Cathleen Small - Bessie Coleman: First Female African American and Native American Pilot

Fearless young aviatrix Bessie Coleman earned her international pilots license in 1921.

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The Times of Bessie Coleman

The air is the only place free from prejudices. Bessie Coleman

B essie Colemans life was relatively short by modern standards, but the thirty-four years in which she lived1892 to 1926were remarkable. Not only were there new developments in aviation and technology, but the social landscape in America was also changing. PostCivil War political battles and debates around gender and racial civil rights were still going on, and tensions continued through World War I and beyond. It is nothing short of amazing that Coleman succeeded in this era to become a female pilot, and even more incredible is that she was both African American and Native American. In a time when segregation was commonplace, minorities were seen as less than whites, and women did not even have the right to vote, Bessie Coleman managed to persevere and break past those stereotypes and gain fame as the first female African American and Native American pilot.

A South Without Slavery

Less than three decades before Bessie Coleman was born, the Civil War ended, and the , and the military ensured that slaves in the South were indeed freed and not enslaved again.

This was a major change in societyand one that many Southerners had difficulty accepting. Even those who didnt resent the abolishment of slavery still had to adjust to a new dynamic in which African Americans were free and looking for work to support their families.

Any change like this is bound to be slow moving and met with resistance, and this is certainly the case with the end of slavery. When troops began to leave the South after Reconstruction, African Americans again found themselves at the mercy of white peopleonly this time, in positions of . Bessie Colemans parents found themselves in this type of servitude as sharecroppers. Sharecroppers were allowed to farm the land, but only if a portion of their crops went to the landowner.

The sharecropping arrangements were appealing at first for newly freed black and poor white families because they could not afford to purchase their own land, but many found themselves in exploitative arrangements with no prospect of improving the situation. In other words, African Americans, though no longer slaves, were still controlled and restricted in every aspect of their lives.

Racial Tensions in the South

In 1890, Mississippi passed laws to officially both blacks and whites living in poverty. Nine more former Confederate states followed suit in the next two decades. These laws instituted poll taxes, residency requirements, recordkeeping requirements, and literacy and comprehension tests that effectively stripped African Americans and poor whites of their right to vote. Racial discrimination in the South permeated all aspects of life.

The disenfranchisement laws created an unbalanced political system and stripped African Americans of any political rights. Since African Americans couldnt vote, the elections unsurprisingly went to the candidates supported by wealthy Caucasiansand often those candidates had no interest in improving conditions for blacks. Without any sort of political voice, African American communities suffered. For example, public facilities, such as libraries and schools, were underfunded. A vicious cycle was created. African Americans could not pass the literacy requirements or afford the poll taxes required to vote, and so their community had no political voice, which meant that their facilities suffered. Thus the children using those facilities got substandard educations and ended up living in the same cycle of poverty as their parents had.

As women, Bessie Coleman and her mother were at a dual disadvantage. They could not vote because they were women, and they also would have difficulty voting because they faced the same challenges as other African Americans. Women were not granted the right to vote until the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920.

Segregated areas, as in this 1940s picture of a bus station waiting room in North Carolina, were the norm in the Jim Crow South.

positions. Wilson and his cabinet members quickly decided that racial separation would create the best possible nation for white people and African Americans, and they supported segregated workplaces along with legislation that upheld segregation.