Bessie Coleman, the tenth of 13 children born to tenant farmers Susan and George Coleman, was a native of Atlanta, Texas. Her family moved to Waxahachie when she was two years old. She followed her brothers to Chicago in 1915 and developed an interest in flying. Because she could find no one in the United States who would teach an African-American woman, she 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 to pilot an airplane. She died in an air accident in Jacksonville, Florida in 1926 and is buried near Chicago.