Bessie convinces them to teach her to fly. ![]() “She then hops on a train,” Hopson says, “and goes to the north of France to the best flying school operated by the Cauldron brothers. But when she arrived in France in 1921, because of a recent accident, flight schools in Paris were closed to women. It was Robert Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender, who advised Coleman to leave America to pursue her dream. She took an amazing path … and really to become the symbol of possibility for many generations to come.” “She followed her desire to learn, to really be something different, as she put it to make something of herself, and fell in love with aviation. “Where was different was her commitment to learning,” adds Lonnie G. Army veterans, told her women were flying airplanes in France, which reinforced her interest.” “She understood the importance of being educated. “She believed in herself and her determination to follow her dreams to become an aviator was not to be deterred,” says Coleman. Coleman joined a recent panel discussion, hosted by the National Air and Space Museum, along with Philip Hart, author of Up in the Air: The Story of Bessie Coleman, Ellen Stofan, the Smithsonian’s undersecretary of science and research, and Secretary Lonnie G. “I want to amount to something.”Īccording to Gigi Coleman, Bessie’s great-niece who tells her aunt’s story in a one-woman traveling show, flying airplanes was the opportunity she was looking for. “I want to find a bigger life,” she said. She moved to Chicago and got a job as a manicurist at the age of 23. In 1915, Coleman joined the Great Migration with millions of other African Americans heading north to escape the oppressive laws in the South. If she found out she couldn’t do something here, she would think, ‘Where can I do it?’ That’s the spark that inspired me.” But more than that, she was a critical thinker. “When people told me I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, I thought of her. “When I first learned about Bessie Coleman, I thought I had met a superhero,” she says. Today, Hopson flies for United Airlines as a first officer on Boeing 737 jets and is also the author of A Pair of Wings, a 2021 novel inspired by Coleman’s exploits. ![]() She learned about Coleman at the same time she decided to chuck an important job in corporate marketing to follow her dream of becoming a commercial airline pilot at age 50. ![]() “I want to amount to something.”Ĭarole Hopson is one of those women. “I want to find a bigger life,” said Bessie Coleman. In the process, this daring aviator and civil-rights pioneer inspired generations of women to soar-both literally and figuratively. Picking cotton alongside her parents, earning a living as hardscrabble sharecroppers, she was determined to succeed in life despite the odds stacked against her. Anyone else might have quit at any time.”īorn Januin Atlanta, Texas, Coleman was one of 13 children born to Susan and George Coleman. “She figured out what she wanted to do and kept at it. “Bessie was a real gutsy woman for the era,” says Dorothy Cochrane, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, where a collection of photographs and archival materials documents the life of the aviator. “I refused to take no for an answer,” she would say. When told she couldn’t do something, “Queen Bess” or “Brave Bessie”-as she was known to her fans-dug in her stylish heels and made it happen. In an era of Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation, she was determined to succeed and make her dreams a reality. Having battled gender bias and racism in the U.S., where no flight school would accept her, she had learned to speak French, traveled to France and earned an international certification to fly an aircraft.Īfter training in France because no American flight school would accept her, Coleman earned her pilot's license Jfrom the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.Īs a daring pilot in the early years of aviation, Coleman made many acrobatic flights during her barnstorming trips across America, sometimes parachuting from her plane to the awe of audiences. Once again, Bessie Coleman-the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license just over a century ago, on June 15, 1921-experienced the exhilaration of soaring through the skies. As the World War I-surplus biplane picked up speed, the pilot eased back on the stick and gently climbed into the air. The engine coughed and sputtered, then caught with a load roar.Īfter the motor had warmed up, the pilot throttled up and eased the Curtiss JN-4 down the bumpy runway. Grabbing the propeller blade, a crew member spun it hard. The young woman in the cockpit of the biplane studied the control panel, then flipped a switch and signaled to the ground crew.
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