About This Show
Barnstormer is inspired by the true story of Bessie Coleman. Before Amelia Earhart, there was Bessie Coleman – the first Black Aviatrix who moved from the cotton fields of Texas to the wild blue yonder. There weren’t a lot of options for a Black girl from rural Waxahachie, Texas in 1917. Dissatisfied with the choices of either picking cotton and/or laundering cotton, Bessie Coleman left Texas to follow her dreams, eventually traveling all the way to Paris to learn to fly because no schools in America would teach her. Determined to establish a flying school for Black Americans, Bessie performed breathtaking aerial shows as a “barnstormer” to raise funds for the school. She became a world-renowned aerobatic pilot, skydiver, and airshow performer and opened the frontier of aviation for Black Americans and continued the quest to remove gender barriers in aviation. In 1921, she became the first Black American individual to receive an international pilot’s license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale in France. Although a tragic accident kept Bessie from ever seeing the fruits of her labors, her nephew went on to become a World War II flyer with the Tuskegee Airmen, fulfilling her dream.