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Hello, my name is Bessie Coleman I was the first black woman to hold a pilot's license. I earned my license from the Federation Aeronautique International on June 15, 1921, and im the earliest known Black person to earn an international pilots license.

I was born on January 26, 1892, in Atlanta, Texas, im the tenth of 13 children of George Coleman and Susan Coleman. When I was two years old my family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where we lived as sharecroppers.

I began attending school in Waxahachie at the age of six. I walked four miles each day to my segregated, one-room school, where I loved to read and established myself as an outstanding math student. At the age of twelve, I was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church School on scholarship. When I turned eighteen, I took my savings and enrolled in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma (now called Langston University).

On November 20, 1920, I traveled to Paris, France so that I could earn my pilot license. I learned to fly a Nieuport 564 biplane with "a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rubber bar under the pilots feet.