Hello everyone,
Happy Monday to you! We are still remembering and celebrating black history month. Bessie Coleman was a Black American female pilot. She overcame challenges and obstacles to be the first black female pilot. An accomplishment that paved a way for others to launch into a life of unlimited possibilities.
Think and reflect on these two points as you enter your week.
Take A Moment To Reflect:
- The struggles faced was meant to burden and bring under subjection
- It is by the burning hope and desire that radiates through you to be great
Reflect on This Thought:
Bessie Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas. She was a daughter of an African American woman that was a maid and a mixed Native and African American father who was a sharecropper. The family stayed in Waxahachie, Texas while her father went to Oklahoma to try an escape discrimination.
By the time Bessie was eighteen, she saved enough money to attend the Colored Agricultural and Normal University which is now Langston University in Langston, Oklahoma. Unable to continue College, Bessie dropped out after one semester; at age 23 years old she moved in with her brothers in Chicago. There she went to Burnham School of Beauty Culture in 1915 to become a manicurist. Bessie worked in a barbershop as a manicurist, hearing stories her brother told her of his time in France and his teasing how French women being allowed to learn to fly airplanes and Bessie could not.
Making the desire for being a pilot more of what she wanted to pursue, Bessie applied to many flight schools across the country. No schools would take her because she was African American and a woman. A famous African American newspaper publisher, Robert Abbott told her to go to France where she could learn how to fly airplanes. Bessie began taking French classes because the applications for flight had to be written in French.
Attending the Caudron Brother’s School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France, Coleman graduated and received her international pilot license June 15, 1921. Coleman’s dream was to own her plane and open her own flight school. Returning to America, Bessie gave speeches and showed films of her flight tricks in churches, theaters, and schools to earn money. When her popularity grew in 1922, she performed her first public flight by an African American woman. Coleman refused to speak at places that were segregated or discriminated against African American. Famous for her loop-the-loops and making the shape of an 8 in an airplane. In 1923Coleman was in a serious airplane crash two years into her flying. The accident didn’t stop her, in 1925 was back performing dangerous air tricks. Bessie finally reached the dream of owning her own plane. Coleman learned to fly tricks from famous German pilot who thought she was a great pilot in Germany. Coleman was an activist, standing up for African Americans wanting to watch her fly in stadiums with whites, stating that she wouldn’t fly if the African American were not allowed to sit in the same stadium. Coleman died in 1926 when she fell from her plane on a routine flight check her and her mechanic named Williams Wills at 3,000 feet.
Focus On This:
Bessie Coleman was a great woman who did not fear the challenges of obstacles she faced as a black woman. In a world when color skin separated the rights of liberties, Coleman went after her goals to become more then what people expected for her to rise to the occasion of greatness. Activist, pilot, and owner of her on plane. Had she lived she would have reached her goals of opening her on Aviation flight school. The door had been opened for people of color to be all manner of pilots today for both men and women of color.
Once again thank you for being a part of the Books by Fran Community everyone. The life of this woman Bessie Coleman was to be celebrate in her death as it was in her life. Write your comments below and let me hear from you on how learning this part of history has inspired you to reach your goals like the men and women that have gone before you. Until next week, stay safe, blessed and healthy.