On a crisp autumn morning in 1921, Bessie Coleman stood at the edge of a muddy field in Le Crotoy, France, gripping the wooden strut of a rickety Nieuport 82 biplane. The engine coughed and sputtered as the French instructor shouted instructions over the roar. Bessie, a young Black woman from Texas who had been refused entry to every flight school in the United States, took a deep breath and climbed into the open cockpit. She had saved every penny from her job as a manicurist, learned French, and crossed the Atlantic alone to chase a dream that most people told her was impossible.

As the plane lurched forward and lifted off the ground, she felt the wind tear at her goggles and knew she was exactly where she belonged. Bessie was born in 1892 in a one-room cabin in Waxahachie, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children. Her mother, Susan, was a domestic worker; her father, George, was a sharecropper of Cherokee and African American descent. When Bessie was six, George left the family to seek better opportunities in Oklahoma, and Susan raised the children alone. Bessie walked four miles each day to a segregated school, where she excelled in reading and arithmetic.

She saved her earnings from picking cotton and washing laundry, determined to escape the cycle of poverty. At eighteen, she moved to Chicago to live with her brothers and enrolled in the Burnham School of Beauty Culture, becoming a manicurist. But her heart was set on the sky. The turning point came when her brother John teased her about French women being more advanced than American women because they could fly. That jibe lit a fire in Bessie. She began reading everything she could about aviation, but every American flight school she contacted rejected her because of her race and gender.

As the plane lurched forward and lifted off the ground, she felt the wind tear at her goggles and knew she was exactly where she belonged.

A friend suggested she try France, where women were already training as pilots. Bessie took the advice: she studied French at a language school, saved her tips, and in 1920 sailed for Europe. She arrived in Paris with little money and no guarantee of acceptance, but she was determined to prove that the colour of her skin had nothing to do with her ability to fly. Bessie earned her international pilot's licence from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale on June 15, 1921, becoming the first Black woman in the world to do so.

But the challenge was far from over. When she returned to the United States, she found that no airline would hire a Black female pilot, and barnstorming—the dangerous, thrilling business of performing aerial stunts—was dominated by white men. Bessie refused to give up. She took a second trip to Europe to train with advanced stunt pilots, learning how to loop, roll, and dive. She also studied parachute jumping, knowing that a spectacular show would draw crowds and earn her a living. Back in America, Bessie became known as 'Queen Bess' and 'Brave Bessie.'

She performed at airshows across the country, often refusing to fly at venues that segregated the audience. She used her fame to speak at schools and churches, encouraging African Americans to pursue aviation and other careers closed to them. She dreamed of opening a flight school for Black students. But the work was gruelling: she survived multiple crashes, including one that broke her leg and ribs, and she constantly struggled to afford repairs for her planes. Still, she never wavered. 'The air is the only place free from prejudices,' she once said.

Bessie's life ended tragically on April 30, 1926, when she was thrown from a plane during a test flight in Jacksonville, Florida. She was only 34. But her impact soared far beyond her years. Her courage inspired a generation of Black aviators, including the Tuskegee Airmen, who later fought in World War II. In 1995, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in her honour, and in 2006, she was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame. A fun fact: Bessie always wore a custom-made leather flight suit and a helmet with a long silk scarf that streamed behind her in the wind—a signature look that made her unforgettable to everyone who saw her fly.