Bessie Coleman

1892–1926 · American (Texas) · Jazz Age

Known for: First African American and first Native American woman to earn a pilot's license—had to train in France because American schools rejected her

Coleman was the daughter of a sharecropper and part-Cherokee mother who was determined to fly. Rejected by every American flight school because of her race and gender, she learned French and trained in France, earning her license in 1921.

She became a barnstormer performing for integrated audiences, refusing segregated ones. She was saving money to open a flight school for Black Americans when she fell from an open cockpit during a test flight and was killed at 34.

What Bessie Coleman would be watching

The “if they lived today” Q&A on this page gives Bessie Coleman Red Tails (2012) as a favourite film. Their reason: “The Tuskegee Airmen. My dream realized by the next generation.” Rankquant scores it above 26% of films, drawn from 295 IMDb reviewers individually re-centred rather than averaged raw. The full film & TV rankings are built the same way.

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