Parkland College

2011

Bessie Coleman

Honors Project; Article 3

Kelley Heaney

[Type the company address]

This is the story a woman who lived before her time, doing things that women weren't supposed to be able to do. The fact that she was black made the struggle to break out of the stereotypes of women in the 1920's that much more difficult. At that time, American women were expected to stay home to take care of the children and the house. Skirts and hair were still worn long and education was short. But things were changing and some women wanted to break the molds. This was the age of flappers, hair bobs, race riots, and prohibition. It was also the early years of aviation, with some planes still built out of wood with open cockpits and few safety features.

World War I had done a great deal to advance plane manufacturing, particularly with the JN-4, also known as a "Jenny". This was a two seat, bi-plane, which means it had two sets of horizontal wings coming off the body. "The plane's slow speed and stability made it ideal for stunt flying and aerobatic displays. Some were still flying into the 1930s," states the website thepaperairplanecompany.com. Many returning war pilots started performing for large crowds in air shows, doing daring stunt flying and even wing walking. Some daredevils dangled under the plane by a rope in their mouth. "It was a dangerous life. Struts broke into pieces, engines failed, wing fabric ripped, and landing wheels collapsed. Quite a few would-be pilots never made a second flight," reads wingsoverkansas.com.

This was the world Bessie Coleman wanted to join. According to centennialofflight.gov, she was of mixed African American and Native American heritage. Born in Texas, in 1892, to sharecroppers, she was the tenth of thirteen children. In 1901 her father left the family to return to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), shortly after which her older brothers also left, leaving her mother with four daughters under the age of nine, according to website lkwdpl.org. As the oldest of the four, Bessie helped with the girls and the household chores while her mother worked as a cook and housekeeper. The young girl could read and write and was good at math. She read many books about successful Afro-American people like Harriet Tubman and Booker T. Washington and helped with the bookkeeping for the family's finances. Somehow, she managed to finish high school while caring for her sisters, and helping her mother earn money taking in laundry, saving what she could. She also managed to attend college with her savings, but only for one semester since that was all she could afford, reads centennialofflight.gov. In 1915, she joined her brothers in Chicago. According to PBS.org, one brother, John, a WWI veteran, would taunt her about how much better French women were than American women, saying that they could even fly airplanes. In fact, the first woman in the world to achieve a pilot's license was a French baroness.

Coleman, tired of listening to the taunts of her brother, applied to aviation schools in the United States, and was turned down by all on the ground of being black and being a woman. Other American women had been able to achieve a license, the first being Harriet Quimby in 1911 at an aviation school in New York. Coleman, working as a manicurist at Chicago's White Sox Barbershop, became acquainted with many wealthy black men, including Robert Abbott, founder of the popular black newspaper, the Chicago Defender.

Robert Abbott was one of the only self-made black millionaires in the States during the 1920's. "Abbott, captivated by the thought of a black woman pilot, did some investigating for Coleman and found that the French still possessed a kind of ‘aeromania' and were more liberal in their attitudes toward women and ‘people of color,'" avows website wingsoverkansas.com. He and some of his friends helped Bessie to pay for French lessons. Bessie also worked hard saving money to help with the expenses giving up her job as a manicurist and taking a better paying position as a chili house manager.

In November, 1920, Coleman boarded a ship bound for France where she was signed up to take a 10 month flying course. "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," according to PBS.org.  She finished the course in seven months to become the first African American person to attain a pilot's license. But, she soon realized that the only way to make any money as a pilot would be to do stunt flying, which was very popular following World War One.

Barnstormers and flying circuses were the place for aviators to shine, performing death defying feats. Coleman returned to France to take advanced lessons in aerobatics after once again checking American schools and being rejected. Upon her return to the States, in August, 1922, Coleman needed to create publicity about her flying. "She created an exciting image of herself with a military style uniform and an eloquence that belied her background," maintains website BessieColeman.com.

Her first air show was in New York and was sponsored by Robert Abbott and the Chicago Defender paper, on September 2, 1922. Trying to raise money to buy her own plane, Coleman also worked at other various jobs including giving flying lessons. Unfortunately, during her first lesson, the plane crashed and she spent months in the hospital recovering from injuries. In addition, she gave lectures to encourage others, especially black women, to pursue their dreams and she revealed a goal of opening her own aviation school focused on training black pilots. This was not to be. Often known now as "Queen Bess," she did try to use her celebrity status to instigate a change in race relations by insisting that the main gate at her shows not be segregated, so that blacks and whites were admitted equally.

While preparing for a 1926 show in Jacksonville, FL, where she was to be the star attraction, she was peering over the side of the plane's open cockpit, surveying the ground below in preparation for a parachute jump in the area. Due to the fact that she was too small to see properly, she had unfastened her seat belt for a better view. With her mechanic flying, the plane suddenly accelerated and flipped over. It was later determined that a screwdriver had shifted and become stuck in the gear control box causing the problem. When the plane flipped Coleman, of course, fell to her death. The plane crashed nearby also killing the mechanic.

She had been flying for five years and during that time had become an inspiration to many. According to BessieColeman.com, three services were held for her, one in Jacksonville, Orlando and finally in Chicago. The Chicago memorial service, before the arrival of her body, was attended by 5000 mourners. When the coffin arrived, 10,000 filed past it and thousands more attended the actual funeral. She was buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Chicago. 

The biggest honors were yet to come for the young black woman who, according to lkwdpl.org, always dreamed of "amounting to something." In 1929, Lt. William J. Powell founded the Bessie Coleman Aero Club, an aviation school in Los Angeles. He also wrote a book, Black Wings, which he dedicated to her in 1934. The Challenger Pilots Association of Chicago, Chicago's first black flying club, did a flyover on the anniversary of her death in 1931. In 1978, Chicago region women pilots founded the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club. A road near the O'Hare Airport in Chicago was renamed Bessie Coleman Drive in 1990 and declared May 2 Bessie Coleman day in 1992. The US Postal Department in 1995 issued a Bessie Coleman stamp and in 2000 she was inducted into the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame. The National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, inducted her in 2006.

Bibliography:

www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/cole-bes.htm

www.bessiecoleman.com

www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/coleman_b.htm

www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flygirls/peopleevents/pandeAMEX02.html

http://www.thepaperairplanecompany.com/curtiss_jenny_jn4.html

www.ninety-nines.org/index.cfm/bessie_coleman.htm

www.earlyaviators.com/ecoleman.htm

www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Explorers_Record_Setters_and_Daredevils/Coleman/EX11.htm

www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/abbott.html

http://www.wingsoverkansas.com/bonnie/article.asp?id=511