January
26
Bessie appears to have led a fairly uneventful existence until soldiers returning from World War I with tales of aeronautical adventures lit a spark that was more than a spark. It was an inferno. How does that work? Where does desire that strong come from in a person? And this wasn't even an ordinary inferno; nothing was going to extinguish this dream.
One
impossible dream quickly became two. Bessie Coleman was awarded her international pilot's license by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in June of 1921. In September of that year she returned to the United States and for the next five years thrilled audiences with her stunt flying (never at any location that denied entrance to African-Americans), taught other women to fly, and used her position as much as possible to advance the cause of racial equality and women's rights. Sadly, Bessie Coleman died in a flying accident in 1926.
On to January 27
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Bessie
Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, a daughter of sharecroppers, on
this day in 1893. Her childhood was typical for an African-American
girl of that area and time--she walked four miles to a one-room, ill-equipped
school and had nothing. Around 1916, Bessie and her family moved to
Chicago to take advantage of the opportunities that were becoming
available in the urban North. 
Bessie
worked two jobs, as a manicurist and as manager of a chili parlor,
in order to save the money to go to flight school, but no school would
take her because of her race and sex. There were, of course, some
women pilots at that time, but they were invariably well-off and white.
Bessie must have heard "you can't do it" a dozen times a
day from those who cared about her and those who didn't. But nothing
mattered to her except that she realize her driving ambition.
While the United States was still
sexist and racist to its core, France was not. If she learned French
and was able to get there, she could become a pilot. Of course, this
meant that a great deal more money would be required. Enlisting the
help of one of Chicago's only African-American millionaires, Robert
Abbott, Bessie was able to go to Berlitz school in Chicago to learn
French and was soon off to Paris.
