C ALFRED "CHIEF" ANDERSON

In March 1941, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt hopped in the back of pilot C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson's plane at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama and went for a flight.   “She [Eleanor Roosevelt] told me, ‘I always heard Negroes couldn’t fly and I wondered if you’d mind taking me up’.... When we came back, she said, ‘Well, you can fly all right.’ I’m positive that when she went home, she said, ‘Franklin, I flew with those boys down there, and you’re going to have to do something about it.’”

EUGENE JACQUES BULLARD

Eugene Jacques Bullard (9 October 1895 – 12 October 1961) was the first African American military pilot.

EMORY MALICK

*Emory Malick (Emory C. Malick, Licensee: Pilot No 105) was born on Dec 29, 1881. Emory Conrad Malick grew up in central Pennsylvania.  There he built his own gliders and flew them across the Susquehanna River to his job as a farmhand and carpenter over on Cattie Weiser’s farm. By 1910, Malick had taken his aviation skills to Philadelphia, where he later transported passengers for the Flying Dutchman Air Service and took aerial photographs for Dallin Aerial Surveys.

BESSIE COLEMAN

Born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, Bessie Coleman was the first black woman to earn a pilot's license. Because flying schools in the United States denied her entry, she taught herself French and moved to France, earning her license from France's well-known Caudron Brother's School of Aviation in just seven months. Coleman specialized in stunt flying and parachuting, earning a living barnstorming and performing aerial tricks. She remains a pioneer of women in the field of aviation.