American Airlines recently honored black aviator Bessie Coleman by flying an all-black, all-female crew out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, marking the 100-year anniversary of her becoming the first black woman to receive a pilot’s license in the United States. Coleman “bravely broke down barriers within the world of aviation and paved the path for many to follow,” the airline stated in a news release.
However, despite their heralding of the event as a “historic” flight, American Airlines’ own records show that within their senior leadership team and top income earners of 10 members, only one is black: Chief People Officer Cole Brown.
Additionally, of its 97,000 employees, only “16.2% are black,” according to a self-disclosed demographic survey conducted in the fourth quarter of 2021. The city of Dallas is over 24% black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Bessie Coleman was born in Texas in 1892, a few miles from the tricorner Texas-Arkansas-Louisiana border. She grew up poor in a sharecropper family in Waxahachie, south of Dallas. Coleman moved to Chicago when she turned 23 and was fascinated upon hearing stories about flying from soldiers who were coming back from active duty in Europe during World War I.
Coleman earned her pilot’s license in June 1921 from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in France.
She enjoyed a celebrated career traveling the United States and performing in air shows for five years before tragically falling to her death in Florida when an aircraft being flown by Texas mechanic William Willis malfunctioned. She was 34 years old at the time of her death in 1926.
Coleman often performed in Texas, including in her hometown of Atlanta, Texas, and in the greater Dallas and Houston areas.
In 2006, Coleman was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio. A documentary about her life entitled The Legend: The Bessie Coleman Story premiered in 2018.
