In November 1920, Bessie sailed to France for a 10-month course at the famed Caudron Brothers’ School of Aviation at Le Crotoy, France. Bessie walked the nine miles to the airfield every day for flight lessons in order to save her limited funds. She finished the course in seven months, learning to fly a 27-foot (8.2 meters) biplane with a 40-foot (12 meters) wingspan. It was the French Nieuport Type 82.
On June 15, 1921, Bessie took her test. She flew a five-kilometer course at an altitude of 50 meters (160 feet). She was also required to complete a figure eight and land within 50 meters of a designated spot. She received her license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, becoming the first African American with a pilot’s license. She was also the only woman among the 62 candidates who earned licenses during the six-month period.
Chicago Defender
Established in 1905 by Robert Abbott, the goal of this Chicago-based African American newspaper was to recognize African Americans and encourage racial pride. Within five years, the small local paper began attracting national attention, and soon it became the country’s leading African American newspaper, boasting the motto “The World’s Greatest Weekly.” The Chicago Defender profiled famous African Americans and covered controversial topics, such as segregation and lynching.
In 1956, the Chicago Defender became a daily publication and began acquiring other US newspapers. It continues today, reporting the news and championing equality for all.
When Bessie arrived in New York the following September, she was surprised at the attention she received from the newspapers. The Harlem Renaissance had exploded in New York, with attention focused on African American writers and entertainers. Everyone wanted to meet Bessie, who was part of just a handful of American women pilots and the only African American among them. She had always wanted to amount to something, and now she had.
Bessie Coleman was born January 26, 1892, in the northeast Texas town of Atlanta, the tenth of thirteen children born to Susan and George Coleman. The family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, when she was two years old. George, a tenant farmer, built a three-room house for his family. All the Colemans worked in the cotton fields when it was time for the harvest. The children’s schools, which were for African Americans only, even shut down so that every student could work in the fields. The work was backbreaking and earned them little money, and Bessie dreamed of a different life.
When she was seven years old, Bessie’s father left for Indian Territory (which later became Oklahoma) to the north of Texas. In addition to being African American, he was at least half Choctaw or Cherokee. George was tired of living life in segregated Texas. In Indian Territory, he would have full citizenship. But Susan refused to uproot the family and follow him.
With her older sons leaving as well, it was up to Susan Coleman to support her four remaining daughters, all of whom were younger than nine years of age. She found a job as a cook and housekeeper with the Jones family, kind employers who sent her home with sacks of flour and meat. The Jones family also had daughters and gave the Coleman girls their hand-me-down clothing. Although many housekeepers lived with the families they worked for in those days, the Jones family allowed Susan to live at home with her children.
Still, Susan worked long hours, so Bessie took care of her sisters and the home. She and her sisters attended a one-room schoolhouse for eight years, walking four miles each way. Bessie’s best subject was math. When her sisters fell ill, she had to miss school to care for them. She supplemented her education by borrowing books from the traveling wagon library. Sometimes she acted out the stories for her sisters. Bessie read books such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and biographies of famous African Americans such as Booker T. Washington.
When she became a little older, Bessie began making extra money by doing laundry, as her mother did. She picked up the laundry weekly, which often required toting the clothes more than five miles. Susan let Bessie keep the money she earned, and these funds allowed her to go to college—the Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now Langston University) in the all-black town of Langston, Oklahoma. College was expensive, however, and Bessie was forced to drop out after the first semester, when her money ran out.
Bessie briefly returned to Texas but knew the town of Waxahachie had nothing to offer her. As soon as she raised the money, she moved to Chicago, where two of her brothers lived. Walter worked as a Pullman porter. John was reported to be unemployed, but he may have also worked for gangster Al Capone.
Bessie had had enough of housekeeping and laundry jobs. Instead, she found work as a manicurist at a barbershop on State Street. The lively South Side area where she worked, referred to as “the Stroll,” was later called Chicago’s “Black Wall Street.” Businessmen, gangsters, and jazz musicians were frequent clients of hers.
Both of Bessie’s brothers fought in World War I. When they returned, they talked about what they had seen, particularly the airplanes. Her brother, John, teased her about how French women could be pilots, but she couldn’t. She didn’t think that was right. She decided she would be a pilot.
After Bessie had achieved her goal, she realized that the attention and acclaim were nice, but they didn’t pay the bills. They also wouldn’t help her achieve her dream of opening an aviation school for African Americans. She knew the only way to make a living from flying would be through entertaining people. Unfortunately, she needed more skills. She returned to Europe for six more months of advanced training in France, Holland, and Germany.
Bessie decided to create an image of herself that would attract attention and help her to make money from flying. With her small height of only five feet, three and a half inches, a dashing military-type uniform made her look important as she made her flying debut on September 3, 1922, at an air show at New York’s Curtiss Field. Robert Abbott and his newspaper, the Chicago Defender, sponsored the show, calling Bessie, “the world’s greatest woman flyer.” She did more than just fly overhead—she did figure eights, loop-the-loops, barrel rolls, and other barnstorming tricks guaranteed to draw gasps from the crowds. She became “Queen Bess, Daredevil Aviatrix.”
Word of “Brave Bessie” and “Queen Bess” spread. Whenever she performed, the crowds lined up. Like many barnstormers, she flew an old Jenny (World War I surplus US Army Curtiss JN-4). She concentrated on air shows in the North at first, gradually moving into the segregated South for performances. In 1925, she debuted in her home state of Texas. She performed in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and any small town with a field, even Waxahachie. She drew both white and black crowds, but she put her foot down about the people using segregated gates to enter the show.
Wherever she went, she encouraged women and African Americans to learn to fly. But Bessie still didn’t have enough money to open a flight school. Once she had to replace her own airplane after her Jenny crashed when the motor stalled at 300 feet (90 meters). The accident also resulted in a badly broken leg, three broken ribs, and various cuts. As soon as Bessie was able, she began supplementing her income with lectures, parachute jumping, and wing walking. She even opened a beauty shop in Orlando, Florida, to make money.
When the new Jenny she ordered from Curtiss Airfield in Dallas was finally paid off, she had it flown to Jacksonville, Florida, where her next show was to be held on May 1, 1926. The night before the show, she and her mechanic, William Will, took the plane up. Bessie rode as a passenger so that she could look over the side of the plane for good places to make parachute jumps. They were flying at about 80 miles an hour (130 kilometers per hour) at 3,500 feet (1,100 meters). Witnesses noticed an acceleration before the plane went into a nosedive. When the plane flipped, Bessie fell out and died when she hit the ground. Will struggled to gain control of the plane but couldn’t. He crashed the plane about a thousand yards from where Bessie’s body lay. He later died. Upon investigation, the cause of the crash was found to be a loose wrench that had jammed into the instruments.
In Orlando, more than 5,000 people paid their respects to Bess
ie before her body traveled by train to Chicago. There, 10,000 more said good-bye to Queen Bess. Only 34 years old, she didn’t live to see her dream come true, but it did happen three years later, when the Bessie Coleman Aero Club was established. The school educated many outstanding African American pilots, including Willa Brown and the Tuskegee Airmen.
Bessie Coleman was not forgotten. In 1931 and for many years afterward, the Challenger Air Pilots Association of Chicago and later the Tuskegee Airmen did a flyover of Lincoln Cemetery on Bessie’s birthday. Like Harriet Quimby, Bessie was honored with her own postage stamp in 1995. Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley named a major road at O’Hare Airport after her, calling it Bessie Coleman Drive. Today, Bessie Coleman’s brief life continues to inspire others.
LEARN MORE
Bessie Coleman website, www.bessiecoleman.com
“Bessie Coleman” on US Centennial of Flight Commission website, www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Explorers_Record_Setters_and_Daredevils/Coleman/EX11.htmBessie
“Bessie Coleman” on Ninety-Nines, Inc. International Organization of Women Pilots website, www.ninety-nines.org/index.cfm/bessie_coleman.htm
Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator by Doris L. Rich and Mae Jemison (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995)
Up in the Air: The Story of Bessie Coleman (Trailblazer Biographies) by Philip S. Hart (Carolrhoda Books, 1996)
NETA SNOOK
The Woman Who Taught Amelia to Fly
NOT ALL OF AVIATION’S PIONEERS died tragic deaths or set records. Some were just aviators who demonstrated their skills and talent day after day through the work they did with little fanfare. These people were the foundation of early aviation. Anita “Neta” Snook was one of those people. She accomplished much as an early aviator, but this achievement is often overshadowed by the fact that she taught the most famous woman pilot in the world how to fly.
Neta Snook was born February 14, 1896, in Mount Carroll, Illinois. She had a happy childhood and loving parents. Even as a toddler, she was drawn to anything mechanical. She enjoyed building toy cars and toy boats instead of playing with the usual dolls that girls were expected to enjoy.
The appearance of automobiles during Neta’s childhood thrilled both her and her father. He bought a car when she was nine, and they spent many hours driving. Sometimes, her father let her steer from her perch on his lap. They also studied the engine together, learning how it worked and how to make repairs.
One day, Neta and her family went to the county fair. Neta’s eyes grew large as she took in a sight she had never seen before: giant balloons in the air. Neta spent her time at the fair watching balloons and the balloonists who flew them. What would it be like to fly? she wondered.
When she was in her teens, Neta’s family moved to Ames, Iowa. After completing high school, she continued her education at Iowa State College (later renamed Iowa State University). The agricultural college had added home economics for the new female students being admitted. Neta was required to complete 17 hours of home economics courses before she could study what she really wanted to learn about: combustion engines, mechanical drawing, and machine repair. Until then, she spent much time in the university library reading up on subjects that fascinated her.
While at college, Neta heard about the Curtiss Flying School in Newport News, Virginia. The school had been started by Glenn Curtiss, an aviator and aircraft manufacturer. Neta applied during her second year of college, but the school turned her down. The response was, “No females allowed.”
The next year, a newspaper ad caught her attention. The Davenport Aviation School promised to teach anyone to fly for $400. This time, her application was accepted. She may have been the first woman to attend the school, but she was soon accepted as one of the guys, particularly after she pointed out errors in the blueprints of the plane they were building. Her classmates called their redheaded peer “Curly.”
The school introduced the students to aviation, but it was a low-budget operation in an abandoned warehouse on the river. The students had to build and maintain the airplanes if they wanted to fly. This requirement suited Neta’s mechanical interests just fine, and she took her first flight on July 21, 1917. She climbed to 6,000 feet (1,800 meters). Years later, Neta would still remember racing down the field at the start of that first flight and the moment the tail lifted off the ground.
Initially, Neta’s mother was embarrassed about Neta’s being in flight school. It just wasn’t something women did. Her mother didn’t tell the rest of the family, but soon the secret was out. Neta’s grandfather, a Civil War veteran, was so excited that his granddaughter was learning to fly that he visited her at school and took his first and only ride in an airplane at the age of 74. After getting her license, Neta would later take her now-proud mother for a ride around Ames.
Unfortunately, a few months after opening, the school shut down after one of the planes crashed, killing the president of the school and injuring the instructor. With only 100 minutes of flying time under her belt, Neta didn’t have enough flight time to test for her license. Several of her classmates who were headed to Curtiss Flying School promised to put in a good word for her.
The 21-year-old Neta spent a few weeks at home, unsure of what to do next. At the end of September, she received a letter. With shaking hands, she opened the envelope and read it. She had to read it again to make sure she was reading correctly. The Curtiss Flying School had accepted her. Within the week, she rejoined her classmates.
The school was a good one, and Neta learned a lot. She logged flight time while eagerly awaiting her first solo flight. But before she could take that flight, the US government stopped all flying at the Virginia school. World War I had started, and security officials worried that German spies might enroll in the school as a way to spy on nearby military bases and government.
The airplanes were dismantled, and they and the students were shipped to Miami to continue training. This didn’t last long either. About two months later, president Woodrow Wilson issued an order that there would be no private flying in the United States during the war. Neta still hadn’t taken her solo flight. With a letter of recommendation from the school, she returned home, a frustrated “almost pilot.”
Her frustration didn’t last long. One of Neta’s classmates recommended her for a job with the British Air Ministry. As an expediter, her job was to oversee the delivery of airplane parts built in the United States for Great Britain’s Royal Air Force. She tested and inspected engines and engine parts in Curtiss training planes until the end of the war.
Before leaving her job, she bought a damaged Canuck, a Canadian training plane that was similar to the US Jenny. She shipped it home and put it in her parents’ backyard. Airplanes were still rare in Iowa, and a plane in a backyard received extra attention. People kept stopping by to see what this young woman wanted with a wrecked airplane.
The truth was that she was rebuilding it, and she planned to fly it. The backyard had its uses, but there was no way she could take off from 828 Wilson Avenue in Ames, Iowa. After rebuilding the plane to her satisfaction, she began dismantling it so that she could move it to a pasture next to the Iowa State College campus. After reassembling the Canuck, she made her first solo flight.
US Jenny
Many airplanes have been designed since the beginning of aviation. Some have been successes, and others faded into obscurity. One of the earliest successes was the Curtiss JN-4D, designed by Glenn Curtiss and B. Douglas Thomas. It was a sturdy, open-cockpit propeller airplane used to train American and British pilots in World War I. More than 9,000 of these planes were manufactured. After the war, the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company bought many back to refurbish and sell to civilian pilots. Others bought surplus Jennys from the federal government for as little as $200. Jennys were a favorite of barnstormers and were the first planes used for mail flights.
The US government was still recovering from World War I and didn’t have the manpower to focus on the relatively new aviation i
ndustry. Neta and others like her received licenses for training and pleasure flights but weren’t supposed to take passengers with them. Neta erased the n in “none” on her license to leave “one” as the number of passengers she could take. Because her Canuck was a biplane, only two people fit anyway—she and a passenger.
Neta began making money by barnstorming in the Midwest and charging people $15 for each 15-minute ride. She later inked a contract in the town where she was born to give two flights daily for three days. She received $1,000 for the six flights.
But Neta Snook didn’t feel like a real pilot until she received her international license from the FAI. As soon as she had that little blue book with her photo and license number, she decided it was time for a change. Iowa winters limited her flying, so she moved to where she could fly year-round: California.
Barnstorming
Before there were stunt pilots, there were barnstormers. Early pilots, particularly those who had flown in World War I, had few options to make a living with flying. They found out that they could entertain audiences with aerial tricks and stunts. A barnstormer would attract locals in rural areas with aerobatics: diving, spins, barrel rolls, and the loop-the-loop. Some shows included aerialists who might perform wing walking, plane transfers, or trick parachuting. Sometimes a pilot would drop flyers on a town announcing a time and location. After watching the show, people in the audience would pay anywhere from one to five dollars for a ride. Some shows included more than one plane, and the event would become a sort of flying circus. Many famous aviators got their start in barnstorming, including Bessie Coleman, Charles Lindbergh, and Pancho Barnes (another woman pilot).
Women Aviators Page 3
