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Pre
World War II
Bessie "Queen Bess" Coleman
(January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926), was the first African American
woman to become an airplane pilot, and the first American woman to hold an
international pilot license.
Born in Atlanta,
Texas, Coleman was the tenth
of thirteen children. Her father, George Coleman, was of part Cherokee
ancestry. Her parents were sharecroppers yet her early childhood was a
happy one, spent playing in the front yard or on the porch. Sunday mornings
and afternoons were spent at church.
When she turned eighteen Coleman took all of her savings and enrolled
in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal
University (now called Langston University)
in Langston, Oklahoma. Bessie completed only
one term before she ran out of money and was forced to return home.
On April 30, 1926, Coleman had recently purchased a plane in Dallas and it had just been flown to Jacksonville, Florida
in preparation for an airshow. Her friends and family did not consider the
aircraft safe and implored her not to fly it. Her mechanic and publicity
agent, William Wills, was flying the plane with Coleman in the other seat.
Coleman did not put on her seatbelt because she was planning a parachute
jump for the next day and wanted to look over the cockpit to examine the
terrain. About 12 minutes into the flight the plane did not pull out of a
planned nosedive; instead it accelerated into a tailspin. Bessie Coleman
was thrown from the plane at 500 feet and died instantly when she hit the
ground. William Wills was unable to gain control of the plane and it
plummeted to the ground. Wills died upon impact and the plane burst into
flames. Despite the badly burned plane, an investigation revealed that the
crash was possibly due to a wrench that was lodged in the control gears.
Bessie Coleman is buried in Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery.
Her funeral was attended by 10,000 mourners. Many of them, including
Ida B. Wells, were prominent members of Black society. As the first African
American woman pilot, she has been honored in several ways since her death:
in 1931, a group of Black male pilots performed the first yearly fly-by
over Coleman's grave, in 1977, a group of African American women pilots
established the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club and in 1995, she was
honored with her image on a postage stamp by the United States Postal
Service, and was inducted into the Women in Aviation Hall of Fame. The
international terminal of O'Hare International Airport in Chicago
is located on Bessie Coleman
Drive, as is the main street of the FAA Technical
Center in Atlantic City. A conference room at FAA
Headquarters is named after Bessie Coleman.
Bessie Coleman. (2007, July 6). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved 06:36, July 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bessie_Coleman&oldid=142928593
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Martha S. Putney, World War II
WAC. On February
1, 1943, Putney joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. She entered
the 35th Officer Candidate School
at Fort Des Moines, IA, where she was commissioned on July
7, 1943. After completing OCS, Putney was assigned as a Basic Training
Company Officer at Fort
Des Moines. She had
two temporary duty assignments in Texas
and was assigned company commander of the 55th WAC hospital company
stationed at Gardiner General Hospital
in Chicago, IL. Putney is the author of When the
Nation Was In Need: Blacks in the Women’s Army Corps During World War
II (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, Inc.) 1992.
Martha (Settle) Putney. (June 23, 2004).
Veterans History Project. Retrieved 06:50, July 15, 2007, from http://www.loc.gov/vets/wwii-biographies.html
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World
War I
Dates: 1939 –
1945
Where: Europe, North
Africa, Asia, Australia,
and Pacific islands including Hawaii,
Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans
How It Ended: Japan was the last Axis power to surrender on
August 14, 1945, after the U.S.
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
American Casualties: 407,316 (approx.)
Timeline of America's Wars - 20th and 21st
Centuries. (2007). The History Channel website.
Retrieved 06:52 hrs, July 15, 2007, from http://www.history.com/reference/encyclopedia/viewArticle?id=226139
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