(dramatic triumphant music) - [Narrator] Few people know her name, but the sky was hers before Amelia Earhart claimed it.

- Bessie Coleman was the first American to receive a international pilot's license.

- She wanted to fly faster, farther, and higher.

- Tricks and feats that were not seen with the airplane being helmed by a Black woman.

- [Narrator] Bessie Coleman defied gravity and soar above a world hell-bent upon bringing her down, - Her desire came at very, very high cost.

Well, she was willing to pay.

- My great-grandmother thought that she was crazy, but flying in the airplane, she could fulfill freedom, pride, happiness.

- She is an inspiration to women everywhere.

- Against all odds, she was able to do something that had never been done before.

(triumphant music) (slow dramatic ambient music) - [Narrator] Bessie Coleman's bold and fearless nature was forged during a hardworking life that started in Texas in 1892.

Her parents, George and Susan Coleman, had 13 children, though three died in childhood.

- Poor disadvantaged people did suffer, you know, high infant mortality rates and African Americans had less access to whatever medical facilities there were.

- [Narrator] The Colemans lived in the small town of Waxahachie.

Like many formerly enslaved families, they were sharecroppers who worked tirelessly in a system specifically designed to hold them down.

- Life for sharecroppers was very, very difficult.

I mean, it's very similar to life as an enslaved person actually.

- Coming out of slavery reconstruction, African Americans who freed themselves were offered to lease out the land from a landowner in exchange for a piece of the harvest, but they had to buy in advance or rent in advance, the land, the seed, the tools, and even the housing.

(dramatic music) - The Coleman family received very little for what they did.

Oftentimes, the sharecropper family would end the year owing more money than they were to receive when it was sold.

And this was repeated year after year.

- [Narrator] As she grew, Bessie became the first of her siblings to attend school and learned to read and write, studying even as she continued to do her farm work.

Encouraged by her mother to pursue her dreams, Bessie grew up curious about life beyond the fields her family worked but could not own.

- They said when she was picking cotton, she would see airplanes and stuff, she was looking up and she said, oh, you know, not knowing that that's what she wanted to do but she was always intrigued.

(playful piano music) - [Narrator] Believing her dreams might take shape up north, Bessie kept in touch with her older brothers who had moved to Chicago.

- Bessie's brothers, Johnny and Walter Coleman, lived in Chicago.

Johnny worked for Al Capone, who was the gangster in Chicago, as his personal cook.

And I really don't know anything much about that except Al Capone liked him, giving them some money under the table, I guess.

And Walter was Pullman porter for the railroad.

- Pullman porters were some of the most highly educated African American men in the country.

They started businesses.

They bought properties.

So Pullman porters were seen as really important parts of the Black middle class.

- [Narrator] Pullman porters also provided a crucial line of communication by smuggling in copies of "The Chicago Defender", one of the few Black-owned newspapers in the country, the Defender's stories of Northern opportunities helped instigate the Great Migration, the mass exodus of African Americans out of the deadly Jim Crow South and into northern states.

- It's estimated that half a million African Americans left the south for the north between 1900 and 1920.

(cheerful county music) - [Narrator] Encouraged by her brothers and inspired by news in "The Chicago Defender", Bessie joined the Great Migration in 1915 at the age of 23, setting out a loan for Chicago in pursuit of a better life, far from the cotton fields of Waxahatchee.

- Bessie was a phenomenal woman.

She just had so much drive and ambition to make something of herself.

(cheerful county music) - [Narrator] When she arrived, the city was still heavily segregated, but she found that Black Chicagoans had used that forced separation to carve out a thriving space for themselves.

- African Americans were able to do what the historian Earl Lewis says, "They turned segregation into congregation."

This amazing pathway of support for Black businesses within what Black people began to call a city within a city.

In Chicago, they called it the Metropolis, later calling it the Black Metropolis.

- Oh, you have the most elite Black churches that are there.

You have the barber shops.

You have, you know, the beauty parlors, the manicure shops, you have the Black bank.

So it's a place that actually inspires Black people to think bigger.

(dramatic ambient music) - Bessie Coleman calculated that to accomplish her goals and to avoid, you know, the kinds of work that she didn't wanna do, she decided to go to beauty school and she became a manicurist.

- Aunt Bessie went to Madam Walker's School of Beauty culture when she came to Chicago, and that's when she learned how to do the nails and everything.

- [Narrator] Bessie sought out and secured a job as a manicurist for an elite barbershop called the White Sox Barber Shop, which would place her on a bustling stretch of State Street called the Stroll.

- The Commercial and Entertainment District at 35th State, the great writer Langton Hughes, when he was on the stroll, once said that there was activity from noon to noon.

Midnight was like day.

(jazz music) (crowd chattering) - It was not as if Chicago was this great place to live all of the time, but it was a place where Black people could build up their culture and they could be committed to each other.

And I think Bessie saw a group of Black people who had this commitment to other Black people.

- There's no question that she already came to Chicago with a clear sense of herself.

But to see Black filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux, or Beauty Culturalists like Madame C.J.

Walker, to see Jesse Binga's bank and Anthony Overton's hygienic block to see independent Black cab companies like your cab company, her singular drive to be somebody different couldn't help but be bolstered, powered, pushed by all the things that surrounded her.

- Bessie Coleman hustled as a young woman and she just really transferred that go get 'em hustle spirit to Chicago.

- [Narrator] Two years into Bessie's time in Chicago, in the spring of 1917, the US entered World War I.

(soldiers cheering) Bessie watched as her brothers and other men set sail for Europe, and she kept up with the war by eagerly devouring news in "The Chicago Defender" where she would've read about a new kind of warfare: aerial combat.

- World War I lasted for four years and the airplane was just miraculously transformed from this very dangerous, unreliable flying machine into a real lethal weapon.

So the airplane, in terms of its power plants, the engines, its capacity to fly long distances, I have performed all kinds of maneuvers, this became a reality during those dramatic four years.

- [Narrator] The reported exploits of one African American, Eugene Bullard, must have stood out to Bessie because their stories had similar beginnings, but his story ultimately had him flying.

- Eugene Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia.

He ran away from home when he was a young teenager because of the atmosphere, the segregated atmosphere that he lived in, and the harassment that his family and his father took.

So he stowed away to Europe.

And then, he eventually joined the French Air Force.

Eugene Bullard was the only Black American who joined the French Air Force at the time, and has known to have downed at least one or two German fighter pilots during World War I.

(bright trumpet music) - [Narrator] The war ended in 1919 and Bessie's brothers returned to Chicago, regaling Bessie with amazing stories of what they experienced in France.

And doing so, in the teasing manner of big brothers.

- So Bessie is sitting in the barbershop, a lot of men, a lot of activity going through there.

And her brother comes through, you know, she talking a lot of stuff and kind of picking at her about all these things that these French women are doing.

- [Narrator] One story about French women changed everything.

- And her brother says, "French women are flying."

But you know, you're Black women, you all aren't doing anything.

And so I think because you always had this spunkiness, I think that when he made that comment, that gave her that spark, she said, okay, I know that is what I'm going to do.

- [Narrator] It was an audacious decision.

No Black woman had ever flown an airplane before, anywhere.

- [Bessie] The Negro race is the only race without aviators, and I want to interest the Negro in flying, and thus help the best way I'm equipped in to uplift the Colored race, Bessie Coleman.

- [Narrator] But as Bessie soon discovered, there were no US flight schools willing to teach African Americans, let alone African American women.

- Bessie went to as many flight schools as she could constantly being turned down and told, no, no, no, you, you can't fly.

- It wasn't thought that women should be flying.

And then, they had this horrible idea that Black lacked the aptitude to fly, that they couldn't handle technology.

So that was a reason to exclude them from schools.

It was just really horrible.

- [Narrator] No flight school in the US would have her.

So Bessie decided to do what Eugene Bullard had done, learn to fly in France.

- France was more open-minded in terms of Black Americans.

There were more liberal in relationship to the treatment of Black Americans.

That's why you had people like Josephine Baker, you know, go over to France.

It was the same thing with Eugene Bullard who went to France during that time because of the less hostile environment.

(light dramatic music) (gentle bright music) - In November 1920, she set sail for Paris.

(gentle bright music) Bessie quietly made history when she became the first Black woman to begin classes at the flight school founded by Brothers Renee and Gaston Caudron.

- They had one of the primary aviation schools.

This was a real structured course.

Learn the basics of flight, how to take off, how to land, how to control an airplane in the air, and then also explore some of the edges of flight, and you know, to do a stall or a spin and how to recover from that sort of thing.

(foreboding dramatic music) - Bessie Coleman and other early aviators were interested in the airplane because they were just fascinated, escaping from the bounds of Earth and taking to the air.

It was adventuresome.

It was also dangerous too.

- [Narrator] It wasn't long before Bessie witnessed the fatal crash of a fellow student.

- [Bessie] It was a terrible shock to my nerves.

But I never lost them; I kept going, Bessie Coleman.

- [Narrator] After seven months of training, Bessie's final test included flying a five-kilometer course, executing a figure eight, and sticking a precision landing.

(foreboding dramatic music) Bessie Coleman received her international pilot's license on June 15, 1921.

Notably, two full years before Amelia Earhart earned the same type of license.

Returning to the US, Bessie learned that having a license, even an historic one, was not enough.

No one was willing to pay her to fly it.

- She felt, you know, I really need to learn more.

So she understood that she needed to get her skills to a higher level if she was going to be able to actually come back to the United States and try to find a way to earn a living.

- She raised more capital through Robert Abbott and Jesse Binga, then returned to Europe to hone her skills in preparation for fulfilling her ultimate dream: owning and operating an aviation school open to all people.

- Bessie Coleman, she was a visionary.

This was an industry that was going to grow and grow and be a key part of the American economy and the world economy.

And this was an opportunity to take this flight school idea to America and create flight schools around the country.

- [Bessie] We must have aviators if we are to keep up with the times.

I shall never be satisfied until we have men of the race who can fly.

Do you know you have never lived until you have flown?

Bessie Coleman.

- When Bessie came back from France in 1922, she had to get the interest of the community.

There were accolades that here is the first female African American Black pilot.

And so that was a novelty, but still, it's just not easy.

- [Narrator] In order to raise her public profile and get invited to fly in air shows, she began a pioneering barnstorming career.

- Barnstorming is an American phenomenon, just a simple concept: a guy in a jet flying into a town and saying, "Hey, you want to take a ride?"

What would amount to probably about a 90-second ride around over your house and then back down in the field.

- [Announcer] In rural America, these are the first pilots the public has ever seen.

(playful quirky music) - It really was a period of great enthusiasm and it was the introduction of the airplane to society.

But it was very hard work and very difficult to make a living.

- [Narrator] Initially, barnstormers made money by getting people who had never seen a plane to pay for a simple ride.

- So that was 1919, 1920, 1921.

Now, when that Jenny flew in, you say, "Hey, you wanna take another ride?"

"Well, another group of pilots have been through there two months earlier," and say, "Well, we've already taken a ride."

So now, we've gotta do a stunt to try to get them more interested.

And it was a gradual building process where you needed to get a little bit more to get those people to come in to see you.

Back then, the pilots were sky gypsies, these daring daredevils of the air.

- [Narrator] Despite the danger, the world's only African American aviatrix seized the opportunity.

- She was so unique and so unanticipated as a participant in this aerial spectacular that a lot of people came out to see her.

It is bravado, it can be reckless, and she would do her flying, her stunts, along with some other barnstorms who were all men.

- Pilots during the golden age of aviation, particularly in relationship to air shows, men were generally the pilots.

Women would be involved in doing stunts of various sorts.

- [Announcer] Death-defying stunts on the wingborne.

We never know which chin was up.

(playful quirky music) (somber music) - [Narrator] Bessie decided she would make a mark for herself by doing both aspects.

Mostly she piloted the plane, but sometimes, she did stunt select parachuting too.

(playful music) - Bessie's mother, my great-grandmother, thought that she was crazy.

A woman doing barnstorm and not only barnstorm, but jumping out the airplane.

So I think Aunt Bessie just had a different vision.

- She had a market and there was demand for her because of her coverage in the Black press.

Starting with "The Chicago Defender", that coverage migrated to the "Pittsburgh Courier", another black-owned newspaper, the "Amsterdam News", "The California Eagle."

And then as her fame grew, the mainstream press began covering her activities.

- She also was very engaged in self-promotion.

And she wasn't shy about saying, "Here I am, look at me.

I'm an aviator and against great obstacles."

But for African Americans, in those times, it was a very, very difficult thing to do 'cause you had this whole backdrop of racial exclusion.

- [Narrator] Bessie's plan worked, and as the reports of her fearless barnstorming flights and parachute jumps spread through the country, she began to get invited to air shows.

On September 3, 1922, Bessie made her first formal air show appearance in Long Island, New York.

She was at the beginning of her career, so she had to borrow a plane.

- Her first flight in Long Island, she got an airplane from Glenn Curtiss, the famous white American aircraft manufacturer.

He gave her the airplane for her to use.

- [Narrator] 29-year-old Bessie Coleman, former sharecropper domestic worker and manicurist strolled boldly onto the airfield of her America, publicly dedicating the show to the African American soldiers who fought in France in World War I.

- He started out waving the American flag and they sung the "The Star-Spangled Banner."

So she was this true American patriot.

(engine revving) - [Narrator] She thrilled the crowd below by flying loops.

At one harrowing moment, she stalled her plane and let it fall before regaining control at the last second, - She was able to do things with a plane that other kind of makeshift pilots weren't able to do.

Her training allowed her to engage in tricks and feats that were not seen, especially with the airplane being helmed by a Black woman.

So she engaged and slides and stalls and glides.

(engine revving) (lively music) - It's like, yeah, I did that, you know?

All decked out in her pilot's outfit, you know, she's just so defiant and just badass.

I was like, you know, she's young and nobody could tell her anything.

- She really had the grit and determination.

I think that gave an edge to her flying career.

So she's a real serious aviator in every sense of the word.

- [Narrator] Just one month later, in October 1922, she joined an air show in her adopted hometown of Chicago.

It was at a place called Checkerboard Field.

By now, her mother and her sister Georgia had moved to Chicago.

Always looking for ways to boost her brand, Bessie created a new hook for audiences.

She would create a sisterly duo interact.

- She had asked my grandmother, Georgia Coleman, which is a baby sister, if she would do the parachute jump.

So she'd asked her sister.

And so Georgia said, "Yeah, I'll do it, I'll do it."

- She was doing this great American patriot piece and she had a outfit made for her sister, Georgia, red, white and blue spangled suit.

- [Narrator] But when it came time to strap on the parachute and give the people what they paid for, her sister got cold feet.

- On the day of the event, my grandmother reneged on her.

- They're arguing 'cause Bessie's telling "You're gonna have to jump."

And she said, "No, I'm not gonna jump."

And so I'm sure there were a lot of explicit words used there among these two sisters.

- My grandmother said she didn't care what nobody thought, and she didn't care what Bessie thought.

She wasn't jumping out no airplane.

It was a big mess.

(dramatic piano music) (somber music) - [Narrator] As undeterred as ever, when it was Bessie's turn to fly, she made sure to dazzle the crowd with the most dangerous stunt flying she could do.

- Bessie Coleman and the other pilots always challenged each other and they competed with each other in terms of who could do the best aerial stunt in a biplane.

That was the attitude of these flyers.

"I'm gonna outdo you.

We're competing against each other and we're gonna give these people a show today."

- Who was always a risk.

There's more participants.

There's more action.

There's more danger.

Crashes were routine.

They happened quite frequently.

In early aviation, the crashes could be spectacular.

(ominous dramatic music) - [Narrator] One of her tricks was advertised as a tribute to the US Army's only African American infantry unit commanded entirely by Black officers.

- She would offer a figure eight in testament to the Illinois 8th Regiment that was wildly celebrated on the South side after World War I because she knew what she was doing.

- [Narrator] The show was a success even without the sister in the end.

(dramatic country music) She was gaining recognition and earning some money, though not as much as white aviator.

Yet, constantly looking for places to perform and borrowing airplanes each time wasn't easy.

- Here is the first female African American pilot, and so that was a novelty, there's no doubt about it.

But still, to be able to put together a show, to be able to find an airplane, it's just a difficult thing to do.

- [Narrator] Yet Bessie had a vision and she would never give it up.

- She was just laser-focused on her dream of doing what it is that she loved, and also projecting this image of power and success and self-assuredness and sharing what she loved with the public, but also helping African Americans to see themselves as successful as achieving their dreams.

And she was, I think, really single-minded about that.

(upbeat county music) - [Narrator] Bessie never gave up and kept hustling for sponsors.

Then in 1923, the Coast Tire and Rubber Company signed on as a sponsor, which finally allowed Bessie to do what she had endeavored to do, purchase her own airplane: a 1917 Curtiss JN-4, better known as a Jenny.

- There's a point in time after the war that you could buy a Jenny for 3 or $400.

It's an all-wooden airplane.

It started with a 90 horsepower OX-5 engine.

You imagine just all wood and held together with wire about a mile of wire.

- And it was not uncommon to have to patch up the airplanes.

Something breaks down, you gotta fix it.

You got enough money like Amelia Earhart that you just can go by another airplane.

But she was not at that economic status.

So I think she trusted that whoever repaired the airplane said that the airplane was air worthy, and she trusted that it was.

(lively upbeat music) - [Narrator] On the morning of February 4, 1923, Bessie was set to perform at that fateful air show in Santa Monica, California.

In her very own plane, purchased with the help of the Coast Tire and Rubber Company, 10,000 people flocked to see bold message.

And she hoped to give them a thrill.

- But she also wanted to also communicate a message to the young people who saw her, to African Americans who came to her show that despite obstacles, they could dream big.

- [Narrator] The dream weighed heavy in Bessie's mind as she took off.

(lively music) - She was about 300 feet in the air (foreboding dramatic music) that notoriously used possibly unreliable OX-5 engine just quit on her.

(foreboding dramatic music) - [Narrator] It takes 500 feet to recover.

So Bessie had only seconds to act without her engines.

All she could do was try to level the wings and limit the angle of descent.

(foreboding dramatic music) Her flying skills saved her barely.

(ambient dramatic music) - It was really very, very serious injuries.

She broke her leg, cracked ribs, many, many injuries.

And she kept saying, "Well, just patch me up and I'm gonna go back out there."

- My great-grandmother, Susan Coleman, went to the hospital and when she saw Bessie, you know, she was really devastated about what happened with her.

And she asked Bessie, "Are you crazy enough to keep doing this?"

You know, it doesn't make any sense.

But she explained to her mother, this is what she wanted to do.

This was her dream.

She loved flying.

She felt flying in the airplane was the only place that she could feel freedom and pride and just, you know, happiness.

You know, what could my great-grandmother say but okay.

- Her family was supportive, but they were scared.

And so they kind of tolerated her pursuit of this career, but they were always scared that something was going to happen like what happened.

- [Narrator] After the crash, Bessie traveled back to Chicago where she spent more than a year recovering from her injuries.

Her airplane, which she had worked so tirelessly to buy and own, was completely destroyed.

The pain of her injuries and the loss of her beloved plane might have made others quit, but Bessie was undaunted.

In the spring and summer of 1925, she booked a tour through the heavily segregated Southern Bible Belt, which would include air shows with a borrowed plane, lectures, and screening films of past flights.

- Bessie Coleman, you know, then becomes a part of this Chitlin' Circuit, performing in the south, all with circuses and carnivals and in different festivals.

And then it is really incredible.

But Bessie Coleman begins making demands of her booking agents to say, "I refuse to play segregated venues.

These venues in the deep south have to allow African Americans equal access as whites to see my performances."

- I thought, how courageous could that be for this petite young Black woman, like in the height of lynchings and all of that going on, that she had this courage to say that.

So Queen Bess realized that all of us are the same.

And she used aviation and airplanes to make us see that.

(playful music) - [Narrator] One air show in Houston, Texas was slated for June 19th, the Juneteenth holiday, which celebrates the emancipation of the last enslaved people in Texas more than two years after slavery officially ended.

Now Bessie would give African Americans in her native Texas something new to celebrate.

- Bessie Coleman wanted to be an inspiration.

She wanted to move her race forward.

She wanted people now to look up to her, but she wanted people to look up for her and take her example to do it for themselves.

(dramatic music) - I think it was just extraordinary and I'm just amazed at how much she did accomplish without any kind of of pathway.

She was the path breaker.

She was the barrier breaker.

(dramatic ambient music) - [Narrator] Press coverage of Bessie's performances impressed the state's colorful Governor Miriam Ma Ferguson.

Ferguson was notoriously anti KKK and had recently defeated a Republican rival who was endorsed by the clan.

- Ma Ferguson, the governor of Texas loved her because Ma Ferguson was just in bold and courageous as Coleman was.

She hated the Ku Klux Klan.

And Bessie actually stayed at the governor's mansion there with Ma Ferguson.

It's an amazing American story.

(gentle bright music) - [Narrator] By now, Bessie had almost enough money to buy another airplane.

And after performing in Dallas, she sought one at Love Field, the future birthplace of Southwest Airlines.

- Love Field was created in 1917 as a training field to learn to fly for the military.

And this was right after the war.

It had all these airplanes that were left there when they're starting to sell the surplus Jennys.

- [Narrator] Bessie scoured Love Field and found a Jenny she liked.

It needed work, but she started making layaway payments on it.

(foreboding dramatic music) Leaving Texas, she continued her flying in speaking tour with stops in Georgia than Florida.

Press coverage in Georgia was positive, but as Bessie moved onto Florida, her progress stalled.

She continued to give lectures, but she couldn't secure a plane in some cities and wasn't allowed to perform in front of an integrated audience in others.

- It was a pivotal moment for her because she had gone from being this great European icon, this great American icon in many ways.

But when she gets to Florida, she stunted a little bit.

- Aunt Bess decided to take a little time off from flying, so she started working at a little beauty shop where she did hair and nails.

- [Narrator] Returning to work as a manicurist must have been a grave disappointment after her time in the sky.

But Bessie did not let it derail her.

And she used the time and the work to continue striving for her dream.

- She was working, making money to pay for her aircraft as she was making installment payments on that.

So that's why she remained in Orlando.

- [Narrator] About this time, Bessie received an invitation to parachute during Orlando's annual flower festival, but a familiar social barrier drew a line Bessie would not cross.

- They had an all white audience, and she said, "No, I want everyone to be welcome."

She wanted whites and Blacks to be able to come to her air show.

- [Narrator] To the surprise of many living under Florida's oppressive, Jim Crow codes, the mostly white, mostly male Orlando Chamber of Commerce relented and gave in to Bessie's demands.

- That was remarkable because people have to understand the context of the time in such a male dominated society.

That was no small thing for her to just see the truth and what was right and wrong.

I don't know if she felt like she was joining any kind of movement or anything.

She was the movement.

She was the person that was doing it.

- She took on the cause of her race.

She took this on as her mantle as something to prove to the world that we are a people who deserve equality.

(gentle somber music) - [Narrator] The momentum of her success attracted a new wave of support.

- Edwin Beeman is a wealthy white gentleman, owner and operator of the Beeman Chewing Gum company.

Mr.

Beeman paid Bessie's last installments towards purchasing her plane.

- I think it was $100 or something to complete paying for the aircraft.

He was married and there were these rumors because she's still this pretty young woman and she's getting this money from this rich white guy.

But I think maybe he just wanted to support aviation.

And he just saw this young woman that wanted to reach a goal.

(foreboding music) - [Narrator] With Beeman's sponsorship, Bessie made the last payment on her used Jenny in Dallas.

- Because she couldn't get the funding for the type of planes she really wanted, you know, a real good plane, she had to take what she could get.

But Aunt Bessie felt, well, at least she had something so she could fly again.

- She had to bring the airplane from Texas through Mississippi to Florida.

- [Narrator] Bessie hired a 24-year-old pilot in mechanic named William Wills to fly her plane in from Texas.

- Mr.

Wills was one of those kinds of fellas that was probably hanging around the airfield, waiting to get a job.

Somebody says, "Hey, so and so bought a Jenny.

Yeah, will you ferry it out to them wherever it may be."

- William Wills was bringing the airplane to her.

It broke down several times.

- They said it kept stalling and stopping.

It was kind of raggedy.

- The Jenny's, particularly those with the original OX-5 engines, were notorious acquitting.

By 1926, the Jenny is already eight to nine years old.

So the airplane that Bessie bought very likely was ridden hard, put up whack.

But Mr.

Wills, he's a mechanic.

He's got tools.

And the mechanic's tools, that's his life book.

(gentle light music) - [Narrator] As Bessie awaited the delivery of her Jenny, she knew she was one step closer to opening inclusive flight schools.

- [Bessie] Of course, it takes one with courage, nerve, and ambition.

What is needed is men who are not afraid of death.

I am anxious to teach some of you to fly, for accidents may happen.

I may drift out and there would be someone to take my place.

Bessie Coleman.

(somber foreboding music) - [Narrator] In April 1926, Bessie accepted an invitation from Jacksonville's Negro Welfare League to perform there.

As she prepared and awaited her plane's arrival, she ran into an old friend Robert Abbott was visiting from Chicago.

When William Wills finally landed at Jacksonville's Paxon Field with Bessie's jet, Abbott had a bad feeling and warned his dear friend Bessie.

- Robert Abbott made a comment that he did not want her to fly because he didn't like the looks of that scrubby guy.

But we don't know for sure if he was talking about the young pilot, Mr.

William Wills or some other male that had to be around.

- [Narrator] Early on April 30th, the day before her performance, Bessie brushed aside Abbott's concerns and focused on preparing for the air show.

- Bessie told Williams she wanted to fly over the area that she was going to be performing.

Paxon Airfield, which is now a high school, was the first airfield in Jacksonville.

She wanted to fly and take a look at it, find out what she was gonna be doing, and where all the details you need to complete your performance.

- You'd really have to have a practice eye to make sure that the struts were still solid.

You really have to make a pretty thorough inspection.

It's just the nature of this beast.

- [Narrator] Satisfied that Wills delivered her plane in decent shape, Bessie was ready to scout and asked Wills to pilot the craft so she could check out the area.

- And when they got close to the area, Bessie Coleman, who is a very short statured woman, she had to kind of lean up and over to look at where she was going to be performing.

(slow dramatic foreboding music) - [Narrator] As she leaned over, something made the plane jerk and the relentlessly capable Bessie Coleman simply fell.

(dramatic ethereal music) - Well, the last minutes of Bessie's life, last seconds had to been pretty horrific.

Here's a young woman, so passionate about aviation.

So to be in that position as an experienced daredevil, is that aircraft's turning and her reaching in to hold onto everything with all of her might and then losing it and falling away, it must have been for those split second, both heaven, because she had this full view of what we aim for as aviators, be free and untethered in the air, and then hell, and she hit a sickening thud when the mother Earth just consumed this aviator and took her away forever.

(foreboding music) - [Narrator] William Wills struggle to regain control of the plane.

- He's pitching forward and he's gonna be increasing speed.

A pilot still trying to get some kind of control of the aircraft.

He's not successful.

He crashes a mere a thousand feet away.

There's this effort to run out to rescue Wills.

Now these airplanes were fire traps.

You can almost look at 'em and start a fight.

- Someone lit a match, they said a spectator, and he was lighting a cigarette and then the plane just went up with the gasoline.

- Poof, the airplane went up.

And so if there was any chance of getting Wills out, it was immediately snuffed out by this raging inferno.

That those that were even there try to rescue, had to back off.

And if Wills were still alive, he burned.

- [Narrator] It seemed impossible.

Bessie Coleman was unstoppable and now she was dead.

To some, it also seemed suspicious.

What caused Bessie's plane to jerk suddenly out of control?

- What my mother told me is that when they went up, a wrench somehow got lodged in and it made the plane just go out of control and the plane just took a nose stop.

- Why did it happen?

How did it happen?

It had to be something, and there's something.

Of all the stuff that was there, the ashes that remained, cables just in a tarred up mess.

It was a wrench.

I can imagine a newspaper editor of a local newspaper in Florida reading the account of the reporter that went out to cover Bessie's crash.

And no one knew what happened other than the airplane converted, she fell out and crashed, and the pilot died, and it was a big fire.

So I imagine editors say, "Well, our audience going, 'Oh, what happened?

What happened?

And what'd they find that they found a wrench?'"

Ah, I think that's why the theory of the wrench came up.

So you can see that up here along, you know, the control stick, the mechanism that controls the control stick to the arms, the elevator arms.

But there's no place for a wrench to get lodged.

- [Narrator] So was it something more insidious?

- The issue I think around pilots aircraft being sabotaged is one that could be very true, especially since she was this Black woman who doing things that a lot of other Americans were not doing.

So I'm sure you still had that level of hatred there also.

There's no proof of it, but I'm sure it's quite possible - In both instances where Bessie Coleman crashed, conspiracy theories suggest that perhaps sabotage was involved.

But I am of the mind that they were both accidents.

I think in both instances, it was the secondhand aircraft that she had that was less well maintained and the fact that she didn't have the top flight mechanic on her team.

If she had corporate support, I think both of these accidents would've been averted.

(dramatic ambient music) - [Narrator] Whatever the cause of the tragedy, the African American community was devastated and the remains of Bessie's plane were picked apart by souvenir hunters.

One week later, at the first of what would be three funerals, 5,000 mourners filed past her closed coffin in Jacksonville until well after midnight.

- And from there, they went to Orlando and the Mount Zion Missionary Institutional Baptist Church, one of the oldest churches in Orlando.

And they have that recorded as one of the largest funerals in history.

And from there, she was taken to Chicago.

- [Narrator] Veterans from the Illinois 8th Infantry regiment, served as pallbearers of her flag draped coffin.

The revered activist Ida B. Wells presided at the standing room only funeral at the Pilgrim Baptist Church.

She was laid to rest in Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery.

Her tragic death cut short what no doubt would've been a long lifetime of continued accomplishments.

However, one of her dreams came to fruition when three years after her death, aviator William Powell founded the Bessie Coleman Arrow Club inspired by Bessie's dream to open inclusive flight schools.

- The idea of the club was to play out Bessie's vision of having flight schools.

If you were interested in learning how to fly, you're a Black man or a woman, you had an alternative now.

- William Powell said that "Because of Bessie Coleman, we have overcome that which is worse than racial barriers.

We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream.

And I think that's something that all of us human beings can carry with us."

Queen Bess did a wonderful job of showing us of what we can do and she has allowed so many of us, including myself, to dream.

(slow dramatic ambient music) - In the current moments, there's significant discussion about the need to better integrate not just women, but Black women within into the STEM field, science, technology, engineering, math.

So in trying to think about models for Black girls and women of seeing a world that was not built for them and mastering it and saying that, "Not only will I be present, but I'll become a giant in that work."

And so Bessie Coleman offers that legacy.

She offers that example for young girls, Black, white, and everything in between, to see that there is no technology, there is no avenue of life that can extend beyond their reach.

(dramatic ambient music) (slow dramatic music) (slow dramatic music continues) (gentle light music)