04/30/2024
It wasn't until about a year ago that I learned about early pioneering woman aviator Bessie Coleman. In the infancy of aviation, women and African-Americans weren't supposed to be either impressive or pilots – she was both. On this day in 1926, at the age of 34, she was killed while rehearsing for an air show.
Bessie Coleman, American aviator and a star of early aviation exhibitions and air shows. In 1921 she became the first American woman to obtain an international pilot’s license, and in 1922 she flew the first public flight by an African American woman in America.