LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Bessie Coleman
built 645 days ago
At age 29, Bessie Coleman was the first black woman to receive her pilot's license and the first woman to receive an international pilot's license. Bessie learned French as she had to go to France for lessons because no one would teach her in the US. Wanting to share her success and help other women and African Americans overcome poverty, prejudice and injustice she had faced she worked to open a flight school for African Americans. She believed they needed to take their place in the skies, too. The doll comes dressed in her flight uniform designed by her when she got her license. The uniform has leather trim on her jacket, a hat with an embroidered eagle and leather boots.
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When Bessie Coleman was a child, she wanted to be in school -- not in the cotton fields of Texas, helping her family earn money. She wanted to be somebody significant in the world. So Bessie did everything she could to learn under the most challenging of circumstances. At the end of every day in the fields she checked the foreman's numbers -- made sure his math was correct. And this was just the beginning of a life of hard work and dedication that really paid off: Bessie became the first African-American to earn a pilot's license. She was somebody.
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A children's book on Bessie Coleman has the heart of the story: Nikki Grimes, Talking About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman. Available at 57th St. Books. Coleman was cameo's on a PBS program in The History Detectives series, sleuthing who built Lindbergh's engine.
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In 1921, Bessie Coleman of Chicago became the first African American to earn a pilot's license, having to travel to France for her flight training since no American flight school would accept her because of her race. Upon her return to the United States, Coleman intended to start a flying school for African American pilots. She began earning the money for this cause by performing on the aerial barnstorming circuit. Her aerial stunts and parachute jumps at airshows, circuses, and county fairs across the country became internationally famous. As she toured the United States she ... gave lectures at black schools, churches, and recreational facilities in an effort to encourage African Americans to enter the field of aviation. Preparing for an air show in Jacksonville, Florida, Coleman was killed when she was thrown from a crashing aircraft in which she was a passenger.
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Bessie Coleman picked cotton as a child, but her mother was determined that her thirteen children get an education. Bessie graduated from high school and went to Chicago where she worked in a barber shop, ran a chili parlor, and discovered airplanes. Unable to find an aviation school that would teach a black woman to fly, she went to Paris. She became the first black woman to receive a pilot's license and the first woman to get an international pilot's license. Bessie returned to the United States where she lectured and gave shows while trying to establish a flight school for blacks. She was killed when her plane nose dived and she fell to her death.
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Bessie Coleman park council was formed in 2005 as one of many responses to a serious increase in crime, shootings and disorderly loitering in and near the park, at 54th and Drexel. The council has worked with police and the Chicago Park District (regional and downtown staff) to increase policing and find structural solutions to discourage said loitering and criminal activities. Current council president is Peter Cassel, 773 619-5449 or via e-mail at peter.cassel@gmail.com.
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Bessie Coleman