Born in Texas in 1892, she was a very hard-working and successful student despite poverty and hard conditions. When she finished school she went to the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University, but all her savings only paid for one term, and so she moved to Chicago to be with two of her twelve siblings.
Hearing about First World War pilots inspired her to want to fly planes. Despite backing from influential men in the black community, as a black woman she could not get admitted to any US flight schools. However, she knew that in France, women were already being trained as pilots.
She learned French while in Chicago, and got financial backing to travel to Europe from Robert Abbott, a wealthy black Chicago businessman. On June 15 1921, she was awarded an International Aviation Licence from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
This meant she was the first African American woman to hold any pilots licence, and the first African American to hold an international pilots licence.
After a brief return to the USA, once again finding herself unable to get training there, she took further tuition in France, the Netherlands and Germany in advanced aviation. She continued learning with the aim of becoming a stunt pilot, the only real way to make a living as a civilian aviator before the age of commercial flights.
She achieved great popularity and success as a stunt pilot when she went back to the USA, while never compromising on issues of race. She would not participate in flying displays in any venue that didn't admit people of colour, and she walked off the set of a film which would have starred her, when she discovered the script required her to appear in stereotypical tattered clothes.
Her aim was to make enough money to set up a flying school for black aviators, of both sexes. Sadly, she died when the plane being flown by her mechanic went into a tailspin and she was thrown to the ground. The plane crashed, also killing the mechanic. Although this cut short her ambitions, and her life (she was only 34), she had already inspired a generation of African Americans, and opened the eyes of some white Americans.
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