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Incredible Women

by Tony & Lynne Wigmore

Incredible women who have done incredible things with little or no recognition at the time

Bessie Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926)

Popularly known as Queen Bess and Brave Bessie, she was the first African-American woman and first Native American to hold a pilot license. After studying in a small, segregated school, Bessie attended one term of college at Langston University but could not afford to stay. Interested in flying from an early age, French women were allowed to fly but AfricanAmericans, Native Americans, and women had no flight training opportunities in the United States. Having saved and obtained sponsorships to go to France for flight school, Bessie received her international pilot’s license on June 15, 1921 from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Coleman’s dream was to own a plane and to open her own flight school. She gave speeches and showed films of her air tricks to earn money, although she refused to speak anywhere that was segregated or discriminated against African-Americans. In 1922, she performed the first public flight by an African American woman and became famous for doing “loop-the-loops” and "figure 8's” in an aeroplane. Performing in her hometown in Texas to a large crowd, she refused to perform unless there was only one gate for everyone to use but did accept segregated seating. On April 30, 1926, Bessie Coleman took a test flight with a mechanic named William Wills who piloted the plane while Coleman sat in the passenger seat. At about 3,000 feet, a loose wrench got stuck in the engine of the aircraft. Wills was no longer able to control the steering wheel and the plane flipped over. Unfortunately, Coleman was not wearing a seatbelt and, as planes at the time did not have a roof or any protection, she fell out of the plane and died. In 1931, the Challenger Pilots’ Association of Chicago started a tradition of flying over Coleman’s grave every year. By 1977, African American women pilots formed the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club and in 1995, the “Bessie Coleman Stamp” was made to remember all of her accomplishments.

Elizabeth Jennings Graham (March 1827 – June 5, 1901)

Her mother was born enslaved but her father was a free man and in 1821, he was awarded a patent from the U.S. government for developing dry scouring, a new method to dry-clean clothing making him the first known Black person to hold a U.S. patent. With the proceeds he bought his family's freedom. Elizabeth was born free in March 1827. In July 1854 Elizabeth was running late for church so she boarded a streetcar of the Third Avenue Railroad Company at the corner of Pearl Street and Chatham Street. The conductor ordered her to get off alleging the car was full - although this was later proved false. When she refused, the conductor tried to remove her by force. Eventually, with the aid of a police officer, Jennings was ejected from the streetcar. In 1855, a court ruled in her favour Brooklyn Circuit Court Judge William Rockwell declaring in his charge to the jury: "Coloured persons if sober, well behaved and free from disease, have the same rights as others and can neither be excluded by any rules of the company, nor by force or violence." She later founded and operated the city's first kindergarten for black children in her home. She died on June 5, 1901, at the age of 74, and was buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery along with her son and her husband. In 2019 it was announced that New York City would build a statue honouring Graham near Grand Central Terminal.

Edith Louisa Cavell (4 December 1865 – 12 October 1915)

Born in Swardeston, near Norwich, where her father was vicar for 45 years, Cavell worked as a governess, including for a family in Brussels from 1890 to 1895 when she returned home to care for her father during a serious illness. This experience led her to become a nurse after her father's recovery and along with other staff she was awarded the Maidstone Medal for her assistance with the typhoid outbreak in 1897. In 1907, Cavell was recruited to be matron of a newly established nursing school in Ixelles, Brussels and in 1910 launched the nursing journal L'infirmière. Within a year, she was training nurses for three hospitals, twenty-four schools, and thirteen kindergartens in Belgium.

During the German occupation of Brussels, starting in 1914, Cavell sheltered wounded British and French soldiers, as well as Belgian and French civilians of military age, funnelling them out of occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands. They were hidden from the Germans and provided with false papers and enough money to reach the Dutch border. This placed Cavell in violation of German military law and the authorities became increasingly suspicious of the nurse's actions. She was held in prison for ten weeks, the last two of which were spent in solitary confinement. Cavell made three depositions to the German police admitting that she had been instrumental in conveying about 60 British and 15 French soldiers, as well as about 100 French and Belgian civilians of military age, to the frontier and had sheltered most of them in her house. The penalty, according to German military law, was death, although the First Geneva Convention ordinarily guaranteed protection of medical personnel, that protection was forfeit if used as cover for any belligerent action. After the war, her body was taken back to Britain for a memorial service at Westminster Abbey and then transferred to Norwich, to be laid to rest at Life's Green on the east side of the cathedral. The King had to grant an exception to an Order in Council of 1854, which prevented any burials in the grounds of the cathedral, to allow the reburial.