Remembering The First all Female Black Flight Crew And A Woman Who Inspired Them All

Following Black History Month and now into Women’s History Month, let’s look back on a big moment in aviation, the first ever all female, all African-American commercial flight crew.  On February 12, 2009 Atlantic Southeast Airlines flew from Atlanta to Nashville under the control of Captain Rachelle Jones Kerr, First Officer Stephanie Grant and Flight Attendants Robin Rogers and Diana Galloway.  It was flight history that happened by chance at the last minute.

First Officer Grant was only assigned the flight when the original co-pilot became sick.  She would later tell the press her reaction when she stepped into the cockpit and saw Captain Kerr. “The fact that it was Rachelle, an African-American female, and we just met in passing a couple weeks prior… It was amazing,” Grant said. Kerr said, “We just looked at each other and grinned, because I think in that moment. we knew.”

While this historic flight happened by luck, on August 22, 2022 American Airlines assembled an entire all-female, all Black crew to fly in celebration of the 100 Anniversary of America’s ‘First Lady of Flight,’ Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman to obtain a plot’s license and the first American to earn an international pilot’s license.  

Dallas Flight #372 to Phoenix was not only the first all-Black female flight crew in the carrier’s 96-year history, the airline pulled personnel from across the country to assemble a 36-member all Black women crew which included the pilots, cargo team flight attendants and maintenance technicians.  

Bessie Coleman’s great niece, Gigi Coleman, was on the American Airlines Flight 372 to celebrate the historic event.  

Bessie earned her pilot’s license in France 100 years earlier, since no private or governmental flight program in the US would accept Black men or women in the U.S. at that time.

Born to a family of sharecroppers in Atlanta, Texas, Coleman grew up working in family cotton fields in Waxahachie.  She attended one semester of college at Langston University when her funds ran out and she was forced to leave school.  She moved to Chicago with two of her brothers who had served in the French military as members of the 370th Regiment of the Illinois National Guard during WWI.  Their tales of France and women flying led Bessie to pursue a career in aviation.  

As no flight school would accept her as a Black woman, she studied Berlitz French, worked two jobs and found sponsors to allow her to travel to France to attend its most famous flight school - the Ecole d’Aviation des Frères Caudron at Le Crotoy in the Somme. 

On June 15, 1921, Coleman became the first black woman to earn an aviation pilot's license and first American to earn an international pilots license from the famed Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. 

She returned to the states to great attention and she traveled the country performing stunts in air shows, giving lessons, giving speeches and showed films of her air shows in theaters and schools to raise funds for her dream project, a flight school for Black and women pilots. 

She died while preparing for a parachute jump at a Jacksonville air show.  Bessie had removed her seatbelt to look over the plane’s cockpit wall when a wrench became lose and wedged itself in her plane’s engine causing it to flip over and eject her.  Bessie was only 34 years old, she’d been flying for just seven years.

Ceremonies in Florida and in Chicago were attended by thousands and at the funeral in Chicago, her eulogy was delivered by renowned activist and journalist, Ida B. Wells. Twenty pallbearers carried her casket.  Bessie Coleman would be remembered by others over the years.

In the 1930s Challenger Air Pilots Association sponsored annual memorial events including flying over “Brave Bessie’s” grave to drop flowers.

On September 12, 1992, Dr Mae Jemison boarded the Space Shuttle Endeavour to become the became the first African American woman in space.  She carried with her a picture of the famous aviator.

Jemison would later write about her, “... I was embarrassed and saddened that I didn't learn of her until my space flight beckoned on the horizon… I wished I had known her while growing up, but then again I think she was there with me all the time.” 

In 2023 Bessie was imortalized by the US Mint as a part of its American Women Quarters as a pioneer in the field of aviation.  The design depicts Bessie preparing for flight, her plane and the date she received her pilot’s license.

How to remember Bessie Coleman? She summed up her brief career in several famous quotes.  "A woman is like a teabag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water."  "I made my mind up to try. I tried and was successful. "

And finally, “You've never lived till you've flown!”

The National Air and Space Museum has more stories about Black and Women Aviators for you to discover. 

Harriet Quimby was the first American woman to earn a pilot's license and the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel, a feat overlooked by the sinking of the Titanic the day before!  Learn about her and other great women aviation pioneers.