Bessie Coleman Learns French to Fly

Bessie Coleman grew up in Texas picking cotton, and walking four miles to a one-room school, and reading every book she could get hold of.

Then she heard about aeroplanes. Pilots coming home from the war told stories about looping through clouds, and Bessie decided, quietly and completely, that she was going to fly.

So she went to a flying school. They said no. She went to another. No. Every single flying school in America said no to her, because she was a Black woman.

Now, most people would have given up there. Bessie did something else entirely.

She found out that flying schools in France would teach her. So she got a job, saved every penny — and learned to speak French. A whole language, just so she could ask properly.

Then she sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, walked into a French flying school, and asked in perfect French to be taught.

They taught her. In 1921 Bessie Coleman earned her pilot's licence, the first Black woman in the world to hold one.

She came home and flew at air shows, looping and rolling above crowds who had never seen anything like her, and she refused to perform anywhere that would not let everyone in to watch.

Goodnight, brave one. The sky is still up there, waiting.