By refusing to be held back by discrimination, both for her gender and her race, Bessie Coleman took aviation to new heights in its early days \u2013 did her utmost to ensure that other people of colour could follow in her footsteps. Jonny Wilkes delves into the life of the fearless female flyer <\/p>
While working as a manicurist in Chicago in 1919, twenty-something Bessie Coleman decided what she wanted to do with her life: fly. She had heard about heroic World War I aces and death defying aviators wowing crowds with their aerobatic antics, and desperately wanted to be part of it.<\/p>\n
The chances of her taking to the skies were extremely slim. For one thing, she was a woman; for another, she was black. But when her brother teased her by saying a black woman would never fly, Coleman\u2019s mind was made up. \u201cThat\u2019s it! You just called it for me!\u201d<\/p>\n
All she had was an insatiable motivation \u2013 she certainly didn\u2019t have money. Elizabeth Coleman was born, on 26 January 1892, into an impoverished family in Texas, the 10th of 13 children to African-American mother Susan and father George, who was part-Cherokee. They worked as sharecroppers and labourers, and a young \u2018Bessie\u2019 had to help pick cotton and walk for miles just to attend a one-room school. Although naturally bright and inquisitive, she could only afford one semester at university.<\/p>\n
Her move from Waxahachie, Texas, to Chicago came in the early stages of the Great Migration \u2013 when African-Americans left the South in their millions to find greater opportunities in the North \u2013 but racial prejudice in the US<\/a> could not so easily be escaped. In 1919, the city erupted into race riots<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet that same year, Coleman found hope in tales of aviation, especially of the female pilots in France that her brother saw while fighting in the war. It quickly became clear that he wasn\u2019t entirely wrong for thinking a black woman would never fly, given that his sister\u2019s many applications to flight schools were instantly dismissed.<\/p>\n \u201cI refused to take no for an answer,\u201d became Coleman\u2019s mantra.<\/p>\n If she could not learn in the US, she would head to France where the aviation scene was highly renowned, and more welcoming. To pay for the trip, she scrimped and saved from various jobs before securing the support of Robert Abbott, owner of the African American newspaper the Chicago Defender<\/em>. At night, she taught herself French.<\/p>\nHow did Bessie Coleman become a pilot?<\/h2>\n