Black aviation, across a century and across the world.

Ahmet Ali Çelikten

Yeşilköy, Ottoman Empire

First Black military pilot

Born in Izmir in 1883. His maternal grandmother had been brought to Turkey from Bornu, in what is now Nigeria. He began cadet training at the Naval Flight School at Yeşilköy in 1914 and graduated on 11 November 1916, months before Eugene Bullard earned his wings in France. He flew in the First World War and again in Turkey's War of Independence. He is widely regarded as the first Black military pilot in history, and is almost unknown outside Turkey.

Eugene Bullard

Lafayette Flying Corps, France

First African American military pilot

Born in Columbus, Georgia. Flew with the Lafayette Flying Corps in the First World War and became the first African American military pilot. When the United States entered the war and took over American volunteer pilots, it took every one of them except him.

William Robinson Clarke

Jamaica and the Royal Flying Corps

First Black military pilot in British service

Born in Kingston, he paid his own passage to England in 1915. He flew reconnaissance over the Western Front from May 1917 until he was shot down that July while photographing German positions. He survived, and served on.

Bessie Coleman

Le Crotoy, France

First African American woman to hold a pilot licence

Every flight school in America refused her. So she learned French, sailed to the Caudron Brothers' school at Le Crotoy, and took her licence from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale on 15 June 1921. She was the first African American woman and the first Native American woman to hold one. It took her seven months.

James Herman Banning

First African American to fly across the continent

Banning and Thomas Allen flew coast to coast. They financed the trip as they went by asking people to sign the aircraft's wing for a contribution. They named themselves.

John C. Robinson

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Commander, Imperial Ethiopian Air Force

A Chicago aviator, invited by Haile Selassie in April 1935 and named commander of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force that August. He trained Ethiopian pilots, flew reconnaissance and carried men and supplies to the front against Mussolini's invasion. Back home he persuaded his old school, Tuskegee Institute, to open a school of aviation. He is also remembered as a father of Ethiopian Airlines.

Cornelius Coffey · Willa Brown

First Black-owned flight school in the United States

The Coffey School of Aeronautics opened at Harlem Airport in Oak Lawn, Illinois. It was the first flight school in the United States owned and operated by African Americans. Of seven Black-operated schools funded under the federal Civilian Pilot Training Programme, Coffey was the only one not attached to a college. Coffey was chief instructor and maintained every aircraft himself. Willa Brown ran it, and trained more than two hundred Tuskegee airmen and instructors. A recruiting poster called her what she was: maker of pilots.

National Airmen's Association of America founded

Coffey, Brown and Enoch Waters founded the National Airmen's Association of America to force Black aviators into military flight training. Within two years the Army Air Corps opened Tuskegee.

Benjamin O. Davis Sr.

First African American general officer

Promoted to brigadier general in the United States Army, forty-two years into his service.

Tuskegee Army Air Field opens

The 99th Pursuit Squadron begins training at Tuskegee Army Air Field. It was created under the segregation it was meant to prove wrong, and staffed in part by pilots the Coffey School had already trained.

Benjamin O. Davis Jr.

Italy and southern Europe

332nd Fighter Group, the Red Tails

Davis commanded the 99th, then the 332nd Fighter Group, escorting bombers over Europe. He would become the first Black general in the United States Air Force. President Clinton advanced him to four-star general on 9 December 1998.

Charles B. Hall

First aerial victory by a Tuskegee Airman

On 2 July 1943, escorting B-25s over Castelvetrano in Sicily, Hall put his P-40 between the bombers and two Focke-Wulf 190s, turned inside them, and shot one down. It was his eighth mission, the first aerial victory by any Tuskegee Airman, and the only one they scored in all of 1943. He shot down three more before the war ended.

Johnny Smythe

Sierra Leone and Stalag Luft I

RAF navigator, twenty-six missions and two years a prisoner of war

A navigator from Freetown, chosen for the work on the strength of his mathematics. He navigated twenty-six bombing runs over Germany and was shot down on the twenty-seventh, spending the rest of the war in Stalag Luft I until the Russians freed it in 1945. In 1948 he sailed as the senior officer aboard the Empire Windrush.

Flight Lieutenant Billy Strachan

Kingston, Jamaica

RAF bomber crew, thirty operations over Germany

He sold what he had and crossed U-boat waters at his own expense to enlist. He flew thirty night raids over Germany as a wireless operator and air gunner, against a bomber crew average of about seven. The desk job he had earned was offered and refused. He retrained as a pilot instead, flew solo after seven hours, and finished the war a Flight Lieutenant.

Lee Archer

Four aerial victories

One on 18 July 1944, then three in a single day on 12 October. Archer was one of three Tuskegee Airmen credited with four aerial victories. The group finished the war with one hundred and twelve.

Squadron Leader Ulric Cross

Trinidad and RAF Marham, England

RAF Pathfinder navigator, eighty operations. DSO and DFC

Born in Port of Spain in 1917, he reached Britain in November 1941 and trained as a navigator. He flew with 139 (Jamaica) Squadron and was chosen for the Pathfinder Force, which marked targets ahead of the bombers. He took the DFC in June 1944 and the DSO the year after, for exceptional navigational ability, and declined the rest he was offered. He is thought to be the most decorated West Indian of the war. He later became a High Court judge in Trinidad.

The Caribbean and Britain

Caribbean aircrew in the Royal Air Force

Around four hundred and fifty West Indians served as RAF aircrew in the Second World War, and several thousand more on the ground. They came from Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados and across the region, to fight for a country most of them had never seen.

Freeman Field. One hundred and one officers arrested

On 5 April 1945, officers of the 477th Bombardment Group entered a whites-only officers' club at Freeman Field, Indiana. One hundred and one were arrested and charged under the 64th Article of War. The Army Air Forces then persuaded the War Department to prohibit racial segregation of base facilities outright. They were arrested for it, and they won.

Ramitelli, Italy

The 332nd photographed at Ramitelli

Toni Frissell photographed the 332nd at their airfield in Italy: briefings, the parachute room, the officers' club in the evening. The Library of Congress holds the negatives. They are among the finest aviation photographs ever made, and they are why this history can be seen rather than only described.

Roscoe C. Brown

Me 262 downed from a P-51 Mustang

On 24 March 1945, flying a P-51 over Berlin, Brown shot down a Messerschmitt Me 262, one of the first operational jet fighters. He was not the first American to down a 262, a claim often repeated on his behalf, but he did it in a piston-engined Mustang against an aircraft roughly a hundred miles an hour faster. He commanded the 100th Fighter Squadron.

Executive Order 9981 desegregates the armed forces

Truman ordered equality of treatment and opportunity across the armed services. Three years after Freeman Field.

Winners of the first Air Force gunnery meet

In May 1949 the Air Force held its first Fighter Gunnery Meet over the desert at Las Vegas Air Force Base, now Nellis. Captain Alva Temple and Lieutenants Harry Stewart and James H. Harvey III, flying P-47N Thunderbolts for the 332nd, won it. The silver cup carrying the winners' names then disappeared for fifty-five years. The historian Zellie Rainey Orr found it in 2005, in storage at the National Museum of the Air Force. Nellis unveiled a plaque on 11 January 2022.

Perry H. Young Jr.

First African American pilot at a scheduled US airline

Hired by New York Airways to fly helicopters, eight years before any major passenger carrier would hire a Black pilot.

Ed Dwight

First African American astronaut candidate

President Kennedy backed him as America's first Black astronaut candidate. He completed the Aerospace Research Pilot School course that carried white officers into the astronaut corps. NASA never selected him. He left the Air Force without flying, and became a sculptor.

Marlon Green

Supreme Court ends airline hiring discrimination

Continental had an opening. Green was a qualified Air Force pilot. They gave the seat to a less experienced white applicant. On 22 April 1963 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Colorado Anti-Discrimination Commission v. Continental Air Lines, 372 U.S. 714. He flew for Continental from 1965 to 1978.

David E. Harris

First African American pilot at a major US airline

American Airlines hired him the year after the Green decision. The door Green forced open, Harris walked through.

Melody Millicent Danquah

Ghana

Ghana's first woman pilot

She flew solo for the first time on 22 June 1964 and took her wings on 15 April 1965, one of the earliest women to fly anywhere in Africa. She was among the first three women accepted into the Ghana Air Force.

Daniel "Chappie" James Jr.

First African American four-star general

Tuskegee-trained. Flew fighters in Korea and Vietnam. Took his fourth star in 1975.

Captain Chinyere Kalu

Zaria, Nigeria

First Nigerian woman to hold a commercial pilot licence

She enrolled at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology in Zaria and took her commercial pilot's licence on 20 May 1981, the first Nigerian woman to hold one. She went on to run the college that trained her, as Rector and Chief Executive from 2011 to 2014.

Guion Bluford

First African American in space

STS-8, 30 August 1983, the shuttle programme's first night launch and night landing. Sixty-two years after Bessie Coleman had to sail to France for a licence.

Frederick D. Gregory

First African American to pilot and to command a shuttle

Piloted STS-51-B in 1985 and commanded STS-33 in 1989. He later served as Deputy Administrator of NASA.

Mae Jemison

First African American woman in space

STS-47, 12 September 1992. A physician and engineer who served in the Peace Corps in West Africa before NASA. She carried a poster from the Alvin Ailey company with her, and a statue from West Africa.

Patrice Clarke Washington

First Black woman captain at a major US carrier

Captain at UPS, seventy-three years after Bessie Coleman was told no by every school in the country.

Bernard A. Harris Jr.

First African American to walk in space

STS-63. Outside the airlock, in a suit, in orbit.

Major General John H. Bailey II

Institute Founder

Commissioned an Ordnance Officer out of Officer Candidate School on 10 May 1967. Germany from 1962 to 1965. Two tours in Vietnam: platoon leader and company commander with the 101st Airborne, then Army Fixed Wing Aviator with the First Aviation Brigade, flying reconnaissance, surveillance and search-and-destroy missions over South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. He finished his service as Commanding General of the Texas State Guard. In 2001 he founded Bailey Military Institute, a 501(c)(3), to put young people into aviation careers. He serves now as Founder and Executive Director Emeritus.

Captain Irene Koki Mutungi

Nairobi, Kenya

First African woman to captain a commercial airliner

She qualified to captain a Boeing 737 for Kenya Airways in 2004, the first woman on the continent to command a commercial aircraft. She later became the first African woman certified as a captain of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Captain Amsale Gualu

Addis Ababa to Bangkok

First all-female crew in African aviation

She became the first female captain in Ethiopian aviation in 2010, on a Q-400 from Addis Ababa to Gondar and Axum. On 18 November 2015 she commanded the first all-female crew flight in African aviation, from Addis Ababa to Bangkok. Pilots, cabin crew and ground staff were all women.

Major Mandisa Mfeka

South African Air Force

South Africa's first Black woman combat pilot

She joined the South African Air Force in 2008, went to the Central Flying School at Langebaan in 2010 and took her wings in 2011. In May 2019 she flew in the formation over the presidential inauguration, the country's first Black female combat fighter pilot.

Charles McGee

Four hundred and nine combat missions across three wars

Across the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam. One of the highest three-war totals of any American fighter pilot. Promoted to brigadier general in 2020, at 100.

Sian Proctor

First Black woman to pilot a spacecraft

Inspiration4, the first orbital flight crewed entirely by non-professional astronauts. She is a geoscientist and community-college professor.

Dr. Charles R. Glass

Executive Director, John Bailey Institute

Eagle Scout, Navy officer, Eastern Airlines pilot, commercial drone pilot and university professor holding an Airline Transport Pilot certificate. He has carried research funding from the Office of Naval Research, the Texas Department of Transportation, the Transportation Research Board, the US Coast Guard and the Department of Education, all of it aimed at recruiting and graduating students into STEM careers. More than four hundred people from his community now work as aviation professionals around the world. In 2022 he became the second Executive Director of Bailey Military Institute.

Jessica Watkins

First Black woman on a long-duration ISS mission

Crew-4, 2022. She worked on the Curiosity rover before she flew.

Ed Dwight

Reached space in 2024, aged ninety

On 19 May 2024 Ed Dwight flew to space aboard New Shepard, aged 90. He became the oldest person ever to do it. Stepping out of the capsule, he put both arms over his head.