Bessie Coleman: Daredevil Aviatrix

Bessie Coleman knew that becoming a pilot was her dream. Because she was a black woman, no American flight schools would admit her. Despite the obstacles, Bessie managed to become the first African-American woman in the world to earn a pilot's license.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to Blaine Chuck Reboarding and I'm Fair Dowdie. And
as Black History Month is drawing to a close and
Women's History Month is right around the corner, we thought

(00:22):
it would be nice to do an episode that kind
of bridges the gap between the two a little bit.
And it's also a great excuse to return to a
subject we really love but haven't touched on since last
spring's Mystery of st X episode, and that's Aviation. Of course,
this episode won't include many mysterious disappearances or Little Prince
impersonation Bin a Little Prince. It's one of my favorite

(00:45):
podcast moment. But that doesn't mean that the life of
this subject, Bessie Coleman, is any less fascinating, not at all.
Coleman was the first African American woman in the world
to earn a pilot license, and she was also the
first life African American pilot of either sex. According to
Flight Journal. She was a contemporary of Amelia Earhart and

(01:07):
in fact earned her pilot flights since a year before
Earhart did. Of course, she managed to do this in
the early nineteen twenties, during a time when most Americans,
even those in the black community, still felt that a
woman's place was in the home, not in the workplace,
and certainly not flying around in the sky. What's more,
segregation was still a big factor, and there weren't any

(01:29):
white flight instructors who were willing to take on Coleman
as a student. So we're going to be taking a
look at how Coleman overcame these obstacles to pursue her dream.
After all, if there weren't white flight instructors who were
willing to take her on, how did she learn to
fly because there weren't black flight in So, yeah, that's
going to be one of the mysteries we unveil, and
then we're going to take a look to it why

(01:51):
she wanted to learn to fly in the first place,
and how after becoming a pilot she used her position
to fight for equality for others of her race. But
to truly understand what Coleman was up against in pursuing
her dream of flying, you really have to go all
the way back to her childhood. She was born Elizabeth
Coleman on January eighteen, nine, two in Atlanta, Texas, and

(02:14):
she was one of thirteen children in a family of
poor sharecroppers. Her mother, Susan Coleman, was black, and her father,
George Coleman, was of mixed race, part of African American
and part Cherokee. Neither of Bessie's parents could read or write,
so in eighteen ninety four, George Coleman moved his family
to walk the Hatchie, Texas and bought a small plot

(02:34):
of land there to build a three room house. So
in their new town, the Coleman's earned a living by
picking cotton, and all the kids pitched in to to
help raise money for the family, but they also went
to school because their parents wanted a better life for them.
Of course, schools were segregated at the time, so Bessie
had to walk four miles every day to her school,

(02:54):
which was basically just a single room that handled all
eight grades that were offered. But despite those circumstances, that
long trip to school and the combined nature of the classroom,
Bessie's academic abilities really became clear even at a young age.
She was especially good at math, and she even used
her skills to make sure the foreman of the fields

(03:15):
her family worked and didn't cheat them when it was
time for them to get paid. But when Bessie was
somewhere in the age range of six to nine years old,
were seemed to differ on the exact timing of that
Her father left them. He felt that discrimination really limited
his opportunities for advancement in Texas, and so he wanted
to move to Indian Territory, where as we've talked about

(03:36):
on some previous podcasts, his native American ancestry would have
made him more of an equal citizen. But Susan Coleman
didn't want that life. She didn't want to be a
tough pioneer family, so she stayed behind with the kids
and supported the family on her own by working as
a cook and a housekeeper for a white family, which
was also tough, of course, I mean as you would

(03:58):
expect it to be. But meanwhile Bessie had to take
on the housekeeping duties with her mother away, working this
the day in her own halfhold, and take care of
her younger sisters while her mother was away, and often
she had a myth school to to do. All this,
which must have been hard for aspect of bright student.
She still had really big dreams, though, and Bessie's mother

(04:18):
encouraged that. According to an article in Flight Journal by
Dennis Morausei, Bessie's mom was known to say, if you
stay a mule, you'll never win the race. And she
used to have her kids copy the manners of the
white filmily that she worked for, and she talked to
them about the great achievements of African Americans, like a
book or T. Washington and Harriett Tabman. And it must

(04:39):
have made an impression because when Bessie completed all eight
grades in her one room schoolhouse, and that was all
that they offered, because they just expected, okay, exactly, we're
going to go work in the fields. Now. She graduated
in and at that point she knew that she wanted
more after that, she wanted to become something else. So
she had saved up some money by working as a

(05:01):
laundress this whole time, and and that year at the
age of eighteen, and she used the savings to enroll
in the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Lankston, Oklahoma
it's now Lankston University. But she only had enough money
to attend for one term, so as soon as that
was up, she had to go back home start doing
laundry and cleaning again to save up some more money.

(05:24):
So at that point it seemed like she wasn't quite
sure what her next move was going to be. I mean,
obviously that's a difficult scenario to maintain working saving money
than going for a for a term. It all changed though,
when her older brother Walter invited her to come and
live with him in Chicago, and she still had to
save up for a couple of years to make that

(05:44):
move possible. But at the age of twenty three, Bessie
headed up north. In Chicago was just a different world.
They had an entire area of the city, the South Side,
which was settled by mostly blacks, and there were just
more job opportunities in a war back in walksa Hatchie,
so Bessie enrolled in a beauty school and she ended
up becoming a manicurist at the White Sox Barbershop. A

(06:07):
few years after she moved up to Chicago, her mom
and sisters moved up there too, while her brother's Walter
and John, went off to France to fight in World
War One. By this time, African Americans were allowed to
serve in the military in segregated unit kind of an
update from our mass to fifty fourth episode. So nobody
seems to know exactly when Betsy became interested in flying.

(06:29):
It might have been as far back as walksa Hatchie,
and airplanes were, of course invented in nineteen o two
probably made a pretty big impression on most children around then.
But it might have also had something to do with
the use of airplane technology in World War One and
the advancements that were being made in their technology there
used at the time, and probably she had an interest

(06:51):
in World War One with her brother's away fighting, it
definitely seemed like airplanes were the wave of the future,
and she took an inch or at some point or another.
But regardless of how she got interested, by the end
of the war, flying had become Bessie's goal. Most sources
actually relate a story about how her older brother John,
who had just come home from the war, visited her

(07:13):
in the barbershop one day and kind of started taunting her,
sort of bragging about the women he had met in France,
saying that they were so beautiful and intelligent and some
of them could even fly planes, and he regaled her
with these stories of female pilots. Bessie supposedly responded, that's it.
You just called it for me. So that could have

(07:33):
been the moment when she knew for sure she wanted
to be a pilot, or maybe she just knew that
France was an option for her. They're probably not the
reaction her brother was expecting from his teasing, but either way,
it was probably right around that time that she started
to apply to American flight schools, except that she kept
on getting rejected from them. Some of the schools would
tell her they thought women shouldn't be flying at all

(07:55):
because it was too risky. But race very well might
have had something to you with it too. There were
no black flight instructors, there were no black flight schools
at the time. But Bessie did not quit. She did
not give up on this on this dream. She had
told one of her barbershop patrons, Robert Abbott, about her
dream to fly and the problem she was having making

(08:16):
it a reality. And Abbott was a pretty good guy
to to tell your problems too. He was pretty influential.
He was the editor of a black weekly newspaper called
The Chicago Defender. I think that's popped up in in
several episodes we've covered, but one of his biggest goals
was to quote uplift the race, and according to Jacqueline
McLean's profile of Bessie and Women with Wings, Abbott wanted

(08:40):
to help her achieve her goals because he thought it
would help prove what African Americans could accomplish. I mean,
if you're interested in uplifting the race, what better way
than to sponsor a pilot who can literally fly up
in a way because people can't say you can't do
something if you actually show it, and it's just a
powerful it's a powerful metaphor to two for what he

(09:01):
was trying to do, flying yes, taking flight. So when
Bessie passed on to Abbot what her brother had told
her about France, he of course encouraged her to pursue
flight school there. He was basically like, well, if no
one in America will take you, you gotta go somewhere else.
So at about age twenty eight, Bessie used for savings
to start taking French classes so she could learn the language.

(09:23):
She also applied for a passport and picked up an
extra job at a restaurant just to save up some
more money for school, and after applying to a few
French flight school she was finally accepted to the Kadron
Brothers School of Aviation in France. So Abbott did prove
to be a benefactor. True to his word. He helped
Bessie secure funds for school so she could cover tuition,

(09:45):
and in late nineteen twenties she headed off to France
to start a ten month flight course. So for about
the first seven months of her training Bessie simply took lesson.
She learned to fly in a French Newport Type eight
two by plane and according to the McLean's profile we mentioned,
during the lessons, a teacher would just sit in the

(10:06):
front seat working all the controls, and a student pilot
like Bessie would have to sit in the back seat
and you couldn't necessarily see the instructor from there or
even here the instructor because of course the engine was roaring,
So students just learned to fly by feeling the movements
of the controls, mimicking the instructor's motions, just really kind

(10:28):
of picking it up along the way. Then on June fifteenth,
at age twenty nine, Bessie earned her license from the
Federalition Aeronautique Internacial. As we mentioned earlier, she was the
first black woman in the world to earn a pilot's license,
and the f AI license in particular was so highly
regarded it was accepted by every country in the world.

(10:50):
So this was the license that you wanted. Coleman finished
up her program and returned home to the States that September,
where she was met by reporters from both black and
white newspapers who wanted to interview her. So pretty famous
at this point. And while in New York, she was
invited to see a Broadway musical with an all black
cast called Shuffle Along. She was the guest of honor

(11:11):
there and the performers gave her a silver cup and intermission.
And she also started to form some new pretty big
dreams about advancing the African American cause. I mean, now
that she had achieved this seemingly insurmountimal dream of of flying,
she had new goals and she started to think about
opening an aviation school for black people, And according to

(11:32):
McLean's profile, she said in an interview with The Chicago Defender, quote,
we must have aviators if we are to keep up
with the times. I shall never be satisfied until we
have men of the race who can fly. Do you
know you have never lived until you've flown. But of
course to open a school she would need some cash,
and at that moment, there really was no way for

(11:54):
her to make it in the nineteen twenties. After all,
there weren't any commercial airlines to work for and all
the oh there were some pilots who were working for
the postal service, they were pretty much all white night.
I mean, we've talked about that in the X episode,
exactly what he did working, carrying nail and doing that
sort of thing. So Bessie realized she would have to
make a living as an entertainer performing in air shows,

(12:16):
but she needed more training to do this because she
didn't really learn how to do stunts during her first
stint in flight school. Air show performers at this time
usually did things like loop the loops and barrel rolls
and having people parachute out of plane. So in February
nineteen two, Bessie went right back to France learned some tricks,
so she trained there for two months and went to

(12:37):
Germany to to train for ten more weeks. And while
she was there, she was filmed flying over Berlin. She
returned to the United States in August nineteen two, and
her old friend and benefactor, Robert Abbott, who was still
one of her biggest supporters, immediately scheduled an air show
on Long Island that would feature her talents. And the

(12:58):
show took place Labor Day, September three, nineteen at Curtiss Field,
and according to Encyclopedia Britannica, this was the first public
flight by an African American woman in America. But the
people who she porrowed a plane from for this special
occasion wouldn't allow her to do stunt, so she just

(13:18):
kind of had to fly around still, though a huge
crowd of people turned out to see her and to
see this remarkable feat of African American woman pilot. After that,
she did another exhibition at Checkerboard Field in Chicago, and
there she did get to show off her acrobatic flying techniques,
including loops, figure eights, and some spine tingling dips and dives,

(13:42):
and the audience was really thrilled by it. I mean,
I think at one point I read an account where
one of the moves she did was a dive that
almost made it look as if the plane were going
out of control. So the audience was really shocked. I
mean they thought something was going wrong, and then kind
of at the last second, she pulled up up and
and she was fine, and they were all really thrilled
by that. So her stunts earned her the nickname Queen

(14:02):
Bess Daredevil a via tricks, and also Brave Bessie. So
Abbott was the one who first started calling her Queen Bess,
and that's where that case couldn't promote his his investment
a little bit. Indeed, So Bessie was pretty famous, as
you can imagine by this point. And not long after
that Chicago show with all of the exciting stunts, the

(14:22):
African American Seminal Film producing company got in touch with
her about starring in a movie based on her life
and at her accomplishments, called Shadow and Sunshine. Bessie initially
agreed she signed on, but right from the beginning the
script called for her to dress in rags and represent

(14:42):
this poor, uneducated girl coming to the big city, which
of course hadn't been her situation at all. She had
worked hard to accomplish what she could in Texas and
and then made her way to Chicago. She didn't like
the way that the story in general, though portrayed black woman.
She thought it made people black people in general look ignorant.
So she quit. And quitting this project really meant she

(15:06):
lost the support of the black entertainment community, dropping out
so suddenly. And I mean, one can't help but wonder
if she had done this movie, would her name be
better known today? That's true, I didn't think about that.
But she still needed money after this. She didn't have
the support of the entertainment community, but she still needed
some cash to save but for her aviation school. I mean,

(15:26):
besides the fact that she just needed some money to
live as well. And I mean we mentioned before her
borrowing planes, she still didn't have a plane of her own,
so every time she performed somewhere, she had to rely
on somebody else to learn her a plane. So Bestie
needed to find some gigs fast, and she thought she
found a really good one in Oakland, California. In early nine.
She made a deal with the Coast Tire and Rubber

(15:48):
company that was based there, and they offered to buy
her a plane if she would agree to drop ads
for them from a plane during an air show, and
the show took place February four nine, but it didn't
exactly go as planned. It seemed like it was off
to a good start. Bessie was for the first time
flying her own plane, which was a Curtis j N four,

(16:08):
better known as a Jenny. It was a used plane,
though she couldn't afford a brand new plane, so it
was leftover from World War One and wasn't in the
best condition. Soon after she took off that day, the
plane's motor stalled and it fell three hundred feet and crashed.
Bessie was okay, but she was really badly injured. She
had a broken leg, fractured ribs, and internal injuries. But

(16:31):
what probably surprises me the most about this whole story
is that, rather than just being shocked and concerned, the audience,
according to McLean's profile, was really angry that they hadn't
gotten the show that they came to see, and they
asked for their money back. That is pretty surprising. I mean,
you would think okay, shows over and I'm worried the

(16:51):
pilot didn't even make it, or at least just horror,
you know, and I don't know, yeah, concerned for another
still hoping for some barrel rolls and and seeing all
the tricks that you paid for. But with a long
road to recovery ahead of her, and of course her
plane demolished. Not to mention no funds anymore, Bessie had

(17:12):
to go home to Chicago to recoup again. That she
didn't let that set back, I mean, breaking her leg
keep her down. She told her friends, tell them that
as soon as I can walk, I'm going to fly.
About a year later, she made good on that. She
was fully recovered, and she planned a tour of lectures
and air shows across Texas which took her to Houston,
San Antonio, Dallas, and her old hometown of Waxahatchie. And

(17:35):
the tour was a big success, even though Bessie drew
some pretty serious lines in the stand along the way.
For example, right before performing in Waxahatchie, she learned that
black audience members were required to use a separate entrance
to the grounds from their white counterparts, so Bessie refused
to fly unless everyone got to use the same entrance.
So this was taking a really big risk on her

(17:58):
part because she needed the money. She needed that gig.
But surprisingly the event organizers complied with her requests because
after all of the show did not take place, they
weren't going to make any money off of it either.
In a way, again, it reminds me of Satil Page.
I think everything reminds me of Satil Page, but his
his putting his foot down on certain issues about how

(18:20):
events were segregated. Bessie managed to make enough money though
off of that Texas tour to save a little cash
and put another down payment on a Jenny the plane
that she had crashed in originally hoping to get a
better version this time after a brief visit to Chicago
at the end of she set off again for another tour,

(18:42):
this time a tour of the Southeast, during which she
lectured at churches and theaters and schools and both Georgia
and Florida. And there was another incident at the Chamber
of Commerce Flower Show in Orlando, Florida. Bessy was supposed
to perform, and then she found out that the event
was advertised for White's ownly, again she refused to perform
unless blocks were allowed in, and again the organizers relented.

(19:06):
I guess when it came down to making money or
standing on their questionable principles money. Yeah. So during these
Southeastern tours, Bessie also met Edwin M. Beamon, who was
the heir to the Beamon Chewing Your Unfortune. He helped
her pay off the Jenny plane she'd started to buy
back in Dallas, and she planned to use that plane

(19:29):
to perform a very special trick, a parachute jump at
the Negro Welfare League field day in Jacksonville, Florida. So
she needed a partner for this. She got a white
pilot mechanic named William Wills to fly the plane over
from Dallas to Jacksonville, and he had to make two
emergency landings along the way because the plane kept on

(19:51):
experiencing engine problems. Again, this was not a new plane,
it was the best Bestie could afford um and she
was having to make do. So Will's managed to get
the plane to Jacksonville and then he worked on the
mechanical issue. By the morning of April he told Bessie
that the plane was ready to fly. The air show

(20:12):
was actually scheduled for the next day, but Bessie wanted
to take the plane up to fly over the jump
site and kind of get a feel for how things
were going to go on the day of just to
be prepared. So they took off and Will's was up
front since he would be flying the plane during the
actual jump, and Bessie was in the rear cockpit. She
didn't have her seatbelt fastened because she was only around

(20:33):
five ft three ish inches tall, and she wouldn't be
able to lean over the side of the plane and
see the ground if she was strapped in, so it
would kind of defeat the purpose of going out in
the first place. So they flew out, and they circled
the area where the jump was going to take place,
and then they rose to about three thousand, five hundred feet.
As they started to head back, they were traveling along
at that elevation and an eighty miles per hour, and

(20:54):
suddenly the plane nos dived at about one thousand feet,
it went into a tailspin, and then at five hundred
feet it completely flipped over, throwing Bessie out of the
plane and the fall killed her. Wills, meanwhile, tried to
write the plane, but it crashed about one thousand feet
from where Coleman landed, and he too was killed in

(21:14):
the crash, and an investigation that followed revealed that the
accident had been caused by a wrench that was left
in the engine and had gotten all jammed up in
the gear. So memorial services were held for Coleman in
both Jackson Bill in Orlando, and on May five, her
remains were returned to Chicago. The Illinois Central Train station

(21:36):
was apparently packed with mourners upon her arrival, and at
the service that was held for her at Pilgrim Baptist
Church in Chicago, about ten thousand people showed up to
pay their respects. Bessie Coleman was buried in Lincoln Cemetery.
At her grave, there's a five foot high monument that
has a photo of her on it, all dressed up
in her leather flight gear that she preferred, and she

(21:58):
standing in front of her planes. Show you guys can
google pictures of her two. She's actually really beautiful and
her outfits are cool to look at, and it's just
neat to look at because I didn't know about her
before I researched this podcast. It was neat to just
look at her face. It looks kind of intense. Some
of those photos twenties era aviation costumes are always pretty

(22:18):
cool looking indeed, but not everyone really celebrated or paid
their respects to Bessie after her death. White newspapers at
the time, when they recounted the crash, seemed to focus
more on Wills, implying that he was teaching Bessie how
to fly and the situation flight isn't it it is?
And sometimes they didn't even refer to Bessie by name,
calling her simply the woman the Chicago Defender, though of

(22:42):
course I knew what she truly was, and wrote though
with the crashing of the plane, life ceased for Bessie Coleman,
enough members of the race have been inspired by her
courage to carry on in the field of aviation. Whatever
is accomplished by members of the Race and aviation will
stand as a memorial to Ms. Coleman. And and this
reminded me a little bit of the Tuskegee Airman upisode

(23:04):
I think Candice and Jane did a while back, because there,
of course the most famous African American aviators. And I
guess since neither of us had heard of Bethie Coleman before,
it is interesting to think of her as a as
a memorial almost too till later aviators. Yeah, I though
a lot of people don't know her story today. I

(23:24):
mean compared to Amelia Earharts, who, as we mentioned, was
a contemporary of hers, she has been remembered in that
way that the Chicago's frender mentioned he has an inspiration,
especially to others of her race and her gender. In
the nineteen thirties, black entrepreneur William J. Powell founded the
Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs to encourage more African Americans to

(23:44):
participate in flying, and then in nineteen seventy seven, a
group of female black pilots founded the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club.
She ofso has a few tributes back in Chicago. In
nineteen ninety a road at O'Hare Airport was renamed Bessie
Coleman Drive. In in nine Chicago's mayor declared may Second
Bessie Coleman Day. So she still remains an inspiration for

(24:08):
aviators and even just people who want equality. There's a
great quote of hers that I wanted to share before
we finish off this episode, and it's the sky is
the only place. There is no prejudice up there. Everyone
is equal, everyone is free. That is a really great quote,
and I think it's also interesting to consider her not
just an inspiration for African American aviators or women, but

(24:33):
just somebody who went out and accomplished things that she
raised money for her French lessons and moved abroad, found
a school that would teach her what she was trying
to learn. I mean, that's inspirational, gender and race aside. Yeah,
and she went through a lot to get there. I mean,
I think people tend to get discouraged sometimes when they
get off track of what they want to do, like, oh,

(24:53):
I have to work this other job. But she worked
as a laundress and as a manicurist and all kind
ends of random things, you know, worked in a restaurant,
and eventually, at the age of thirty, finally got to
do which she was trying to go. So if you
want to suggest any other similarly inspirational people to us,
you can always suggest topics at History Podcast at Discovery

(25:17):
dot com. We're also on Twitter and missed in History,
and we're on Facebook. And if you want to learn
a little bit more about the topic we discussed today,
which was flight, we have an article on our website
called what was Man's first attempt at Flight? And you
can find that by searching on our homepage at www.
Dot how Stuff Works at dot com. Be sure to

(25:41):
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