Bessie Coleman: The Texas Manicurist Who Became America's First Black Woman Pilot
Updated: 3 days ago
In 1915 Bessie Coleman was filing nails in a Chicago barbershop. Six years later she was holding an international pilot's licence, earned in France because not one flight school in America would teach a Black woman to fly.
She went on to loop the loop in front of thousands, refuse to perform for segregated gates and turn down a film role she found demeaning. She was dead at 34. This is the full story of Queen Bess.
Quick Answers
Who was Bessie Coleman? An American stunt pilot and the first African American woman to earn a pilot's licence, in 1921. She was also of Native American descent.
When was she born? 26 January 1892, in Atlanta, Texas.
Where did she learn to fly? At the Caudron Brothers' School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France, after American schools refused to teach her.
How did she die? She was thrown from her plane during a practice flight in Jacksonville, Florida, on 30 April 1926.
What was her nickname? Queen Bess, and sometimes Brave Bessie.
Growing Up in the Texas Cotton Fields
Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman was born on 26 January 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, the twelfth of 13 children. Her parents, George and Susan Coleman, were sharecroppers. The family had both African American and Native American roots. They moved to Waxahachie when Bessie was small.
Her mother, a former slave who couldn't read herself, borrowed books so Bessie could learn. Bessie walked four miles to a one-room segregated school, turned out to be brilliant at maths and finished all eight grades, spending the rest of her time picking cotton. When she was about nine, her father left for Oklahoma to get away from the racism of Texas. The rest of the family stayed behind.
She later scraped together enough to enrol at what's now Langston University in Oklahoma, but the money ran out after a single term and she went home.
The Best Manicurist in Black Chicago
In 1915, aged 23, Bessie moved to Chicago to live with her brothers. She trained at the Burnham School of Beauty Culture and got a job as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop on the South Side. She was good at it, too. In 1916 she won a contest naming her the best manicurist in Black Chicago.
Beauty work was one of the few ways a Black woman could earn real independence back then, and Bessie used it to save. She took a second job on top to put even more money away.
The barbershop was also where she first heard stories about the pilots of the First World War. Her brother John, who'd served in France, liked to wind her up about it. The Cradle of Aviation Museum records exactly what he said: "I know something that French women do that you'll never do…fly!" She took it as a dare.
Why Bessie Coleman Learned to Fly in France
Every American flight school she tried turned her down, because she was Black and because she was a woman. Help came from Robert Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender, the country's leading Black newspaper. He told her to try Europe instead, and he and the banker Jesse Binga put money behind her.
So she learned French at the Berlitz school and in late 1920 she sailed for Paris. She enrolled at the Caudron Brothers' School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, on the Somme estuary, where she was the only student of colour in her class. On 15 June 1921 the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale awarded her its pilot's licence. She was the first African American woman to earn one, and the first African American of either sex to hold an international pilot's licence.
Only a fortnight earlier, white mobs had destroyed the Black district of Greenwood in the Tulsa race massacre, in the same state her father had moved to for a better life.
She didn't stop at the licence. She stayed on in Europe for extra training, travelling to the Netherlands and Germany, where she met the aircraft designer Anthony Fokker and trained with one of his pilots.
Queen Bess Takes to the Skies
Bessie came home in September 1921 to a media frenzy. A year later, in September 1922, she gave her first American air show at Curtiss Field on Long Island. It was held in honour of the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment, the Harlem Hellfighters of the First World War, and the Defender billed her as the world's greatest woman flier.
From there she became a full-time barnstormer, flying Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplanes at shows across the country, including the Checkerboard Airdrome in Chicago, which is now Midway Airport. Crowds came for her loop-the-loops, figure eights and dives that skimmed the ground. They called her Queen Bess and Brave Bessie.
It wasn't all smooth flying. In February 1923 she crashed in California, breaking a leg and cracking several ribs, and it took her a long time to recover and rebuild her bookings.
No Uncle Tom Stuff
Fame brought offers. The Black-owned Seminole Film Company offered her the lead in a feature called Shadow and Sunshine, with more than 100 Black extras lined up. She said yes, then found out her character would first appear on screen in rags. She walked away, and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum records her parting shot: "No Uncle Tom stuff for me!"
Turning it down cost her. She was criticised for it, her film career was over before it started and some Black fairs stopped booking her. She didn't budge.
Her real ambition was a flying school for Black Americans. She wanted, in her own words, "to make Uncle Tom's cabin into a hangar."
Refusing to Fly for Segregated Crowds
Bessie had a simple rule: she wouldn't perform anywhere Black and white spectators had to come in through different gates. In 1925 she finally took her show home to Texas. On 19 June, Juneteenth, exactly 60 years after Union troops brought word of emancipation to Texas, she flew in Houston in front of a crowd that was still seated by race but cheered together.
Then came Waxahachie, her home town. When she found out Black spectators were expected to use a separate entrance, she refused to fly. The promoters gave in and opened one gate for everyone, though people were still seated separately once inside. It was a partial win, but it was hers.
How Bessie Coleman Died
By 1926 Bessie was raising money for her flying school and had bought a new Curtiss biplane in Jacksonville, Florida, despite warnings from family and friends.
On 30 April she went up for a practice flight ahead of a show, with her mechanic and publicity agent William Wills at the controls. She sat in the other seat with her seatbelt undone so she could lean out and scout the ground for a parachute jump she planned to make. About ten minutes in, the plane went into a dive and didn't pull out, spinning instead. Bessie was thrown out and killed. Wills died when the plane came down.
Accounts disagree on how high she was when she fell, with figures ranging from about 500 feet to 2,000 feet. What investigators found was clear enough: a loose wrench had slipped into the gearbox and jammed the controls. She was 34.
Funerals in Three Cities
More than 5,000 mourners turned out in Jacksonville on 2 May 1926, and thousands more attended a service in Orlando. Her body was then taken to Chicago, where over 10,000 people filed past her coffin. The journalist and campaigner Ida B. Wells gave the eulogy, and Bessie was buried at Lincoln Cemetery.
The white press barely noticed. The New York Times didn't run her obituary until 2019, as part of its Overlooked series.
Bessie Coleman's Legacy
Black aviators picked up where she left off. Aero clubs sprang up in her name, and in September 1931 they staged the first all-Black air show in America, drawing more than 15,000 spectators. That same year, pilots began flying over her grave in tribute. She's credited with inspiring generations of Black pilots, including the Tuskegee Airmen.
In 1992 Mae Jemison became the first African American woman in space aboard the shuttle Endeavour, and she took a photo of Bessie with her. The US Postal Service put Bessie on a stamp in 1995. In 2023 she became the sixth woman featured in the US Mint's American Women Quarters series, shown suiting up for a flight.
She wasn't the only Bessie who refused to stay where she'd been put. Just a few years after her death, Bessie Stringfield became the first Black woman to ride a motorcycle solo across America, sleeping at filling stations when hotels turned her away. Bessie wasn't the only woman of her era breaking into aviation either. In the 1930s Sarla Thukral became one of India's first women pilots.
Bessie never got her flying school. But she gave everyone watching from those segregated stands proof that a sharecropper's daughter from Texas could fly.
Suggested Reading
Want more on Queen Bess and the Black pilots who followed her? These are worth a look.
Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator by Doris L. Rich. The go-to biography, pieced together from old newspapers and the people who knew her.
Fly High! The Story of Bessie Coleman by Louise Borden and Mary Kay Kroeger. A beautifully illustrated picture book that's perfect for introducing younger readers to her story.
Black Wings: Courageous Stories of African Americans in Aviation and Space History by Von Hardesty. The bigger picture, from Bessie through the Tuskegee Airmen to the astronauts who came after.
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Sources
Bessie Coleman: Five Stories You May Not Know, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
No Uncle Tom Stuff: Reflecting on Juneteenth and Bessie Coleman, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Bessie Coleman, Cradle of Aviation Museum
Bessie Coleman: Woman who dared to dream made aviation history, US Air Force
Bessie Coleman Quarter, United States Mint
Bessie Coleman, Women in Texas History
