I refused to take no for an answer. ---Bessie Coleman.
In the employees' entrance hallway where I work (the Gainesville Post Office) is framed a large reproduction of a 1995 postage stamp featuring aviation pioneer Bessie Coleman. Born in a large family of cotton sharecroppers in Texas in 1892, she later moved to Chicago and became enamored with flying...but couldn't find anyone in this racially hung-up country to teach her how to pilot a plane. Strongly determined not to take "no" for an answer, she undertook to travel across the Atlantic and received her training, first in France and later in Germany. Returning to the United States with her international license, the first African-American woman to receive a pilot's license (and to our shame she had to leave the country to do it), Bessie starred in a flying circus stunt plane act traveling across America in the early-to-mid 1920s. Tragically, she died falling from a defective plane that she was trying out on the outskirts of Jacksonville, Florida in 1926...at the way-too-early age of 34...
Let's face it: no matter who you are or where you came from, there are always going to be people in your pathway determined to prevent you from progressing with your dreams...I don't get it, but that's the sad truth. Maybe they're jealous of your talents and feel threatened and challenged by your drive...or maybe they're just trying to test you to see how badly you want what you're seeking. I don't care what the reasons are...I'm a lot older in my life than Bessie Coleman was when she left this Earth and I'll never fully understand the pervasiveness of hatred and discrimination she faced as she led her own life as she saw fit, but I'd be grateful to have as much as a tenth of the gumption that she displayed as she didn't just throw her hands up and give in just because some jerks said she "couldn't"...
