The eccentric engineer: the highs and lows of Bessie Coleman, America’s first black female pilot

To say Bessie Coleman was born into deprivation would be an understatement. Her parents were sharecroppers in late 19th-century Texas, picking cotton and taking in laundry to get by, and she was the 12th of 13 children. Bessie’s father was Native American Cherokee while her mother was African American, so almost every door to improvement was closed to them. Not that this put her off. She became the first person of African-American and of Native American descent to be awarded an international pilot licence by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Read More…