Pioneer and pilot, Bessie Coleman was the first Black woman and first Native American woman to hold a pilot’s license.
children. Coleman’s father, who was 75 percent Native American, felt frustrated by the increasing restrictions from lawmakers in Texas and left the family for Oklahoma when she was seven years old.
Coleman’s older brothers moved on to Chicago, and she was tasked with caring for her younger siblings while her mother worked. Although she had to miss many days of school, she was a standout student. When she finished all eight grades of public school, she wasShe wanted to move on to higher education, and in 1910 she started at the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma. She lasted one term before she ran out of money and had to return to Texas and work as a laundress.
She saved for the next five years and finally had enough money to leave in 1915. She boarded a train heading north and planned never to return.brother and his family on the South Side of Chicago. She trained as a manicurist and began working at a barber shop. There she heard stories of veterans returning from World War I, and she increasingly became interested in aviation and the idea of becoming a pilot.
No flying school, however, would allow Coleman to enroll. She was a woman, Black and Native American at a time when only white men were permitted to train. Coleman had made powerful connections during her time at the barber shop, including one with Robert S. Abbott, publisher of
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