Breaking barriers--The Bessie Coleman story

Flight Journal, Aug 1998 by Maurizi, Dennis

Call it what you will-acrid, pungent, bitter-the smell was close to overwhelming. It was always close to overwhelming at this stage, when the castor oil used to lubricate the engine began to burn off as a sickly yellow mist.

The young woman in the cockpit could feel it begin to settle on her face and goggles. She could feel the heat, too, thrown right back at her by the 80hp engine as it worked to find its proper speed. At this point, it was anyone's guess which was racing faster: the engine, or her pulse.

She might have appreciated knowing that some 500 years earlier, Joan of Arc had a few nervous moments of her own in this area of France. But there was no time for that now.

Her grip on the wooden stick began to tighten. Anxiously, she tested and re-tested the rudder bar beneath her feet. Then, ever so slowly, the woman eased the French Nieuport biplane forward.

"Steady," she told herself. Forget the bad jokes about the cloth-covered wings coming apart at the seams. Forget the crash you saw just weeks earlier. Forget it all, and just concentrate. Just do what you've spent the last seven months practicing to do. You know the drill.

A smooth climb to 150 feet, then twice around the five-kilometer test course. Throw in a couple of figure8s to show them you know what you're doing, and finish it off with a perfecty uneventful landing. You know you can do it. Now just prove it to everybody who's watching.

The date was June 15, 1921. The woman was Bessie Cc)leman. She was an .\merican, but on this day, she would he flying over the fields of the prestigious French flying school, Ecole d'Aviation des Freres Caudron, in Le Crotoy, France. lhe flight would earn her not only the pilot's license she had long dreamed of, but a place in histury as well. Not that historn would pay that much attention.

Admit it. Have you ever heard of her? There she was, the world's first female African-.merican flier. A contemporary of Amelia Earhart's. A pretyy big deal, no matter how you look at it. But if you're like most people, you probably never had a clue. Don't feel had; you're not alone. Even Mae Jemison has admitted she learned of Coleman's existence only a few years ago. And Jemison, remember, was this country's first black, female astronaut.

Fortunately, Bessie Coleman was never much intimidated by what other people thought, or didn't think. Good thing, too. When she first got the itch to fly, no white instructors were willing to teach her. She didn't bother trying to find any black ones; there weren't any.

Oddly enough, that probably suited some members of the black community just fine, judging by an editorial that ran in the "Amsterdam News"-a popular African-American newspaper in New York at the time. The piece was entitled "Colored Women Venturing too Far from Children, Kitchen, Clothes and Church." A black woman's place, it seemed, was in the home-not in the hangar. But obstacles were nothing new to Bessie Coleman; they came with the territory.

Born in 1892, she was one of 13 children in a family whose parents could neither read nor write. She grew up in the segregated town of Atlanta, Texas, where the only available school-if you could call it that-was a single room with one teacher who served all eight grades.

The schooling was not only poor, but it was also intermittent. Whenever any kind of work needed to be done in the fields, the school doors didn't even open. Her father left when she was nine, so for much of her young life, Coleman was reared by her mother, Susan. This at a time when nearly 85 percent of all black households were headed by men. What kept her going?

Well, do you remember the film, "Dead Poets Society"? Do you recall how Robin Williams' character inspired his students by telling them to "Seize the day" and make their lives extraordinary? Turns out Susan Coleman had the same philosophy; she just didn't have a scriptwriter. "If you stay a mule," she constantly told her daughter, "you'll never win the race." And like any good parent, she wanted her daughter to win the race.

Susan Coleman knew the value of manners; how good ones can help to open suspicious minds and poor ones just as easily close them. She had her children emulate the manners of the white family for whom she worked as cook and housekeeper. Meals in the Coleman household were always served on a tablecloth. Utensils were always in their proper place. "Please" and "thank you" soon became a natural part of dinnertime conversation.

But it was the after-dinner conversation that had the greatest impact. That's when Susan Coleman turned the talk to the achievements of African-American heroes such as Booker T. Washington, writer-poet Paul Dunbar and Harriet Tubman, leader of the Underground Railroad.

She made it a point to obtain books that chronicled their exploits and have her daughter read aloud from them. It certainly had an effect.

Bessie Coleman said later that she never doubted she would succeed, and as a child, promised herself that one day, she would "amount to something." What that "something" was didn't become clear until 1919. She was 27.