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Bessie Coleman: Schools
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Bessie Coleman was born into a poor family in a small town in Texas in 1893. Her mother had to support the family by doing laundry and Bessie and her sisters worked during the school holidays picking cotton to supplement the family's income.
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Bessie was the sixth of ten children in the Atlanta home of George and Susan Coleman. The Colemans moved to Waxahachie where George left the family, leaving his wife to raise Bessie and three sisters. The family survived by picking cotton, doing laundry and cooking for white households. But Bessie yearned for more. She finished eight grades at a one-room school and attended a term at a college in Oklahoma.
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Coleman began school at the age of six and had to walk four miles each day to her all-black, one-room school. Despite sometimes lacking such materials as chalk and pencils Bessie was an excellent student. She loved to read and established herself as an outstanding math student. Bessie completed all eight grades of her one-room school. Every year Coleman’s routine of school, chores, and church was interrupted by the cotton harvest. Each man, woman, and child was needed to pick the cotton, so the Coleman family worked together in the fields during the harvest.
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Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, in 1892. When she was two years old her family moved to a small farm near the town of Waxahachie, 30 miles south of Dallas. One of 13 children, she spent most of her time looking after her younger sisters and brothers. During the long cotton-picking season, the local school shut down so that the children could help with the harvest. Coleman was an eager student, though, and craved the challenge and excitement of school. She earned top marks, especially in mathematics.
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From there, Coleman went from one of the new flying schools to another, but was turned down as quickly as she asked. There were, of course, two reasons why Coleman couldn't find anyone to teach her to fly. In Chicago in 1919 and 1920, her race was an obvious reason. In America, her sex was another. The doors were closed to young Bessie Coleman.
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Bessie was a highly motivated individual. Despite working long hours, she still found time to educate herself by borrowing books from a traveling library. Although she could not attend school very often, Bessie learned enough on her own to graduate from high school. She then went on to study at the Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now Langston University) in Langston, Oklahoma. Nevertheless, because of limited finances, Bessie only attended one semester of college.
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