Bessie Coleman - Legacy and Honors

Legacy and Honors

Her funeral in Jacksonville, Florida on May 2, 1926 was attended by 5,000 mourners. Many of them, including Ida B. Wells, were prominent members of black society. Three days later, her remains arrived in Orlando, Florida, where thousands more attended a funeral at the city's Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church. Three days later her remains went to Chicago's Pilgrim Baptist Church. An estimated 10,000 people filed past the coffin all night and all day. After funeral services, she was buried in the Lincoln Cemetery.

Her impact on aviation history, and particularly African Americans in aviation, quickly became apparent following her death. In 1927, Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs sprang up throughout the country. On Labor Day, 1931, these clubs sponsored the first all-African American Air Show, which attracted approximately 15,000 spectators. That same year, a group of African American pilots established an annual flyover of Coleman's grave in Lincoln Cemetery in Chicago. Coleman's name also began appearing on buildings in Harlem. In 1989, First Flight Society inducted Coleman into their shrine that honors those individuals and groups that have achieved significant "firsts" in aviation's development.

A second-floor conference room at the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, D.C., is named after Coleman. In 1990, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley renamed Old Mannheim Road at O'Hare International Airport "Bessie Coleman Drive." In 1992, he proclaimed May 2 to be "Bessie Coleman Day in Chicago".

Mae Jemison, physician and former NASA astronaut, wrote in the book, Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator (1993): "I point to Bessie Coleman and say without hesitation that here is a woman, a being, who exemplifies and serves as a model to all humanity: the very definition of strength, dignity, courage, integrity, and beauty. It looks like a good day for flying."

In 1995, she was honored with her image on a U.S. postage stamp, and was inducted into the Women in Aviation Hall of Fame. In 1999 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.

In November 2000, Coleman was inducted in The Texas Aviation Hall of Fame.

She is the subject of Barnstormer, a musical that debuted October 20, 2008 at the National Alliance for Musical Theater Festival in New York; the book and lyrics are by Cheryl Davis and the music is by Douglas Cohen.

In 2004, a small park in the Southside Chicago Hyde Park neighborhood was named "Bessie Coleman Park." Additionally, the Bessie Coleman park council was formed in 2005 as one of many responses to a serious increase in crime, shootings, and disorderly loitering around the park, at 54th St. and Drexel Ave.

In 2007, a street in Gateway Gardens, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, was named after her.

The 90th anniversary of her first flight, July 23, 2011, was commemorated by a reading of parts of her biographies and an exhibition of model aircraft at Miller Field (Staten Island, New York), a former United States Air Force facility.