Courageous or Tenacious? Look to Bessie Coleman
Courageous and tenacious, look to Bessie Coleman for inspiration
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Are you tenacious or courageous? Either? Neither? Or both?
These two qualities, and the distinctions between them, were on my mind as I read “Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator” by Doris L. Rich. The author details the story of Bessie Coleman, the first African American female aviator in the world, and the challenges she overcame to achieve this goal.
Today, as we continue to struggle with racism in the United States, we look back and marvel by how Bessie accomplished so much when bigotry was accepted so pervasive in the United States. Born at the turn of the 20th Century, the odds were stacked against her. Bessie was black, with Native American heritage, and female—all of which placed her in the lowest rung of perceived social classes of the day.
And yet, Bessie strived and succeeded to “amount to something” (and then some), and to make a mark. She was both tenacious and courageous with a good dose of bravado mixed in. Bessie had the drive to become a pilot for personal reasons, but she was altruistic in her pursuit as well. She wanted to raise up her race and encourage others to reach and strive for their potential.
TENACIOUS OR COURAGEOUS?
What’s the difference, really, between tenacity and courage? I used to think these qualities were somewhat the same. When it comes to courage, you have to believe in a principle so much that you’re willing to risk nearly everything for it. And once you’ve made up your mind, you have to be dogged in your endeavor. That’s the tenacious part that keeps you to your goal no matter what setbacks you encounter.
Bessie possessed confidence that she had a right to reach for her dreams. She took small but amazing steps along the way, such as learning enough French to complete applications for French aviation schools. I can’t imagine the stamina it took for Bessie to step off the boat in 1920 when she arrived in France to navigate a world where she didn’t know the language. She went on to establish herself in an aviation program.
Finally, Bessie did take to the sky, and she kept going even as the money and opportunities were not easy to come by. And to be in the air—in planes made of wire and cloth—and do all those crazy eights, loop-the-loops and even free fall parachute jumps to the ground is another feat I can’t fathom. But Bessie kept to it, even after a crash and terrible injuries side railed her in February of 1923.
FIRST HISTORY HERO, MORE READING
I discovered Bessie Coleman out of curiosity after reading Bill Bryson’s book “One Summer,” which detailed significant historical events of 1927. I wondered about the legacy of African Americans at that time, particularly in aviation, which is how I found Bessie.
If we own that we are all part of the human story and all interconnected, unfortunately that also means we must accept our shared potential for doing harm to each other. However, we also can share in human achievement of people such as Bessie Coleman. She made a difference that lingers still today and did so by way of her courage and tenacity. If you’d like to have her image to spur you on you’ll find her as a #historyhero here.
There are many books, tributes and additional information about Bessie Coleman, including an official website detailing her story and others who continue to honor her achievement. Bessie lives on in the hearts of those who embrace her courage to reach for her dreams and tenacity to strive and realize them. Today, there are schools, roads and aviation groups that honor her.
As Bessie said, “If I can create the minimum of my plans and desires there shall be no regrets.”
JOURNAL PROMPT:
As a history hero, Bessie Coleman continues to give each of us an example of how to live a life of bravery. How can you channel her in your life and tap into the courage and tenacity within you?
Bessie Coleman Infographic
TIMELINE POINTS
1875: Susan (who was most likely born a slave) and George Coleman marry. George is both African American and Native American ancestry.
1892, January 26: Bessie is born in Atlanta, Texas. Two years before Bessie’s birth state of Mississippi began enacting Jim Crow laws. Bessie was one of a six. Poor sharecropper family.
1893: Banks failed and there was an economic depression in the United States.
1985: George bought a small plot of land in Waxahachie, Texas.
1896: U. S. Supreme Court established separate but equal education with Pesoy versus Ferguson.
1899: Bessie starts school in a one-room schoolhouse, age 6. She walks 4 miles to attend school interrupted during harvesting season when she has to work helping to pick cotton.
1901: George decides to leave Texas and the oppression of Jim Crow. He heads to Oklahoma, but Susan does not. She remains in Waxahachie, Texas with their younger children. Bessie cares for her siblings while Susan works as a housekeeper. The previous year there were 115 lynchings in the south.
Susan begins cleaning for the Jones family. She is very religious. The Jones family provides food and clothing for Susan and her family.
Bessie was not a good laborer when it came to picking cotton. She is good with numbers and Susan counts on Bessie to make sure the foreman does not stiff them in their daily totals of cotton picked and weighed. In fact, Bessie sometimes places her foot on the scale if she can do it without getting caught. Picking cotton back breaking, fingers bleeding grueling work. The average weight per person per day is 150 pounds.
At this time, Bessie’s two older brothers Isaiah and John head to Chicago. Bessie was the only one of her siblings, and her parents, who could read. Susan encouraged Bessie by borrowing books and requiring she read the Bible as well. As a child Bessie displayed innate confidence, and was helped by her beauty and abilities.
1904: Bessie accepted in missionary Baptist church. Susan had strong religious beliefs, and this correlated with the idea that all people are equal in the eyes of God. Bessie completed 8 grades.
Bessie began working as a laundress to earn extra money with the goal to move on and get more out of life.
1910: Bessie left for Langston, Oklahoma and Colored Agricultural and Normal University. She was 18. They placed her in the 6th grade level based on her skills at the time of entry. She ran out of money after a semester. She brought home the school band to announce her return to Waxahachie. Bessie went back to work as a laundress, working with scalding water and walking 5 miles to retrieve and deliver her work.
1915: Brother Walter invites Bessie to come to Chicago.
1916: Bessie completes manicurist training, and begins working on “The Stroll,” eight blocks of State Street between 31st and 39th. The stretch is also called Black Broadway and Black Wallstreet. Bessie met influential people like Robert Sengstacke Abbott, founder of Chicago Defender which was an important African American paper. She learns to appreciate the power of the press to craft a story.
1917, Jan 30: Bessie marries Claud Glenn, a mild-mannered friend of Walter. They never live together.
1919: Chicago deals with civil race unrest after a black child is killed for accidentally floating into the white swim area. Riots ensue causing the death of 38 people, 537 injured, and 100 people left homeless due to property loss. Abbott supports Bessie’s interest in becoming the first black female pilot. There is rumor that a Spaniard may have invested in her effort to become a pilot.
1920 Nov. 4: Bessie applied for her passport
1920 November 20: Bessie sailed for France. The first school she approached for training declined. Second was in Somme Crotoy and France’s most famous flight School Écste d’Aviation des Freres Caudron at Le Crotoy in Somme.
Bessie completed a 7-month aviation program. She learns how to do tailspins, banking, and loop the loops. She saw a terrible accident involving a student. She walked 9 miles to attend school, and didn’t know French enough to speak or understand it.
1921, June: Bessie completed additional training. She learned on French Nieuport Type 82 plane similar to Curtiss Jn-4 or Jenny. It was a favorite for learners in the U.S. Made of wood, wire, steel, aluminum, cloth, pressed cardboard.
She had to inspect the plane each time before she flew, including steering and brakes, wing struts, wires, engine, cloth, propeller, landing wheels, gear. Steering was a vertical stick to pitch and roll. Rudder bar – yaw and vertical movement. Stop lower tail until rigid metal tail skid dug into the earth.
Students rode in the rear cockpit with identical stick and rudder and would watch the movement of these to learn how to fly. (If a student froze while clutching the stick, both student and teacher could die).
1921, June 15: Bessie passed the test and got her international license permitting her to fly anywhere in the world from Fédération Aeronautique International (FAI) at age 29. She was the first black woman to earn this license.
Bessie went to Paris for 2 months and may have received lessons from unnamed French flying ace. There was a total absence of racial antagonism in France, and Bessie probably spent time seeing the sights as well. She brought back a beautiful wardrobe of dresses and a tailored flying suit with leather coat.
1921, September 16: Bessie arrived in New York on the S.S. Manchuria and met reporters both black ad white. She told them she planned to do exhibition flights. In N.Y. she was honored with a silver cup at a theatrical performance by both black and white audience with standing ovation. Shuffle Along was the show.
1922, February 22: Bessie received more training in France so she could do more tricks for exhibition flights.
1922, April: Bessie heads to Holland to talk with one of the world’s most noted aircraft designers. Anthony H. G. Fokker. He worked in Germany during WWI but escaped to Holland.
1922, May: Bessie heads to Germany, makes friends in aviation circles. She stayed 10 weeks. She was filmed by Pathé News which showed footage of her flying. She used it for lectures. This footage was lost later.
1922, August: Bessie returns to the United States. She realizes she will have to be dramatic and often fabricates to heighten her story for the press. She realizes the press is her path to the public. A week after arriving in the United States, she claims a dozen Fokker planes will arrive for her school but they never came. She claims to be 24 but is actually 30. She claims to have traveled to England, Belgium and Switzerland but did not.
1922, August 27: The Chicago Defender schedules a show with over-the-top promises but it was rained out.
1922, September 3: Bessie flies a borrowed Curtiss JN-4. The company pilot rode with her for a turn to check her skills. No stunts were allowed. None of the other promises by Defender occurred. But still even famous stunt jumper Hubert Fountleory Julian did not upstage Bessie. She was reported to be a “conservative flyer but a good one.” Jackson (a promotor) was busy organizing black state fairs. Bessie is engaged to appear at the Negro Tri-state fair in Memphis, TN, on October 12.
1922, September: Bessie returns to Chicago and two weeks later performs an air show. More over the top promises are made one of which is that Bessie’s sister Georgia will do a “death defying” parachute jump but Georgia does not want to do it and does not.
1922, October 7 – October 15: Bessie performs shows. During the October 7 exhibition she finishes first act in 10 minutes, and then heads out to do another performance with twisting and turning. It is the first performance of black female flier.
Three weeks after this performance she risks her reputation by pulling out of a movie commitment because she didn’t like how the backers wanted her to portray her character as poor and ignorant. She said, “I’m no Uncle Tom.” Conflict with agents and broken contract followed her. Bessie had a reputation of being difficult to work with, and she had three managers in five months. Bessie wanted equality for her race and gender.
1922, October 12: Bessie flew at the Negro Tri-State Fair show in Memphis, Tennessee.
1922, December: With no movie sponsor or plane, Bessie announced she’d be open a school for aviators at 628 Indiana Ave. in Chicago.
1923, January: Bessie left for California to do an ad blitz for student Robert Paul Sachs for Coast tires. She offered to drop leaflets from the sky.
Bessie intended to purchase and plane and did. It was a surplus plane in the amount of $400, a Curtiss Jn-4.
Per interview with Air Service Newsletter, a publication for Pilots great quote. “She says she went to France for two purposes, to drink wine and learn to fly. It goes without saying that she has been successful in flying, but we don’t know her capacity or ability to drink wine.”
1923, February: An exhibition show schedule to celebrate the opening of a new fair grounds at Palomar Park near Slauson Ave. 10,000 people gathered to see her. She took off at Santa Monica and for 25-mile flight to fair grounds. Her motor stalled at 300 feet and her new plane nosedived and smashed. A doctor gave her emergency care. She had a broken leg, fractured ribs, multiple cuts around the eyes and chin, and possible internal injuries. Interestingly, much of the crowd complained about not getting to see Bessie. Student Robert Sachs wrote a letter on Bessie’s behalf that was published in the Eagle.
1923, May 5 – 12: Bessie gave lectures at 9th Street branch of Young Men’s Christian Association an showed her films of her flights in Europe and U.S.
1923, June: Bessie returned to Chicago. The Chicago Defender had lost interest and failed to publicize her show scheduled for September 3, Labor Day, in Columbus, Ohio. It was rained out. At the same location and date the KKK had a celebration. Bessie came back and told Defender her plans for school were well underway. She claimed she would do an exhibition in Chicago when her plan arrived.
1923, September 9: Bessie went back to Ohio and performed a show for audience of 10,000. She came back and told the Chicago Defender she would make a farewell flight in the city before heading South for a tour. This didn’t happen and she lost another manager.
1924: The Afro-American runs story regarding Bessie and the loss of another manager. She is described as strong willed and wants to have her say in bookings. Bessie expressed to her sisters that she was about ready to give up and didn’t fit in. Bessie was known in the family as a beloved and fun aunt who taught her nieces and nephews manners.
1925, May: Twenty-Eight months later Bessie is in Texas. On May 9, she gives a lecture and shows her films.
1925, June 19: Bessie makes first flight in Texas. Scheduled on Juneteenth which is significant. Blacks in Texas achieved freedom. Bessie did dives, barrel rolls, figure eights, loop-the-loops. Worst Jim crow in the U.S. in Texas. The event was a huge success and even covered by a white paper.
1925, July 10, July 11 and July 12: Bessie did more shows in Texas.
1925, August 9: A show in San Antonio. She realized African Americans were her best audience. She went to Dallas to buy an airplane, Curtiss Southwestern Airplane.
1925, September 5 and 6: Scheduled shows in Wharton, Texas. On the 6th Bessie decided to perform a jump from her plane. She did a freefall at 3,000 feet and landed in the crowd. It was considered a huge success.
After September Bessie gave a show in Waxahachie. Organizers had separate entrances for whites and blacks. Bessie requested only one entrance. Bessie did more shows in Texas in small towns that didn’t have newspapers. It was a very successful summer. Bessie headed back to Chicago. Agent D. Ireland Thomas organized lectures in Georgia and Florida.
1926, January: Bessie arrives in Savannah, Georgia, first week of new year from Atlanta to Florida for lectures. She thought about a film again and tried to pitch it but no takers. She lectured for several months and worked part-time as a beautician. In Orlando, Florida she became friends with Rev. and Mrs. Viola Hill.
Bessie also became friends with Edwin Beeman of Beeman Chewing Gum. Very wealthy. He gave Bessie the money to purchase her next plane.
1926, April 28: Bessie was scheduled for an exhibition on April 30. John Thomas Betsch promoted it. The 24-year-old mechanic William D. Wills took off with Bessie’s plane from Love Field Dallas. It malfunctioned during his flight to Florida, requiring two additional stops for 21-hour trip. He reached Jacksonville on April 28. Two notable pilots said it was a miracle he had gotten the plane to fly at all because the engine was so bad. Robert Abbott met Bessie and mentioned he did not like her pilot Wills.
At 6:30 Friday morning Bessie called Wills to tell him they’d be riding out with Betsch who would drive them to Paxon field. They arrived at 7:15. Will declared the plane ready. They took off with Bessie in the back studying the field for jump sites. Wills flew the plane. She didn’t wear a seat belt so she could lift up and peer over the side of the cockpit.
Wills headed for a racetrack circled at 2000 feet for 5 minutes and climbed to 3,500 before turning back to Paxon cruising at 80 miles per hour. The plane suddenly accelerated to 110 miles per hour and then nosedived. The plane went into a tailspin at 1000 feet, and then flipped upside down at 500 feet. Bessie fell out and somersaulted end-over-end until she hit the ground, breaking nearly every bone in her body and dying on contact.
Wills was trapped under the plane. Betsch lit a cigarette and dropped a match which caught the plane on fire, and the pant leg of a fire fighter. Betsch was taken into custody.
The cause of the crash was determined to be a wrench that fell into the control gears. It was either left there or fell in. Wills white body was taken to white mortuary. Florida had strict segregation.
Several services for Bessie with thousands in attendance.
1933: Lt. William J. Powell founded Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs on the West Coast.
1934: He dedicated his book Wings to her.
1977: A group of black female pilots in chi/Indiana area formed Bessie Coleman Aviators Club.
1980: Rufus A Hunt revived flyover of Bessie grave.
1990, April 28: Major Richard M. Dailey renamed Old Mannheim Rd at O’Hare airport “Bessie Coleman Dr.”
Photo by Sammie Vasquez on Unsplash
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Sherry is the founder of Storied Gifts a personal publishing service of family and company histories. She and her team help clients curate and craft their stories into books. When not writing or interviewing, Sherry spends loads of time with her grandchildren and lives in Des Moines, Iowa.
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