Bessie Coleman, Queen Bess, and the Chicago Manicurist Who Learned French to Earn the World's Most Hard-Won Pilot Certificate

Bessie Coleman earned her international pilot’s certificate on June 15, 1921 - not in the United States, but in France, because no American flight school would accept her. She was the first African American and the first person of Native American descent to hold an international pilot’s license. She was 29 years old.

Who Was Bessie Coleman?

Coleman was born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, one of thirteen children. Her father was of Choctaw and African American descent; her mother was African American. The family relocated to Waxahachie, where Bessie grew up picking cotton. She was a voracious reader who briefly attended college before the money ran out.

She eventually followed her brothers north to Chicago, where she found work as a manicurist in a South Side barbershop. It was 1918. The Great War was winding down, and the Chicago Defender - one of the country’s most influential Black newspapers - was publishing stories about Black servicemen who had witnessed French women flying airplanes in Europe.

How Did She Decide to Become a Pilot?

Her brothers, back from France, teased her: French women flew airplanes, so why couldn’t she? The comment was likely meant as a dig. Bessie took it as a dare.

She began approaching American flight schools. Every single one refused her - some because she was Black, some because she was a woman, some for both reasons. She didn’t give up. She regrouped.

Why Did Bessie Coleman Go to France?

Two figures in Chicago’s Black community changed her trajectory. Robert Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender and one of the most influential Black Americans of his era, advised her that if American schools wouldn’t teach her, French schools would. Jesse Binga, a prominent Black banker in Chicago, also offered his encouragement.

Coleman enrolled in a French-language correspondence course and taught herself enough to get by - and to enroll. In November 1920, she boarded a ship for Europe. She had never flown in an airplane.

Where Did She Train to Fly?

She enrolled at the Caudron Brothers’ School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France - a flat, windswept stretch of northeast France near the English Channel coast. She trained on the Caudron G.3, a fabric-and-wire biplane with an open cockpit and minimal instrumentation. Pilots read the air through their hands and their seat. The weather offered no grace.

She soloed, completed cross-country requirements, and finished her precision work. On June 15, 1921, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale issued her pilot certificate - the first ever granted to an African American and the first ever granted to a person of Native American descent.

What Did She Do After Earning Her License?

Coleman returned to the United States with a certificate and a goal: open a flight school accessible to Black Americans. But a license and a mission couldn’t fund a school. Aviation at the time ran on barnstorming and air shows.

She went back to Europe - Germany and the Netherlands - to train in advanced aerobatics. Loops, rolls, and the low-level crowd work that separated a performer from merely a pilot. She returned to the United States in 1922 and gave her first American exhibition at Curtiss Field in Garden City, New York. The crowd gave her a name: Queen Bess.

What Was Her Policy on Segregated Air Shows?

Coleman toured the country for the next four years performing at exhibitions. She drew one hard line: she refused to perform at any event where Black spectators were required to enter through a separate gate. Some promoters tried to negotiate around the condition. She walked away from those shows - every time.

She also gave lectures on aviation, constantly advocating for the flight school she was saving toward. She was close.

How Did Bessie Coleman Die?

On April 30, 1926, in Jacksonville, Florida, Coleman was preparing for a May Day air show exhibition. To scout the drop zone for a planned parachute jump, her mechanic William Wills was at the controls of a Curtiss JN-4D Jenny while she leaned over the side to observe the field below. She was not wearing a seatbelt.

At approximately 3,000 feet, the Jenny entered an uncontrolled dive. Coleman was thrown from the aircraft. She was 34 years old. Wills never recovered the airplane and also died in the crash.

Investigators recovered a wrench lodged in the control mechanism. The airplane had experienced mechanical difficulties during a ferry flight from Texas to Jacksonville just days before. Whether the cause was negligence or something deliberate was never fully determined.

Ida B. Wells spoke at Coleman’s funeral in Chicago. Thousands attended. Pilots flew over the church and dropped flowers.

What Did Bessie Coleman’s Legacy Produce?

She never opened her flight school. But the movement she started didn’t stop.

In 1929, aviation pioneers formed the Bessie Coleman Aero Club in Los Angeles, keeping her name and mission alive. In the 1930s, Cornelius Coffey and Willa Brown opened a flight school on Chicago’s South Side that trained hundreds of pilots - many of whom entered the Tuskegee program.

The Tuskegee Airmen flew 3,500 combat missions in Europe during World War II. They escorted bombers in P-40 Warhawks, P-39 Airacobras, and P-51 Mustangs and never lost a bomber to enemy fighter attack. The line from Bessie Coleman to Tuskegee is not metaphorical. It is documented and direct.

How Is She Remembered Today?

In 1992, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor - an airmail stamp, which feels exactly right. Dallas-Fort Worth Airport dedicated a road in her name. Chicago has a Bessie Coleman Drive near O’Hare, not far from where she once worked and first began dreaming about airplanes.

Every year on April 30 - the anniversary of her death - a group of Black pilots flies over her grave at Lincoln Cemetery outside Chicago and drops flowers. They’ve done it for decades.

Why This Matters for Pilots

Coleman never got to see what her determination became. Every institutional door was slammed in her face. She crossed an ocean with a self-taught vocabulary, earned her wings in a foreign country, and then refused to compromise her dignity for a single performance. She spent the rest of her short life working to ensure that the doors closed to her would be open for the next generation.

The next time you see a Black pilot at AirVenture or Sun ’n Fun - walking the flight line, sitting front seat in a warbird, pulling a hammerhead in front of the crowd - that presence traces back, in part, to a woman in a Chicago barbershop in 1918 who decided a closed door was a navigation problem, not a verdict.

Key Takeaways

Bessie Coleman received her international pilot’s certificate on June 15, 1921, becoming the first African American and first person of Native American descent to earn one - after every American flight school refused to admit her.
She learned French through a correspondence course and sailed to France to train at the Caudron Brothers’ School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, having never previously flown in an airplane.
She refused every air show booking that enforced segregated entry, without exception, even at the cost of income and bookings.
She died on April 30, 1926, in Jacksonville, Florida - thrown from a Curtiss JN-4D Jenny at approximately 3,000 feet while scouting a drop zone without a seatbelt. She was 34 years old.
The flight school she never lived to open was built by others in her name; the pilots it trained fed directly into the Tuskegee Airmen program.