Current Events

Current Events

1st quarter 2022

2nd quarter 2022

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All-African-American Crew Honors Pioneering Pilot Coleman
August 22, 2022
Honoring Bessie Coleman An all-African-American flight crew operated a flight from Dallas to Phoenix to honor pioneering African-American aviatrix Bessie Coleman. The American Airlines crew operated the flight from Dallas to Phoenix to mark the centenary of Coleman's first public flight. A passenger on the plane that day was Gigi Coleman Brooms, Bessie's great-niece. She runs the Bessie Coleman Aviation All-Stars, a program that encourages students to study math, science, engineering, and aeronautics. Bessie Coleman was one of few female pilots in the first quarter of the 20th Century. She learned to fly in France and, in 1921 was the first woman of African-American and Native American descent to earn her pilot's license. (Her father, George, had Cherokee grandparents.) Coleman returned to the U.S. and made a name for herself flying in air shows across the country. She took part in her first airshow in Garden City, N.Y., in September 1922 and then embarked on a series of shows elsewhere. She performed daring stunts in the air, some of which men refused to attempt. A broken leg and three ribs sustained in a crash in 1923 didn't stop her.

Statue of Civil Rights Pioneer Bethune Joins U.S. Capitol Luminaries
July 14, 2022
Mary McLeod Bethune statue unveiled Civil rights pioneer Mary McLeod Bethune is the first African-American whose state has commissioned a statue of her to stand in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall. Bethune is depicted wearing a graduation cap and gown, a nod to her role in advancing education for African-Americans, and holding a black rose, her favorite flower. Bethune's parents were former slaves. Mary was one of 17 children who picked cotton in the fields to help the family survive. She was the only one of her family to attend school and found in education her lifelong passion. Bethune opened a boarding school for African-American children in 1904; that was the genesis of what is now Bethune-Cookman University. She later served as an advisor to a handful of U.S. Presidents. In 2018, the State of Florida decided to honor Bethune with a statue in Statuary Hall. At the time, the state already had the maximum of two statues: inventor John Gorrie, whom many say was the inventor of mechanical refrigeration, and Edmund Kirby Smith, an officer in first the U.S. Army and then the Confederate States Army. Bethune's statue replaced Smith's, which now sits in temporary storage at the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee.