Do you know who was the first African American woman to fly a plane? Or who was the first American to receive an international pilot’s license? That person is Bessie Coleman. In this report, I will talk about Bessie Coleman, her life and family, the obstacles she faced, the influence she made on the civil rights era, and the legacy that she left. Bessie Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas. She was one of thirteen other children to Susan and George Coleman. When she was a toddler, her father, half African American, half Native American, left for Oklahoma Indian territory in search of better opportunities. Her mother refused to go with him, and so he left for Oklahoma alone. When Coleman turned two, her family moved to Waxahachie, …show more content…
Racial discrimination was widespread. She tried to enroll in aviation schools all over the country but none accepted her because she was both black and a woman. Another obstacle she faced occurred near the end of her life. In 1923, Coleman bought her own plane. It was a WWII surplus army training plane. Just days after she bought, she crashed it when it did a nose dive while she was on the way to a show. She was hospitalized for three months and she lost her backers. She traveled back to Chicago and spent 18 months searching for new ones.While she wasn’t often discriminated against, she still strongly opposed it. She had refused to fly at any shows that did not allow African American spectators. She overcame these obstacles that were keeping her from getting a license and learning to fly by not giving up. When aviation schools in America did not accept her, she traveled all the way to Europe to learn to fly. She was the only African American in her class and she was taught in a 27-foot biplane that was known to fail often, sometimes in the air. She even witnessed a fellow student die in a plane crash. However she kept going, and after 7 months, she was awarded an international pilot’s license from