Bessie Coleman and the Sky That Refused to Stay Closed
By SDC News One
In the early twentieth century, the sky was supposed to belong to white men with money, medals, and permission. It was not meant for a Black girl born to sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South. And yet, once Bessie Coleman looked up, the sky never quite managed to keep her out.
Her life, her death, and the story told about both were meant to draw a hard line—to warn, to frighten, to instruct Black girls to stay grounded. Instead, her legacy did the opposite. It lit a fuse.
From Cotton Fields to Cloud Banks (1892–1919)
Bessie Coleman was born on January 26, 1892, in Atlanta, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children. Her father, George Coleman, was of African American and Native American descent; her mother, Susan Coleman, was African American. The family worked as sharecroppers, a system designed less for opportunity than for survival.
By age six, Bessie was picking cotton. By age eight, she was walking several miles to a segregated one-room schoolhouse. Education was sporadic, money was scarce, and opportunity was rationed by race and gender. When her father left the family in 1901, hoping to escape Jim Crow by returning to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), Susan Coleman stayed behind, raising the children alone.
Bessie was bright and stubborn. She briefly attended Langston University in Oklahoma in 1910, but tuition ran out before her ambition did. By 1915, she had moved to Chicago, working as a manicurist, listening closely to conversations she wasn’t supposed to overhear—especially the war stories of pilots returning from World War I.
That’s when the sky cracked open.
Rejected in America, Welcomed in France (1919–1921)
Coleman decided she would become a pilot. There was only one problem: no American flight school would admit a Black woman. Not one.
Her brother reportedly taunted her—French women, he said, flew airplanes. Bessie took that not as an insult, but as a map.
With help from Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender and mentors including civil rights leader Robert S. Abbott, Coleman learned French and sailed to Europe in November 1920.
On June 15, 1921, at the Caudron Brothers School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France, Bessie Coleman earned her international pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. She became:
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The first Black American woman to earn a pilot’s license
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The first Native American woman to do so
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One of the very few women pilots in the world, period
America had barred the door. France handed her the keys.
Queen Bess Takes the Air (1922–1925)
Coleman returned to the United States a celebrity in Black America and a curiosity everywhere else. She became a barnstorming pilot, performing daring aerial stunts—loops, figure eights, dives—at airshows across the country.
But Bessie was never just flying for thrills.
She refused to perform at segregated events. She turned down money if Black audiences were forced to enter through separate gates. She spoke openly about her dream of opening a flight school for Black aviators, believing representation wasn’t symbolic—it was strategic.
Her presence in the cockpit was political. Every flight challenged a national narrative that said Black women were meant to watch history, not make it.
April 30, 1926 — The Fall That Made the Front Page
On April 30, 1926, in Jacksonville, Florida, Bessie Coleman boarded a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” for a rehearsal flight ahead of an airshow.
She was not piloting. The controls were handled by her mechanic, William Wills, a white man.
Coleman had unbuckled her seatbelt to lean over the side of the aircraft, scouting the terrain below for a planned parachute jump. Midair, a loose wrench—left in the engine compartment—jammed the control gearbox.
The plane flipped.
Wills died on impact when the aircraft crashed. Coleman was thrown from the plane, falling roughly 500 feet to her death. She was 34 years old.
The explanation was swift. Mechanical failure. Tragic accident.
But the coverage told a different story.
The Story They Told—and the One They Missed
The Black press treated Coleman’s death as a national tragedy. Newspapers mourned her brilliance, her bravery, her broken dream of opening a flight school.
Mainstream white newspapers, by contrast, largely minimized her role. Some focused more on Wills than on Coleman. Others framed her death as a cautionary tale—reckless, dangerous, inevitable.
The subtext was clear: This is what happens when people like her reach too high.
For many Black readers, especially young girls, the message was unmistakable—and offensive.
It did not scare them away.
It called them forward.
The Bessie Coleman Effect (Late 1920s–1930s)
In the years following her death, Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs sprang up across the country—from Chicago to Los Angeles. These clubs raised funds, taught aviation theory, and kept her name alive when institutions would not.
Her legacy traveled quietly, person to person, generation to generation.
By the 1930s, Black pilots—many inspired directly or indirectly by Coleman—were organizing, training, and demanding space in American aviation.
The door remained closed. But it was shaking.
World War II and the Color Line in the Cockpit (1941–1945)
When the United States entered World War II after December 7, 1941, aviation suddenly mattered more than ever. The military created the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program in 1943, allowing women to ferry aircraft and free male pilots for combat.
Black women applied.
They were rejected.
Highly qualified aviators such as Janet Bragg and Mildred Hemmons Carter were denied entry solely because of race. The WASP program accepted white women, along with some Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American pilots—but no Black women.
Contrary to popular myth:
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WASP pilots did not ferry B-17 bombers to Europe
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Their ferrying missions were domestic, within the United States
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In 1943, when Nancy Love and Betty Gillies attempted to fly a B-17 to Scotland, General Henry “Hap” Arnold personally stopped the mission
The idea of women—especially Black women—flying heavy bombers overseas was a line the military would not cross.
Still, Black women found other ways to serve.
Willa Brown, a pioneering aviator and educator, trained hundreds of pilots, many of whom became part of the Tuskegee Airmen—the first Black military aviators in U.S. history.
The planes may not have crossed the Atlantic in their hands, but the future did.
From Bessie to the Stars
Decades later, when Mae Jemison became the first Black woman astronaut in 1992, she carried Bessie Coleman’s legacy with her—openly acknowledging the lineage.
Coleman never saw the world she helped build. She never opened her flight school. She never lived to see Black women claim the skies she dared to enter alone.
But the attempt to reduce her death to a warning failed.
History tried to scare little Black girls away from airplanes.
Instead, it taught them how to fly.
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