Turned away by American flight schools because she was Black and a woman, Bessie Coleman learned French, crossed the Atlantic, and on 15 June 1921 received a pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale — the first African American woman to hold one. As “Queen Bess” she became one of the best-known stunt fliers of the 1920s, using her fame to challenge segregation and to recruit Black Americans into aviation before her death in a crash at 34.
At a Glance
- Born
- 26 January 1892, Atlanta, Texas
- Died
- 30 April 1926, Jacksonville, Florida
- Birth name
- Elizabeth Coleman
- Known for
- Fédération Aéronautique Internationale pilot’s license (15 June 1921); barnstorming exhibitions across the United States (1922–1926); refusing to fly before segregated crowds
- HBCU ties
- Langston University (Attended the Colored Agricultural and Normal University for one term before her money ran out)
- Fields
- Exploration · Sport
- Era
- Turn of the Century
Early Life
Elizabeth Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, on 26 January 1892, one of thirteen children of Susan Coleman and George Coleman. The family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where they worked as sharecroppers. Her father left the family around 1900 to return to Indian Territory, and Bessie helped support the household by picking cotton and assisting with the laundry her mother took in. Her mother encouraged her schooling, and she showed an early aptitude for mathematics.
After finishing school, Coleman used her savings to enroll at the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma, now Langston University, but money ran out after one term. Around 1915 she moved to Chicago, where her brother Walter was living, attended beauty school, and worked as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop. She later ran a small chili parlor. In 1917 she apparently married Claude Glenn, but she never publicly acknowledged the marriage, and the two soon separated.
Life and Work
Stories told by soldiers returning from World War I, including her brother John, who had served in France, turned Coleman toward flying. No American flight school would admit her. Robert S. Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender, and the banker Jesse Binga encouraged and helped finance her plan to train abroad. She took French lessons in Chicago and sailed for France in November 1920.
Coleman trained at the Caudron brothers’ flying school at Le Crotoy on the French coast, learning in fragile open-cockpit biplanes. On 15 June 1921 the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale issued her a license, making her the first African American woman to earn a pilot’s license; some accounts describe her as the first Black person of any nationality to hold an international license. She returned to the United States in September 1921 to heavy press coverage, then went back to Europe in 1922 for advanced training in stunt flying, including instruction in Germany from a chief pilot of the Fokker company. On that trip she also traveled to the Netherlands to meet the aircraft designer Anthony Fokker. Early in her American career the cast of Shuffle Along, the Black Broadway musical, presented her with a loving cup in recognition of her achievement.
Coleman’s first American air show took place at Curtiss Field on Long Island, near New York City, on 3 September 1922, in an event sponsored by the Chicago Defender that honored veterans of the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment. Billed as “Queen Bess,” she performed figure eights, loops, and near-ground dives at exhibitions across the country, and lectured in schools, churches, and theaters to encourage Black Americans to take up flying. In 1923 she crashed during an exhibition in California and was badly injured; she took about a year to recover.
Her goal was to open a flying school for Black students, and she worked to raise money for it through lectures and exhibition fees, at one point opening a beauty shop in Orlando, Florida. She established a base in Houston in 1925 and flew her first Texas show there on 19 June 1925. Coleman refused to perform before crowds segregated at the gate: in Waxahachie she declined to fly unless Black spectators could use the same entrance as whites, and the organizers agreed, though seating inside remained segregated.
In April 1926 Coleman was in Jacksonville, Florida, to perform at a May Day celebration sponsored by the Negro Welfare League. On 30 April she went up for a test flight in a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” recently purchased in Dallas, with her mechanic and publicist William D. Wills at the controls. About twelve minutes into the flight the plane failed to pull out of a dive and flipped over. Coleman, who by most accounts had unfastened her seat belt to lean out and survey the field, was thrown from the aircraft and killed; Wills died when the plane struck the ground. Investigators concluded that a loose wrench had most likely jammed the controls.
Legacy
Thousands mourned Coleman at services in Jacksonville and Chicago, where she was buried in Lincoln Cemetery; Black aviators have since marked the anniversary of her death with flyovers of her grave. Her school was never built, but in 1929 the aviator William J. Powell founded the Bessie Coleman Aero Club in Los Angeles, and on Labor Day 1931 the Coleman aero clubs sponsored what is described as the first all-Black air show in the United States.
Chicago renamed a road near O’Hare International Airport for her in 1990, and the U.S. Postal Service issued a 32-cent stamp in her honor in 1995. She was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2006, and in 2023 she was among the women featured in the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters program. Her career shows how far a Black woman in the Jim Crow era had to travel, literally, to claim a place in a new technology.
Coleman refused the limits placed on her by race and sex, and she used her fame as a flier to challenge segregation and to open aviation to other Black Americans. Open the classroom lesson →
Key Dates
- 26 January 1892 Born in Atlanta, Texas; raised in Waxahachie.
- c. 1915 Moves to Chicago and works as a manicurist.
- November 1920 Sails for France to attend flight school.
- 15 June 1921 Receives her pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
- 3 September 1922 First American air show at Curtiss Field, Long Island.
- 1923 Seriously injured in a crash during an exhibition in California.
- 19 June 1925 Flies her first Texas exhibition, in Houston.
- 30 April 1926 Killed during a test flight in Jacksonville, Florida.
- 1995 U.S. Postal Service issues a Bessie Coleman commemorative stamp.
- 2006 Inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
Sources and Further Reading
- Doris L. Rich, Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).
- National Air and Space Museum, “Bessie Coleman.” Link
- Texas State Historical Association, “Coleman, Bessie,” Handbook of Texas Online. Link
- Claytee D. White, “Bessie Coleman (1892–1926),” BlackPast.org. Link
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By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.