In 1921 Bessie Coleman earned a pilot licence in France after being excluded from training opportunities in the United States. She became the first African American woman and first Native American woman known to hold such a licence. Her career made aviation a site of racial and gender challenge.

Coleman's achievement broadened the social meaning of the aviator beyond white male heroism. Her life offers a powerful context for African American literature on mobility, dignity, exclusion, and self-fashioned freedom.