Bessie Coleman

The Handbook of Texas describes Coleman's Waxahachie as a place of cotton fields and laundry. The twelfth of thirteen children, she picked cotton and helped her mother with the washing and ironing she took in. On one occasion in Waxahachie, the Handbook says, she refused to give an exhibition on white school grounds unless Black spectators could use the same entrance as white ones. The request was granted, though people stayed segregated inside. On Labor Day 1931, flying clubs named for her sponsored the first all-Black air show in America, which drew 15,000 spectators.

What the plaque says

Bessie Coleman (1892-1926) Born in Atlanta, Texas, pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman grew up and went to school in a Waxahachie neighborhood a few blocks north of this site. At age 23 she moved to Chicago and first expressed her desire to fly. Since there were no flight schools in this country that would teach African American women, Coleman learned to fly in France and obtained her international pilot's license in 1921. Upon her return to the United States, she was hailed as the first black woman pilot. Extremely popular, "Queen Bess", as she was known, performed as a barnstormer for integrated audiences at air shows and exhibitions around the country before her death in an air accident in Jacksonville, Florida. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 0.3 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 19 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 30 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• Site of a Confederate Powder Mill — 0.4 mi
• Central Presbyterian Church — 0.4 mi
• Site of Marvin College — 0.6 mi
• N. P. Sims Library and Lyceum — 0.6 mi