Orlandoans embraced gutsy, glamorous pilot
She’s soared through Flashback before, but Women’s History Month especially seems a fine time to return to the story of Bessie Coleman — her grace, her grit, her daring.
“By walking history’s pathways, we learn to step forward with confidence,” notes the National Women’s History Alliance. Coleman had confidence, and like some other trailblazers, you have to wonder where it came from — she had so much going against her.
In the early years of the 20th century, when most Black women in Chicago, where she lived, were limited to jobs such as maids or manicurists, Coleman gained a coveted international pilot’s license in 1921.
She had been born in Texas, on Jan. 26, 1892, and moved in 1915 to the Windy City. When her brothers returned from World War I, they told her tales of wartime aviation and also described the lack of prejudice they had experienced in France. Coleman’s mind was made up: She would learn to fly.
Undaunted after U.S. flight schools turned her down, she traveled to France to get her license. On her return, she became a flier and also lectured, determined to combat discrimination.
Friends in Orlando
During a Florida speaking tour, Coleman met the Rev. H.K. Hill of Orlando’s Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Institutional
Church and his wife, Viola Tillinghast Hill, a respected community activist.
She became close to the Orlando couple and stayed with them at the Mount Zion parsonage.
“For Bessie, the spacious house on shady, tree-lined Washington Street became the center of her life, the idyllic home she had never had,” Doris L. Rich writes in her biography, “Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator.” The Hills encouraged her to open a beauty shop to earn money to buy her own plane.
Coleman had lost her first airplane during a crash, and she was buying a used Curtiss JN-4, or “Jenny,” from a Texas company in installments.
Edwin Beeman, a wealthy white Orlandoan whose family had made
its money in chewing gum and who was fascinated by aviation, gave Coleman the money for the final installment, historian Jim Clark notes in his book “Orlando: A Brief History.”
With her plane paid for and on the way from Texas — flown by mechanic William D. Wills — Coleman headed to Jacksonville for an exhibition. During a rehearsal on April 30, the plane spun out of control.
Coleman was flung to her death; Wills died in the crash.
Thousands of mourners attended services for Coleman in Jacksonville, including schoolchildren who had heard her speak only the day before she was killed. Then her body was put on the train to Orlando, where, on May 3,1926, Mount Zion was the scene
of one of the largest funerals in its history.
Founded in 1880, Mount Zion was Orlando’s oldest church serving the Black commmity, and mourners included prominent residents such as educator Moses Crooms, who was a pallbearer. They honored a daughter of Chicago who had found a place in the hearts of Orlandoans, as well as other Floridians.
After the May 3 service, mourners crowded the Orlando railroad station to say goodbye as Coleman’s body was placed on a train bound for Chicago. Hundreds of Black Orlandoans sang the melody of ‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,’ “according to a news report. At Coleman’s Chicago funeral, her eulogy was delivered by activist and journalist Ida B. Wells. In
all, in both Chicago and Florida, more than 15,000 people paid their respects to the woman who inspired so many, and continues to do so.
On April 2 at 2 p.m., the Holocaust Memorial Research & Education Center of Florida presents “Uprooting Prejudice: Conversations for Change” at the JCC Auditorium in Maitland. Activist Daryl Davis will be joined by Jeff Schoep and Scott Shepherd to talk about how the three men turned peaceful conversations into friendship. Schoep, a former leader of the nation’s largest neo-Nazi organization, has since founded Beyond Barriers, a nonprofit dedicated to countering extremism. Shepherd also denounced white supremacist ideology after getting to know Davis, a Black jazz musician who’s dedicated his life to having respectful dialogues with those of opposing views. A question-and-answer session will follow. For more information and to register, visit www.holocaustedu.org and click on “events.”
Joy Wallace Dickinson can be reached at joydickinson @icloud.com, Finding JoyinFlorida.com, or by good old-fashioned letter to Florida Flashback, c/o Dickinson, P.O. Box 1942, Orlando, FL 32802.