Today on #WorldPilotsDay, i’ll highlight black pilots who broke barriers 👨🏿✈️👩🏿✈️
—A THREAD—
In 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first black licensed pilot.
When she developed an interest in flying, women and people of color had no flight training opportunities in the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Willa Brown was the first black woman to earn both a pilot's license and a commercial license. (Bessie got hers in France)
Marlon D. Green, was an Air Force Pilot who fought to desegregate the Airline Industry. He became the 1st black pilot hired by a major airline.
Jill E. Brown became the first female African-American pilot for a major US airline in 1978 when she joined Texas International Airlines as a pilot.
Ahmet Ali Celikten was the world's first black fighter pilot.
He served in the air forces of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey. He was a veteran of World War 1 and the Turkish War of Independence.
Jesse L. Brown was the first black US Navy pilot. He flew 20 combat missions before being shot down in 1950 during the Korean War.
Eugene Jacques Bullard was the first African American military combat pilot. Often referred to as the “Black Swallow of Death” for his courage during missions, he faced incredible obstacles to become the only African-American pilot in World War 1.
He grew up in Georgia, flew for France in BOTH world wars, ran a Paris nightclub, spoke 3 languages and unironically owned a pet monkey.
Special mention to the Tuskegee Airmen became the first African American flying unit in the U.S. military and fought in World War II.
The Tuskegee Airmen epitomized courage and heroism.
Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr. is one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen of World War II.
He survived 43 combat missions during World War II and is one of only a dozen remaining Tuskegee Airmen from the famed “Red Tails” fighter group still alive.
In 2001, Shawna Rochelle Kimbrell became the first Black woman to serve as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force.
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Cathay had to pose as a MALE to be enlisted as a union soldier, becoming the only documented Black woman to serve as a Buffalo Soldier.
A THREAD
Cathay was born and enslaved in 1850 in Jackson County, Missouri. In September 1861 Union troops impressed Cathay and she joined the Army to work as a cook and washerwoman for Union Army officers.
On November 15th, 1866 Williams disguised herself as a man and enlisted as William Cathey, serving in Company A of the 38th Infantry, a newly-formed all-black U.S. Army Regiment, one of its earliest recruits.
In 1847, Missouri banned education for black people.
John Berry Meachum went ahead and equipped a steamboat with a library, desks, chairs and opened a 'Floating Freedom School'.
A THREAD!
John Berry Meachum was born into slavery in Virginia in 1789 but by the age of 21 he had earned enough money doing carpentry work to purchase his own freedom and then his father’s.
Meachum was a married man, but before he could save up enough to buy his wife’s freedom she was moved to St. Louis. He followed her here and eventually managed to purchase her freedom as well.
Before Florence Nightingale we had Mary Seacole!! A woman who did more to advance the cause of nursing - and race relations - than almost any other individual.
Mary Seacole (1805–1881) was a pioneering Jamaican nurse, healer, and businesswoman whose contributions during the Crimean War have long been overlooked. After being rejected by British military and nursing authorities, she used her own resources to travel to the war zone, where she established the “British Hotel” near Balaclava.
The British Hotel was not a traditional hospital, but it provided food, supplies, shelter, and hands-on medical care to wounded and sick soldiers. Seacole was known for going directly onto the battlefield to tend to injured troops, earning deep respect and admiration from the men she cared for.
Florence Nightingale did not support Seacole’s work and declined to include her among her nurses. While Nightingale and some of her supporters viewed Seacole’s establishment critically—often dismissing it as overly commercial—there is no solid evidence that Nightingale directly called it a brothel. These tensions reflected racial, class, and ideological differences about who was considered “legitimate” within the emerging nursing profession.
Did you know Sesame Street was originally created for black and brown inner city kids?
A THREAD
Children usually spend a lot of time watching a lot tv and technically it was sort of a babysitter. It was even worse for inner city children whose parents spent endless hours at work, thus their kids were usually exposed to long hours of mindless programs.
Lloyd Morrisett, regarded as the father of Sesame Street and vice-president of the Carnegie Corporation with a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Yale University developed
a special interest in children's education.
In 1963, 15 black girls were arrested for protesting segregation laws at the Martin theatre. Aged 12-15, they were locked in an old, abandoned stockade for 45 days without their parents knowledge. They came to be known as The Leesburg Stockade Girls,
A THREAD
The girls marched from Friendship Baptist Church to the Martin Theater, attempting to buy tickets at the front entrance, defying segregation laws. Police attacked with batons and arrested them, transporting them to a Civil War-era stockade in Leesburg, Georgia, 15 miles away.
The stockade had no beds, a broken toilet, and only hot water from a shower. The girls slept on concrete floors in sweltering heat, ate undercooked burgers, and drank from a single cup. Parents were not informed of their location for weeks, heightening their fear and isolation.
On this day in 1923, a lie by a white woman that she’d been sexually assaulted by a black man, led to the destruction of the predominantly African American town of Rosewood, Florida, thus the Rosewood Massacre.
A THREAD
Rosewood was a quiet, self-sufficient town in Florida. By 1900 the population in Rosewood had become predominantly African-American. Some people farmed or worked in local businesses, including a sawmill in nearby predominantly white town.
A rumour spread by a white woman, Fanny Taylor, sparked a massacre in the predominantly black town. Taylor claimed she was sexually assaulted in her house by a Black man. A group of white men believed her claims that she was raped by Jesse Hunter, a recently escaped convict.