Born on January 26, 1892, in Atlanta, Texas, Bessie Coleman became the first African-American and Native American woman pilot in the United States. She grew up in a sharecropper’s family, her father George was Cherokee or Choctaw and part African-American and her mother Susan was an African-American. Being one of 13 children wasn’t easy back in those days. When Bessie was two, her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas.
At the age of six, she started attending a segregated school and every day she had to walk four miles to reach it. Bessie turned out to be an excellent math student and she didn’t have any trouble finishing all eight grades in school.
Luckily some people saw her potential and decided to help her. Those people were Robert S. Abbott, the founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and banker Jesse Binga. They motivated Bessie to go and study in France and they even sponsored her education and trip.
Coleman arrived in Paris on November 20, 1920, and she started immediately working on achieving her dream. The plane that she learned to fly in was called Nieuport 82 biplane, with a control mechanism described as follows, “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”. Bessie was a fast learner. Her hard work paid off and on June 15, 1921, she got her international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
After improving her flying skills with the help of some French ace pilots, Bessie returned to New York in September 1921 and immediately became a media sensation.
Upon returning to the United States, Bessie began her stunt flying career and took a stage name, “Queen Bess”. In the next five years, Bessie became on of the most popular stunt fliers in the country. Everybody was astonished by her capabilities and stunts. The first American airshow that she was part of happened at Curtiss Field on Long Island, near New York City, on September 3, 1922, during the veteran honoring of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I. This event was sponsored by Bessie’s old friend Robert S. Abbott and the Chicago Defender newspaper. Coleman was immediately described as “the greatest woman pilot in the world”.
Coleman died when she was only 34 years old, at the peak of her career. If it weren’t for that terrible accident, she would surely have become an even more amazing pilot.