UNLADYLIKE2020: Bessie Coleman

Directed by: Charlotte Mangin, Sandra Rattley | Produced by: Charlotte Mangin, Sandra Rattley | Starring: Julianna Margulies Key Cast “Narrator” The Good Wife, ER, Billions Lorraine Toussaint Key Cast “Voice of Bessie Coleman” Selma, Orange is the New Black, The Glorias | 2020 | United States | 9:03

Interviewees: Madeline McCray, playwright, actor, and author of Bessie Coleman: A Dream to Fly; U.S. Air Force Colonel and the first and only black woman to pilot the U-2 plane, Merryl Tengesdal.

Bessie Coleman (1892-1926), the daughter of sharecroppers of African American and Cherokee descent in rural Texas, spent her childhood picking cotton. In 1915, she moved to Chicago as part of the Great Migration of African Americans to escape racial terror and find greater job opportunities in the North. After working as a manicurist in a barber shop, she made up her mind to become an aviator. Coleman was rejected from entering every aviation school in the U.S. for being Black and for being a woman. Refusing to take no for an answer, she traveled to France to train as a pilot, and in 1921 became the first African American to obtain an international license to fly. When she returned to the U.S., Coleman became a media sensation with her daredevil performances, and was hailed as “Queen Bess” and “the world’s greatest woman flier.” Throughout her brief career, Coleman refused to perform in airshows where audiences were segregated.