,
a black and had none of the resources of others who followed the Wrights
into aviation history.
Bessie was the sixth of ten children in the Atlanta
home of George and Susan Coleman. The Colemans moved to Waxahachie
where George left the family, leaving his wife to raise Bessie and
three sisters. The family survived by picking cotton, doing laundry
and cooking for white households. But Bessie yearned for more. She
finished eight grades at a one-room school and attended a term at
a college in Oklahoma.
She was picking cotton when the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina, but in 1915, at the age of 23, she moved from Texas
to Chicago to live with a brother and pursue a chance "to amount to
something." Convinced she wanted to fly, she saved money to travel
to France for flying lessons at the Federation Aeronautique Internationale
and in 1921 she became the only black pilot in the world. A year later
she became the first black woman to fly over American soil.
Bessie soon became a role model, not only for blacks and women, but
for others who admired her tenacity and endurance.
She barnstormed, performed sky stunts and flew crop dusters to earn
money to establish her own flying school -- a dream that died with
her in 1926 when she crashed the first plane of her own, a $400 Jenny.
On April 30 in Jacksonville, Florida, she and her mechanic took the
Jenny up for a test flight. The aircraft malfunctioned and the mechanic,
who was piloting from the front seat, lost control. Bessie fell from
the open cockpit several hundred feet to her death.
More than 5,000 people attended her memorial services in Chicago and
another 10,000 filed past her coffin to pay their last respects.
Only after her death did Bessie receive the recognition she desired.
Her dream of a flying school for African Americans was fulfilled when
William J. Powell established the Bessie Coleman Aero club
in Los Angeles. Influenced by the Aero Club, hundreds of black aviators
-- including the Flying Blackbirds, the Flying Hobos,
and the Tuskegee Airmen -- continued to make Bessie's dream
a reality.
In 1977, more than fifty years after her death, women pilots in the
Chicago area established the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club.
The ensuing years brought additional accolades. Chicago Mayor Richard
Daley redesignated a road at O'Hare Airport as Bessie Coleman Drive
in 1990 and in 1995 the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in Bessie's
honor, commemorating "her singular accomplishment in becoming the
world's first African American pilot and, by definition, an American
legend."
In 2000, the little black girl from Atlanta
who dreamed of a better life was inducted into the Texas Aviation
Hall of Fame and, in Atlanta,
the main road to the town's airport also bears the name, Bessie Coleman
Drive. |
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