Let’s look skyward for a little bit of inspiration before Black History Month concludes. Each of the following aviation pioneers cracked open a door that was previously slammed shut. Here are their inspiring stories.
Bessie Coleman
Bessie Coleman was one of the first women in America to pilot an airplane, and, she claimed, the first Black woman aviator. A manicurist in Chicago before taking flying lessons in France shortly before her 20th birthday, she thrilled crowds around the nation with her daring barnstorming exhibitions. (James Mayo/Chicago Tribune)
First Black woman to earn a pilot’s license
Born in Atlanta, Texas, Coleman moved to Chicago around 1915. She attended beauty school to become a manicurist, but wasn’t satisfied with her career path. Coleman wanted to learn how to fly. She soon learned, however, that American flight schools weren’t an option due to her skin color and gender. After hearing stories about the opportunities available for women overseas — likely from a brother who served during World War I — she focused on France.
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Coleman learned French and saved money from her day job in anticipation of a move to Europe. Chicago Defender founder Robert Sengstacke Abbott and banker Jesse Binga helped pay her tuition for flight school in northern France.
Just seven months later, Coleman became the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license. She was presented it by the International Aeronautical Federation on June 15, 1921 — almost two years before fellow aviator Amelia Earhart.
Coleman returned to the United States aboard the steamer ship Mancuria amid fanfare on Sept. 25, 1921. She proclaimed herself the “only Negro aviatrix in the world,” the Tribune reported, and intended “to give exhibition flights and thus inspire the colored citizens with a desire to fly.”
Disaster struck as she was flying to a Los Angeles show in 1923. Her engine stalled, and the aircraft crashed. From a hospital bed she telegraphed friends and fans: “Tell them all that as soon as I can walk I’m going to fly! And my faith in aviation and the use it will serve in fulfilling the destiny of my people isn’t shaken at all.”
As her plane was beyond repair, she could only keep her bookings when she could borrow a plane.
In 1926, she heard that used airplanes were bought and sold at Love Field in Dallas. Coleman bought a well-worn Jenny two-seater. She’d opened a beauty parlor in Orlando, Fla., hoping it would finance her return to flying, biographer Doris Rich wrote in “Queen Bess.”
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Coleman hired William Wills, a white mechanic, to deliver her airplane, and on April 30, 1926, the two went aloft to have a look at the Jacksonville, Fla., racetrack where she would perform. Coleman had added a trick to her routine: stepping out on to a wing, jumping off and parachuting to the ground. Accordingly, Wills was in the front seat and Coleman in the rear seat, when a loose wrench got caught in the control mechanism.
The Jenny turned over, dropping Coleman out of the aircraft at around 2,000 feet. She plummeted to the ground and died. Wills was killed in the ensuing crash.
Funerals were held for Coleman in Jacksonville, Orlando and Chicago, where 2,000 people crowded Pilgrim Baptist Church on May 7, 1926. Coleman was buried in Lincoln Cemetery and for several years pilots dropped floral tributes to her from the sky.
Bessie Coleman Drive at O’Hare International Airport is named in her honor and a postage stamp featuring her image was released in 1995.
Cornelius R. Coffey and John Charles Robinson
John Charles Robinson, nicknamed the “Brown Condor,” was a pioneer aviator from Chicago who started an airport in Robbins with Cornelius Coffey. (Smithsonian Institution)
Founded the first Black-owned airport and aviation school in the U.S.
Though Coffey and Robinson never met Coleman, her story inspired them to move to Chicago to pursue aviation careers.
The men were initially denied admission to Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical University in Chicago because they were Black, Tyrone Haymore, executive director of the Robbins Historical Society and Museum, told the Tribune last year.
Instead Robinson got a job as a janitor at the school on South Michigan Avenue, and timed his tasks to allow him to eavesdrop on classes. He also established an automotive garage near where the new Rosenwald Courts apartments were being erected. Coffey became the first Black man to hold two licenses — a pilot and an aircraft mechanic.
The garage gave the friends the space and tools to build their own small Heath Parasol aircraft from a kit. They couldn’t afford the recommended motor, Haymore said, so they used one from Coffey’s motorcycle instead. The plane worked, and they convinced a Curtiss-Wright instructor to come out and give it a test flight.
Both men were finally allowed to attend Curtiss-Wright and graduated at the top of their class.
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Their next step would be to open their own school. In Robbins, the men found support. Mayor Samuel Nichols, whose daughter Nichelle Nichols notably was a trailblazing icon aboard another aircraft, Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, helped them find land and labor to clear it for a hangar.
Robbins is where Coffey, Robinson and a small group of investors founded the first U.S. airport for Black aviators. Operating under the name the Challenger Air Pilots Association, they began operations in 1931 along 139th Street. The Robbins Historical Museum now occupies part of the site.
A windstorm destroyed their hangar and two airplanes in 1933, but they were welcomed to Harlem Airport in Oak Lawn. There they trained hundreds of pilots — Black and white — together.
Cornelius Coffey, aviation pioneer, trained more than 1,000 fledgling pilots, 200 of them for military forces, by 1951. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
Robinson left the program in the mid 1930s after being recruited by Ethiopia to help develop that country’s air defenses as an invasion by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini loomed. Nicknamed the “Brown Condor,” Robinson returned to a hero’s welcome in 1936 for his work in the African nation, where he spent the rest of his life.
Coffey stayed at the airport at Harlem Avenue and 87th Street, which closed for good after its owners lost its lease in 1956. The site became a shopping center and was annexed by the village of Bridgeview. He later went on to teach at several schools in Chicago, including a long stint at Dunbar High School.
Every day, commercial aircraft pass a marker to Coffey’s place in aviation history without realizing it. Heading for Chicago’s Midway International Airport from the south and east, planes make a final course correction at a point over Lake Calumet that, in 1980, the Federal Aviation Administration named the Cofey Fix (with a slight misspelling because regulations limit such radio checkpoints to five letters).
Willa Brown (Willa Brown Chappell)
Willa Brown, shown circa 1946, was the first African American woman to run for Congress. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
First Black woman to earn private pilot and commercial licenses and first Black woman to run for Congress
The Kentucky native had a bachelor’s degree in teaching from Indiana State University and a master’s degree in business education from Northwestern University, but flight became her life after meeting members of the Challenger Air Pilots Association at a drug store in 1934.
Robinson gave Brown lessons before he departed for Ethiopia, then Coffey took over. Brown made her first solo flight at Harlem Airport in June 1936, then became the first Black woman to receive her private pilot’s license in July 1938. Just two years later, she was the highest-ranking Black female pilot in the U.S.
Brown’s list of firsts is numerous. She became the first Black female member of the Civil Air Patrol. She and Coffey, then married, opened the Coffey School of Aeronautics, which became the first Black-owned flight school in the country. Ground-school classes were taught nights at Wendell Phillips High School in Bronzeville and flight exams were given at Harlem Airport. Brown also persuaded the Civil Aeronautics Authority to accept and train her Black students as qualified pilots in the U.S. Army Air Corps (the precursor to the Air Force). She also was responsible for the foundation of the 99th Pursuit Squadron (later known as the Tuskegee Airmen), the first all-Black American fighter squadron. Later she became the first Black woman appointed to the FAA’s Women’s Advisory Committee on Aviation.
The aviatrix, who also recruited young Black children for a junior airman’s program during World War II, tried her hand at politics. Despite reportedly flying first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Brown withdraw her support for President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a 2nd Ward precinct captain for the Republican party.
“When I led the fight to get Negroes admitted into the army air forces and pressed my claim before the New Deal war department they said that first I would have to carry out an experiment to see if Negro pilots had the ability to fly,” Brown told the Tribune in 1944. “I fought for the full integration of Negroes in aviation and when the New Dealers realized I would accept no appeasement program they set up the segregated unit in Alabama and set out to kill my program in Chicago. Now I am out to do everything to defeat the present administration …”
Brown was the first Black woman to run for Congress, but was unsuccessful in the 1st District in 1946, 1948 and 1950. She also ran for Chicago alderman in 1947 and ward committeeman in 1948.
She was a librarian at Tilden High School in the 1960s and an education coordinator at Westinghouse High School in the early 1970s. Brown died in 1992.
99th Pursuit Squadron (Tuskegee Airmen)
Members of the “Black Eagles,” the first Black fighter pilots to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps, display awards they received in Chicago on Feb. 16, 1983, from the U.S. Customs Service north central region. From left are Carl Ellis, Lawrence Clark, Robert Martin, James Hall and Felix Kirkpatrick, all former members of the Chicago “DODO” Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen. (Ernie Cox Jr./Chicago Tribune)
First Black unit of the U.S. Army Air Corps
The U.S. Army put out a call on March 22, 1941, seeking Black volunteers on a “first come, first served” basis for the 99th Pursuit Squadron — its first Black unit of the Air Corps. Enlistment requirements were for Black men aged 18-35, unmarried and either a high school graduate or holder of a journeyman’s rating in a trade.
Training for pilots and ground crew took place starting on March 24, 1941, at Chanute Field in Rantoul before the graduates were transferred to Tuskegee, Ala. in June 1941. That location would provide the elite fighter pilot group with its famed name — the Tuskegee Airmen. Despite the relocation, a November 1942 Tribune story said the unit was “conceived by Chicagoans, taught in part by Chicagoans, and includes more than 100 Chicagoland youths.”
Its first flyers were scheduled to depart for World War II efforts in October 1942, but were unexplainably held back despite the completion of their training.
“The fact that six weeks later the squadron is still at its original base at Tuskegee, Ala., awaiting orders, indicates that it is high time to light a fire under somebody in Washington,” a Tribune editorial stated. “A source of strength to the nation is being neglected, and there will be no patience with that.”
Locals who were part of the group included Andrew “Doc” Perez, Charles McGee, Henry P. Hervey Jr., Roy Chappell, Wilbur George, Daniel Williamson, Roger Elwood Madison, Robert Martin, Harold Hurd, Hannibal Cox, John W. Rogers Sr. and Oscar Lawton Wilkerson.
Janet Harmon Bragg
Janet Harmon Bragg was the first Black woman to earn a commercial pilot’s license. (U.S. Air Force)
Though she was a registered nurse (with a degree from Spelman College in Atlanta) in Chicago, Bragg had another intention for taking to the skies.
“I had a boyfriend and he was a pilot, and I wanted to keep him,” she told the Tribune in 1993 about Robinson. “So I learned how to fly.”
This hobby soon turned into a passion for Bragg, who received her license at Chicago Executive Airport near Wheeling after acing the exam in 1942 in Alabama — but refused the honor by a white instructor there. Along with Coffey and Robinson she helped open the Black-owned airport in Robbins and formed the Challengers Air Pilots Association.
“You would get up there and in this great big universe,” Bragg said. “It was just you and God.”
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Bragg and Robinson broke up, but she stuck with her avocation and in 1933 bought a single-engine, 90-horsepower International — the first of three airplanes she eventually purchased. Two years later, she joined the flight program at Curtiss-Wright.
Bragg told the Tribune she applied for the Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASPs) during World War II, but said she was denied a position due to her skin color.
Instead, Bragg and her husband Sumner found financial success after opening nursing homes in Hyde Park. She continued to fly and even was honored in 1956 by Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie during a grand celebration in Addis Ababa, where she was presented a lion cub and made honorary consul for Ethiopia in Chicago.
William R. (Bill) Norwood
Capt. William R. Norwood’s name is inscribed on a Boeing 727 on exhibit at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago on May 13, 2021. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
First Black pilot for United Airlines
Bill Norwood broke not only barriers in aviation, but also on the ground. He became the first Black quarterback for the Southern Illinois University Salukis football team while earning his bachelor’s degree there in 1974 in aeronautical science.
After a six-year stint in the Air Force flying B-52s, Norwood applied for a job with Chicago-based United Airlines. Unlike Marlon D. Green, who had to wage a legal battle before he was allowed to become the first Black pilot hired by a commercial airline (Continental), Norwood’s progress through 13 weeks of training was breezy.
“My hair could have been purple,” Norwood told reporters in 1965, when he was given his wings by United. “I was treated well and there were no problems.”
Norwood flew more than 25,000 hours for United and retired in 1996 as captain of the DC-10. His name is inscribed on the Boeing 727, which he previously flew, that’s part of the “Take Flight” exhibit at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. He also wrote a book in 2016 titled, “The Legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen.”
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