August 18, 2018 • 26 mins
Today revisits an episode from Sarah and Deblina about Bessie Coleman, who dreamed of becoming a pilot. 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
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everybody, and Happy Saturday. Coming up this week on
the show, we have an episode in which we briefly
mentioned pilot Bessie Coleman, who was the first African American
woman to get a pilot's license. Back in previous hosts
Sarah and Bablina did an episode on her, so we
are sharing that episode today and it is also a
(00:21):
little taste of something that will be coming up on
the show in one of our new episodes this week,
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blame a Choko reboarding and I'm fair Dudie.
(00:43):
And as Black History Month is drawing to a close
and Women's History Month is right around the corner, we
thought 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
Mystery of st X episode, and that's aviation. Of course,
(01:04):
this episode won't include many mysterious disappearances or Little Prince impersonation.
Felina's Little Prince voice one of my favorite podcasts moments.
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
(01:24):
earn a pilot's license, and she was also the first
licensed African American pilot of either sex. According to Flight Journal,
she was a contemporary of Amelia Earhart and in fact
earned her pilot's license 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
(01:45):
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 white flight instructors who
were willing to take on Coleman as a student. So
we're gonna be taking a look at how Coleman overcame
these obstacles to pursue her dream. After all, if there
(02:07):
weren't white flight instructors who were willing to take her on,
how did she learn to fly? Because there weren't black
flighting chatter. So, yeah, that's going to be the one
of the mysteries we enveil, and then we're gonna take
a look to it. Why 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
(02:30):
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 in Atlanta, Texas,
and 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 African
(02:50):
American and part Cherokee. Neither of Bessie's parents could read
her write, so in eighteen ninety four, George Coleman moved
his family to walk the Hatchiet, Texas, and bought a
small plot of land there to build a three room house.
So in their new town, the Colemans earned a living
by picking cotton, and all the kids pitched in to
to help raise money for the family, but they also
(03:12):
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, 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
(03:33):
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 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, sources seemed to differ on the
exact timing of that her father left them. He felt
(03:56):
that discrimination really limited his opportunities for advancement in Texas, Sin,
so he wanted to move to Indian Territory, where as
we've talked about 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
(04:17):
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 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 household, and take
care of her younger sisters while her mother was away,
and often she had to miss school to to do
(04:40):
all this, which must have been hard for such a
bright student. She still had really big dreams, though, and
Bessie's mother encouraged that. According to an article in Flight
Journal by Dennis Morausie, 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 family that she worked for, and she
(05:00):
talked to them about the great achievements of African Americans,
like a book or T. Washington and Harriett Tabman. And
it must 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,
work exactly, We're going to go work in the fields now.
She graduated in nineteen and at that point she knew
(05:22):
that she wanted more after that, she wanted to become
something else. So she had saved up some money by
working as a laundress this whole time, and in that year,
at the age of eighteen, 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
(05:42):
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.
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 maintainane working saving money
than going for for a term. It all changed, though,
(06:04):
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
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
(06:26):
more job opportunities and their were back in Waxahatchie, so
Bessie enrolled in a beauty school and she ended up
becoming a manicurist at the White Sox Barbershop. A 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
(06:49):
our Massachusetts fifty four episode. So nobody seems to know
exactly when Bessie became interested in flying. It might have
been as far back as Walksahatchie, 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
(07:10):
airplane technology in World War One and the advancements that
were being made in their technology their use at the time,
and probably she had an interest 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
interest at some point or another, but regardless of how
she got interested, by the end of the war, flying
(07:32):
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 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
(07:53):
stories of female pilots. Bessie supposedly responded, that's it. You
just called it for me, So that could have 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
(08:14):
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
because it was too risky, but race very well might
have had something to do 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
(08:35):
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
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
(08:56):
several episodes we've covered, But one of his biggest goal
was to quote uplift the race, and according to Jacqueline
McLean's profile of Bessie in Women with Wings, Abbott wanted
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
(09:16):
than to sponsor a pilot who can literally fly up
in a way, Yeah, because people can't say you can't
do something if you actually show it to it's just
a powerful it's a powerful metaphor for too. For what
he was trying to do, flying, yes, taking flight. So
(09:39):
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. She also applied for a passport and
(10:00):
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 of benefactor. True to his word.
He helped Bessie secure funds for school so she could
cover tuition, and in late nineteen twenties she headed off
(10:22):
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 biplane, and according to the McLean's
profile we mentioned, during the lessons a teacher would just
sit in the front seat working all the controls and
(10:43):
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 men, the king,
the instructor's motions, just really kind of picking it up
(11:04):
along the way. Then, on June fifteenth one, at age
twenty nine, Bessie earned her license from the Federation Aeronautique Internacional.
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. So this
(11:25):
is 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 there
(11:46):
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 this seemingly intermounimal dream of
of flying, she had new goals and she started to
think about opening an aviation school for black people, and
according to McLean's profile, she said, in an interview with
(12:10):
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 have flown. But of course to open a school,
she would need some cash, and at that moment, there
really was no way for her to make it in
the nineteen twenties. After all, there weren't any commercial airlines
(12:33):
to work for, and although there were some pilots who
are working for the postal service, they were pretty much
all white man. I mean, we've talked about that in
the Saint 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, but she needed more training to
do this because she didn't really learn how to do
(12:55):
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 Germany to to train for ten
more weeks, and while she was there she was filmed
(13:17):
flying over Berlin. She returned to the United States in
August nineteen twenty 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 show took place Labor Day,
September three, nineteen two, at Curtis Field, and according to
(13:38):
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 stunts, so she just kind of had
to fly around still, though a huge crowd of people
turned out to see her and and see this remarkable
(14:01):
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, and
the audience was really thrilled by it. I mean, I
think at one point I read an account where one
(14:21):
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 yep and and
she was fine, and they were all really thrilled by that.
So her stunts earned her the nickname Queen Bess Daredevil
a via trix and also Brave Bessie. So Abbott was
(14:42):
the one who first started calling her Queen Bess, and
that's where that is going to 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
African American Seminal Film producing company got in touch with
her about starring in a movie based on her life
(15:04):
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 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
(15:26):
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
lost the support of the black entertainment community, dropping out
so suddenly, and I mean, one can't help but wonder
(15:47):
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 say, but for her aviation school. I mean,
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,
(16:08):
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
nineteen three. She made a deal with the Coast Tire
and Rubber 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.
(16:30):
And the show took place February fourth, ninety three, 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, better known as a Jenny. It was
a used plane, though she couldn't afford a brand new plane,
so I was left over from World War One and
(16:50):
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 what probably surprises me the most
about this whole story is that rather than just being
(17:11):
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 pilot didn't even make
it or at least just horror, you know, And I
don't know. Yeah, I'm concerned for another hoping for some
(17:34):
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 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,
(17:56):
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 the tour was a big success,
even though Bessie drew some pretty serious lines in the
sand along the way. For example, right before performing in Waxahatchie,
(18:19):
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 part because she needed the money she
needed that gig. But surprisingly the event organizers complied with
(18:39):
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 Saturl Page,
but his his putting his foot down on certain issues
about how events were segregated. Bessie managed to make enough
money though off of that Texas tour to save a
(19:02):
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
(19:23):
for another tour, 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.
Bessie was supposed to perform, and then she found out
that the event was advertised for whites only. Again she
(19:43):
refused to perform unless blacks were allowed in, and again
the organizers relented. I guess when it came down to
making money or standing on their questionable principles. Yeah. So
during these Southeastern tours, Bessie also met Edwin M. Beaman,
who was the heir to the Beaman chewing Roo. Unfortune,
(20:05):
he helped her pay off the Jenny plane she'd started
to buy back in Dallas, and she planned to use
that plane 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
(20:26):
over from Dallas to Jacksonville, and he had to make
two emergency landings along the way because the plane kept
on experiencing engine problems. Again, this was not a new plane,
it was the best Bessie 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 thirti n he
(20:50):
told Bessie that the plane was ready to fly. The
air show 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 a day of
just be prepared 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.
(21:11):
She didn't have her seatbelt fastened because she was only
around 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 were strapped in, so
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
(21:32):
along at that elevation and an eighty miles per hour,
and suddenly the plane nos dived at about one thousand feet,
it went into a tailspin, and then at five dred
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
(21:53):
from where Coleman landed, and he too was killed in
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 Jacksonville in Orlando, and on May five, her remains
(22:13):
were returned to Chicago. The Illinois Central Train station 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
(22:35):
a photo of her on it, all dressed up in
her leather flight gear that she preferred, and she's standing
in front of her plane, so you guys can google
pictures over too. 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. I thought it was neat to just
look at her face. It looks kind of intense. Some
(22:57):
of those photos twenties era aviation cost hims are always
pretty 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?
(23:17):
And sometimes they didn't even refer to Bessie by name,
calling her simply the woman. The Chicago Defender, though, of course,
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
(23:40):
as a memorial to Miss Coleman. And this reminded me
a little bit of the Tuskegee Airman episode. 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 Bessie Coleman before,
it is interesting to think of her as as a
(24:00):
memorial almost too till later aviators. Yeah, and though a
lot of people don't know her story today, I 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 under mentioned as 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
(24:24):
Clubs to encourage more African Americans to participate in flying,
and then in nineteen seventy seven, a group of female
black pilots founded the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club. She also
has a few tributes back in Chicago In nineteen ninety,
a road at O'Hare Airport was renamed Bessie Coleman Drive,
and in nineteen nine two, Chicago's mayor declared may Second
(24:46):
Bessie Coleman Day. So she still remains an inspiration for
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.
(25:07):
And I think it's also interesting to consider her not
just an inspiration for African American aviators or women, but
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,
(25:29):
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,
I have to work this other job. But she worked
as a laundress and as a manicurist and did all
kinds of random things. You know, worked in a restaurant
and eventually, at the age of thirty, finally got to
do which where she was trying to. Thank you so
(25:53):
much for joining us for this Saturday classic. Since this
is out of the archive, if you heard an email
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so here is our current contact information. We are at
history Podcasts at how stuff works dot com, and then
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(26:14):
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Thanks again for listening. For more on this and thousands
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Hi everybody, and Happy Saturday. Coming up this week on
the show, we have an episode in which we briefly
mentioned pilot Bessie Coleman, who was the first African American
woman to get a pilot's license. Back in previous hosts
Sarah and Bablina did an episode on her, so we
are sharing that episode today and it is also a
(00:21):
little taste of something that will be coming up on
the show in one of our new episodes this week,
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to blame a Choko reboarding and I'm fair Dudie.
(00:43):
And as Black History Month is drawing to a close
and Women's History Month is right around the corner, we
thought 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
Mystery of st X episode, and that's aviation. Of course,
(01:04):
this episode won't include many mysterious disappearances or Little Prince impersonation.
Felina's Little Prince voice one of my favorite podcasts moments.
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
(01:24):
earn a pilot's license, and she was also the first
licensed African American pilot of either sex. According to Flight Journal,
she was a contemporary of Amelia Earhart and in fact
earned her pilot's license 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
(01:45):
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 white flight instructors who
were willing to take on Coleman as a student. So
we're gonna be taking a look at how Coleman overcame
these obstacles to pursue her dream. After all, if there
(02:07):
weren't white flight instructors who were willing to take her on,
how did she learn to fly? Because there weren't black
flighting chatter. So, yeah, that's going to be the one
of the mysteries we enveil, and then we're gonna take
a look to it. Why 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
(02:30):
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 in Atlanta, Texas,
and 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 African
(02:50):
American and part Cherokee. Neither of Bessie's parents could read
her write, so in eighteen ninety four, George Coleman moved
his family to walk the Hatchiet, Texas, and bought a
small plot of land there to build a three room house.
So in their new town, the Colemans earned a living
by picking cotton, and all the kids pitched in to
to help raise money for the family, but they also
(03:12):
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, 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
(03:33):
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 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, sources seemed to differ on the
exact timing of that her father left them. He felt
(03:56):
that discrimination really limited his opportunities for advancement in Texas, Sin,
so he wanted to move to Indian Territory, where as
we've talked about 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
(04:17):
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 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 household, and take
care of her younger sisters while her mother was away,
and often she had to miss school to to do
(04:40):
all this, which must have been hard for such a
bright student. She still had really big dreams, though, and
Bessie's mother encouraged that. According to an article in Flight
Journal by Dennis Morausie, 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 family that she worked for, and she
(05:00):
talked to them about the great achievements of African Americans,
like a book or T. Washington and Harriett Tabman. And
it must 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,
work exactly, We're going to go work in the fields now.
She graduated in nineteen and at that point she knew
(05:22):
that she wanted more after that, she wanted to become
something else. So she had saved up some money by
working as a laundress this whole time, and in that year,
at the age of eighteen, 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
(05:42):
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.
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 maintainane working saving money
than going for for a term. It all changed, though,
(06:04):
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
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
(06:26):
more job opportunities and their were back in Waxahatchie, so
Bessie enrolled in a beauty school and she ended up
becoming a manicurist at the White Sox Barbershop. A 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
(06:49):
our Massachusetts fifty four episode. So nobody seems to know
exactly when Bessie became interested in flying. It might have
been as far back as Walksahatchie, 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
(07:10):
airplane technology in World War One and the advancements that
were being made in their technology their use at the time,
and probably she had an interest 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
interest at some point or another, but regardless of how
she got interested, by the end of the war, flying
(07:32):
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 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
(07:53):
stories of female pilots. Bessie supposedly responded, that's it. You
just called it for me, So that could have 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
(08:14):
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
because it was too risky, but race very well might
have had something to do 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
(08:35):
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
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
(08:56):
several episodes we've covered, But one of his biggest goal
was to quote uplift the race, and according to Jacqueline
McLean's profile of Bessie in Women with Wings, Abbott wanted
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
(09:16):
than to sponsor a pilot who can literally fly up
in a way, Yeah, because people can't say you can't
do something if you actually show it to it's just
a powerful it's a powerful metaphor for too. For what
he was trying to do, flying, yes, taking flight. So
(09:39):
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. She also applied for a passport and
(10:00):
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 of benefactor. True to his word.
He helped Bessie secure funds for school so she could
cover tuition, and in late nineteen twenties she headed off
(10:22):
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 biplane, and according to the McLean's
profile we mentioned, during the lessons a teacher would just
sit in the front seat working all the controls and
(10:43):
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 men, the king,
the instructor's motions, just really kind of picking it up
(11:04):
along the way. Then, on June fifteenth one, at age
twenty nine, Bessie earned her license from the Federation Aeronautique Internacional.
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. So this
(11:25):
is 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 there
(11:46):
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 this seemingly intermounimal dream of
of flying, she had new goals and she started to
think about opening an aviation school for black people, and
according to McLean's profile, she said, in an interview with
(12:10):
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 have flown. But of course to open a school,
she would need some cash, and at that moment, there
really was no way for her to make it in
the nineteen twenties. After all, there weren't any commercial airlines
(12:33):
to work for, and although there were some pilots who
are working for the postal service, they were pretty much
all white man. I mean, we've talked about that in
the Saint 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, but she needed more training to
do this because she didn't really learn how to do
(12:55):
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 Germany to to train for ten
more weeks, and while she was there she was filmed
(13:17):
flying over Berlin. She returned to the United States in
August nineteen twenty 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 show took place Labor Day,
September three, nineteen two, at Curtis Field, and according to
(13:38):
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 stunts, so she just kind of had
to fly around still, though a huge crowd of people
turned out to see her and and see this remarkable
(14:01):
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, and
the audience was really thrilled by it. I mean, I
think at one point I read an account where one
(14:21):
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 yep and and
she was fine, and they were all really thrilled by that.
So her stunts earned her the nickname Queen Bess Daredevil
a via trix and also Brave Bessie. So Abbott was
(14:42):
the one who first started calling her Queen Bess, and
that's where that is going to 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
African American Seminal Film producing company got in touch with
her about starring in a movie based on her life
(15:04):
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 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
(15:26):
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
lost the support of the black entertainment community, dropping out
so suddenly, and I mean, one can't help but wonder
(15:47):
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 say, but for her aviation school. I mean,
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,
(16:08):
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
nineteen three. She made a deal with the Coast Tire
and Rubber 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.
(16:30):
And the show took place February fourth, ninety three, 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, better known as a Jenny. It was
a used plane, though she couldn't afford a brand new plane,
so I was left over from World War One and
(16:50):
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 what probably surprises me the most
about this whole story is that rather than just being
(17:11):
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 pilot didn't even make
it or at least just horror, you know, And I
don't know. Yeah, I'm concerned for another hoping for some
(17:34):
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 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,
(17:56):
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 the tour was a big success,
even though Bessie drew some pretty serious lines in the
sand along the way. For example, right before performing in Waxahatchie,
(18:19):
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 part because she needed the money she
needed that gig. But surprisingly the event organizers complied with
(18:39):
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 Saturl Page,
but his his putting his foot down on certain issues
about how events were segregated. Bessie managed to make enough
money though off of that Texas tour to save a
(19:02):
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
(19:23):
for another tour, 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.
Bessie was supposed to perform, and then she found out
that the event was advertised for whites only. Again she
(19:43):
refused to perform unless blacks were allowed in, and again
the organizers relented. I guess when it came down to
making money or standing on their questionable principles. Yeah. So
during these Southeastern tours, Bessie also met Edwin M. Beaman,
who was the heir to the Beaman chewing Roo. Unfortune,
(20:05):
he helped her pay off the Jenny plane she'd started
to buy back in Dallas, and she planned to use
that plane 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
(20:26):
over from Dallas to Jacksonville, and he had to make
two emergency landings along the way because the plane kept
on experiencing engine problems. Again, this was not a new plane,
it was the best Bessie 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 thirti n he
(20:50):
told Bessie that the plane was ready to fly. The
air show 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 a day of
just be prepared 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.
(21:11):
She didn't have her seatbelt fastened because she was only
around 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 were strapped in, so
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
(21:32):
along at that elevation and an eighty miles per hour,
and suddenly the plane nos dived at about one thousand feet,
it went into a tailspin, and then at five dred
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
(21:53):
from where Coleman landed, and he too was killed in
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 Jacksonville in Orlando, and on May five, her remains
(22:13):
were returned to Chicago. The Illinois Central Train station 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
(22:35):
a photo of her on it, all dressed up in
her leather flight gear that she preferred, and she's standing
in front of her plane, so you guys can google
pictures over too. 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. I thought it was neat to just
look at her face. It looks kind of intense. Some
(22:57):
of those photos twenties era aviation cost hims are always
pretty 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?
(23:17):
And sometimes they didn't even refer to Bessie by name,
calling her simply the woman. The Chicago Defender, though, of course,
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
(23:40):
as a memorial to Miss Coleman. And this reminded me
a little bit of the Tuskegee Airman episode. 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 Bessie Coleman before,
it is interesting to think of her as as a
(24:00):
memorial almost too till later aviators. Yeah, and though a
lot of people don't know her story today, I 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 under mentioned as 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
(24:24):
Clubs to encourage more African Americans to participate in flying,
and then in nineteen seventy seven, a group of female
black pilots founded the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club. She also
has a few tributes back in Chicago In nineteen ninety,
a road at O'Hare Airport was renamed Bessie Coleman Drive,
and in nineteen nine two, Chicago's mayor declared may Second
(24:46):
Bessie Coleman Day. So she still remains an inspiration for
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.
(25:07):
And I think it's also interesting to consider her not
just an inspiration for African American aviators or women, but
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,
(25:29):
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,
I have to work this other job. But she worked
as a laundress and as a manicurist and did all
kinds of random things. You know, worked in a restaurant
and eventually, at the age of thirty, finally got to
do which where she was trying to. Thank you so
(25:53):
much for joining us for this Saturday classic. Since this
is out of the archive, if you heard an email
address or if Facebook, U, r L or something similar
during the course of the show, that may be obsolete now,
so here is our current contact information. We are at
history Podcasts at how stuff works dot com, and then
we're at Missed in the History. All over social media
(26:14):
that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Thanks again for listening. For more on this and thousands
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