Willa Beatrice Brown and Chicago's Aviation Legacy

Abstract

WHEN HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS WRITE ABOUT CHICAGO AVIATOR WILLA BROWN, they generally recount tales of her role as one of the first licensed female Black pilots in the United States and her indefatigable efforts to open military aviation to Black pilots. They often overlook, however, her personal struggles to obtain a pilot license in a White, male-dominated aviation community, and incorrectly identify her as being the first Black female to earn a federal pilot's license. Most rarely examine her inspiration and motivation for fighting established norms and advocating for the acceptance of Black pilots into the aviation community at large.1 Why, for example, did moving to Chicago and meeting the city's pioneering Black aviators result in a career change from teacher to aviator? What in her background drove her passion to become a spokesperson and lobbyist for change? In an age of racial injustice, segregation, and denied opportunities in many professions, Willa Brown's indomitable spirit and her extraordinary courage helped prove both Black men and women had the right stuff to take to the air.The well-educated Brown simply refused to take no for an answer. Outspoken and fighting for what she believed was right, she was one of a handful of Black women who made a difference for their sex and race in the early twentieth century. As one writer explained, Black women like Brown “didn't care what people thought of them, they didn't let racism stop them, they didn't let the threat of violence, didn't let social structures, stop them.”2 They did not give up in their fight for equality.Willa Brown's early life helped define the woman she would become later in life—educated, driven, and an advocate for equal rights. She was born on January 22, 1906, in Glasgow, Kentucky, the second child and only daughter of Hallie May Carpenter Brown, a Native American, and Eric Brown, an African American.3 In 1915, Eric and Hallie moved Willa, her four brothers, and a nephew from their farm in Kentucky first to Indianapolis, Indiana. The couple subsequently had a fifth son. As the only girl in a household of boys, she certainly learned early how to defend herself and speak up for what she wanted.Like many of their generation, the Brown's had joined the migration north in search of better employment and educational opportunities for their children, and to escape Kentucky's Jim Crow laws. In Indianapolis, Eric Brown worked as a laborer for the Citizens Gas Company. In Indianapolis, however, the Browns found little relief from discrimination, where schools and businesses were also largely segregated and the African American community remained small. The city proved fairly inhospitable to Black migrants. The Black population was isolated socially and economically, jobs were hard to find, and increasing Ku Klux Klan activity, especially in the political arena, made it difficult for Black residents to succeed.4 In fact, one historian described Indianapolis as having “the unenviable distinction of being one of the most racist cities in America.”5In 1919, the family moved to Terre Haute, Indiana. The situation in Terre Haute was not much better, and the Brown's found little relief from the racism they faced in Indianapolis. In the early part of the twentieth century, Terre Haute had a population of 58,157, with only 2,593 Black residents. By 1920, the city's total population increased to 66,083, with 3,646 Black residents.6 As in Indianapolis, the Black population remained largely segregated from their White counterparts, and professional, white-collar jobs largely out of their reach.Eric Brown found work in a creosote factory, a low-paying and often dangerous job. Willa's older brother also found factory work to help support the family. Willa attended Wiley High School, a desegregated high school in south Terre Haute. She, however, was just one of under fifteen African Americans at Wiley, most of them male and who garnered some acceptance because of their athletic abilities.7 Playing on the school's athletic teams did not protect them fully from racism. In 1923, for example, the year Willa graduated, Terre Haute's all-White Garfield High School refused to play football games with Wiley if Black players suited up for the game.8 While in school, Brown worked part-time as a domestic—one of the few occupations open to Black women.Determined to advance her education, after high school, Brown enrolled at the Indiana State Normal School in Terre Haute, renamed Indiana State Teachers College in 1929, and later Indiana State University. The college had open acceptance and did not segregate the classrooms and library. The school did enforce segregation at its eateries, housing, meeting spaces, and social activities.9 Black enrollment remained fairly small, with no more than forty Black students during the 1920s in a student population of over 550. Brown majored in business and minored in French. She also joined the Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha and continued to work part-time as a domestic to pay for college expenses.Prior to graduating, she accepted a job teaching at the segregated Roosevelt Annex in Gary, Indiana. The school, originally built as an elementary school, began teaching secondary courses in 1925. It graduated its first high school class in 1930.10 Brown taught typewriting and stenography at the school. She sponsored the writing club and served as the faculty advisor for the school's newspaper.11 During her summer school breaks, she returned to college in Terre Haute to finish her undergraduate degree, which she received in 1931.12She had not been teaching long when racial tensions in Gary erupted. In September 1927, 1,500 White students at Emerson High School as well as others at area schools refused to attend classes after eighteen Black students transferred to Emerson, which already had six African-American pupils. The students returned to classes when the school board agreed to transfer the Black students to a temporary building within ninety days.13 This event, as well as her earlier experiences, no doubt, helped instill in Brown the need to provide equal opportunity and access for all.Brown's first husband, Wilbur J. Hardaway, also fueled her desire to promote equal rights. While working in Gary, Brown met Hardaway, the first, and only Black alderman in the city. He represented the city's Fifth Ward on the city council.14 He was an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He had graduated from Tuskegee Institute and had served as one of Gary's first Black firefighters. Brown and Hardaway married on November 24, 1929, in the city's Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.The marriage did not last long. Brown filed for divorce in 1931. She learned early she was not cut out to be the stereotypical middle-class Black wife. Rather than keeping house and actively supporting her husband's political career, the strong-willed Brown preferred a career outside of the home. As she later explained, “I wasn't cut out to be a housewife and he [Hardaway] quickly discovered that.”15 The couple had no children. The divorce proceedings garnered public attention when Hardaway filed a counter complaint alleging Brown had “improper relations with one of her former pupils.” At the trial, both provided evidence to the judge and Hardaway withdrew his complaint at the recommendation of the court, which granted the divorce. Hardaway married Erma Whitler-Lowndes, a divorcee with two grown children in 1933.16Newly divorced and looking for greater employment opportunities, Brown moved to Chicago during the summer of 1932. Chicago was the largest city in the Midwest and boasted a population of approximately three million, 230,000 of those African Americans. Chicago, like Terre Haute, remained largely segregated, with most African Americans residing in Chicago's South Side, widely known as the “Black Belt” or “Bronzeville.” Racism was rampant, as were calls from Black organizations, such as the NAACP and the National Urban League, for racial justice. By the early 1930s, Civil Rights was emerging as a national issue and the Black press, especially the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper with a national audience, played a critical role in the nascent movement.17Chicago had also become a mecca for Black Americans looking for a better life. By the time Brown arrived, Chicago's Black Renaissance was underway. Black women played an important role in that movement as well as the civil rights movement, supporting Black arts and literature, promoting Black education and history, striving to ensure fair housing and employment, and working as activists to end segregation.18 As one historian explained, “Chicago's women reformers were among the nation's most organized and sophisticated, with leaders establishing settlement houses, orphanages, and the nation's first juvenile court.”19 It would not be long before Willa Brown crafted a role for herself in this social movement.For a Black woman during the depression, Brown surprisingly had no trouble finding work in her new city. She applied for a teaching job with the Chicago Board of Education, which placed her on its waiting list.20 While waiting for a teaching position, she secured work as a cashier at Walgreen's and then in a number of administrative positions in the private and federal sectors. She became the first Black employee of the Social Security Board's (later became the Social Security Agency and then Administration) Chicago office in 1937, having transferred from the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. She subsequently found work as a laboratory technician and private secretary to Dr. Julian Lewis, an associate professor of pathology at the University of Chicago—the first Black physician to hold such an appointment at a US medical school.21In 1934, while working at Walgreen's, Brown met John C. Robinson, a pilot and mechanic. (Robinson gained international recognition when he served as the commander of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force in 1935–1936 during Ethiopia's war with Italy.) Brown had always admired Bessie Coleman, and Robinson convinced her to take flying lessons, something easier for a Black female to do in Chicago as opposed to other parts of the country. In the 1930s, Chicago had become the center of Black aviation in the country and home to a number of influential Black pilots. The Chicago Defender closely followed the exploits of these male and female pilots and promoted their stories as part of its larger crusade for racial justice.Robinson introduced Brown to his friend Cornelius Coffey, another Black pilot advocating flight training for Blacks. Both Robinson and Coffey had graduated from the Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical University as airplane mechanics.22 It, however, took a threatened lawsuit to get the school to allow them to take classes.23 The two friends subsequently worked with the school to train Black students. The University refused to integrate Black and White students, but told Robinson and Coffey if they enrolled twenty-five Black students, the school would educate them as a separate class. In 1932, the first all-Black class entered the school with Robinson and Coffey teaching the class. Willa Brown passed the aviation ground course at the school in 1935.Coffey and Robinson originally flew out of Akers Airport, one of the few airports in the Chicago area that allowed Black pilots. When that airport closed, they had difficulty finding an airfield that would accept them. In 1931, Robinson, Coffey, and other local Black pilots had established the Challenger Air Pilots Association (CAPA), a Black flying club in Chicago, to encourage members of their race to take up flying. After Akers Airport closed, the association bought a tract of land in Robbins, Illinois, and built an airport. When a thunderstorm destroyed their hangar and damaged aircraft, the association moved to Harlem Airport in Oak Lawn, Illinois, at the invitation of its White manager, William Schumacher. Schumacher told them, “I'm going to put you at the end of the field to save you from having any trouble with the other [White] guys.”24 The CAPA rented one part of the airport, while a group of White fliers opened a school and flying club at the other end. Even though the Black and White pilots had different hangers, they shared Harlem's four sod runways.Willa Brown joined the CAPA and began taking flying lessons from William Schumacher's brother Fred in 1934. However, an auto accident on May 13, 1934, seemed to put an end to her nascent flying career. A friend, John B. McClellan Jr., was driving her back to Chicago from Terre Haute when the accident occurred. McClellan died in the accident and Brown was seriously injured. She was hospitalized with a broken arm, several broken ribs, and a fractured vertebra. Still determined to fly, after recovering from her injuries, she resumed flying lessons. She received her student pilot's license on March 6, 1935 (#43814).25 Her CAPA colleague and friend, Janet Harmon Waterford, had received her student license on November 9, 1933, making her the first Black woman to receive a federal pilot's license.After receiving her student license, Brown pursued an advanced license. She took flying lessons from Cornelius Coffey in 1937 and 1938 and received her solo license on April 20, 1938.26 Two months later, on June 22, Brown received a private pilot's license, which allowed her to carry nonpaying passengers in her plane.27The Pittsburgh Courier, a Black-run newspaper, printed news of her accomplishment: “Miss Willa B. Brown . . . received a private pilot's license in flying. She is understood to be the first colored aviatrix to receive this license. There were 14 others [in her class], all white men . . . Brown passed her examination with the highest mark, 96, of the entire class.” The article continued: “Although only 40 hours are required for a private police license, Miss Brown had almost a hundred to her credit before taking the test.” Brown, however, hoped to expand her credentials by earning another license. As Brown remarked in the article, “I shall work next fall towards getting a limited commercial license. . . . That will permit me to take up passengers for pay.”28 The paper, like many other Black newspapers across the United States, received news and information from Claude Barnett's Associated Negro Press (ANP), an organization founded in Chicago in 1919 to supply news, opinions, feature articles, and reviews to Black newspapers. The ANP kept its subscribers constantly updated on Brown's activities.Relishing the notoriety, Brown wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper, saying, “When I whipped my airplane through the designated spins, spirals, figure eights, verticals, and passed the written test last month to get a private pilot's license, I was overcome with joy to have accomplished my desire; but there also came a deep satisfaction to know that our newspapers and magazines showed such courtesy as to carry articles and pictures concerning this event.”29 Hoping to clarify her place in history, after receiving her license, Brown sent a telegram to the Bureau of Air Commerce asking if “there are any other colored women holding pilot licenses,” other than those held by Dorothy Darby, Lola Jones, and herself. The bureau, which had not yet recorded her private pilot's license, responded that she and Jones had solo licenses and Dorothy Darby had an amateur license.30True to her word, Brown applied for her limited commercial pilot's license. In October 1938, she took the necessary written exam for that rating. She failed the airplanes and theory of flight, meteorology, and navigation sections of the exam; the Civil Aeronautics Authority, which replaced the Bureau of Air Commerce in 1938, required a grade of no lower than 70 on each section to pass. She later retook the written exams and passed, though she did not achieve passing scores on her October 26 and December 15, 1938, flight tests. However, when she retook the flight test on June 16, 1939, she passed it. Her examiner wrote that despite her visual issues, “her flight test in general was still better than fair.” Her medical examiner found her vision needed correction, so she now had to wear corrective lenses when piloting an aircraft. She received her limited commercial license in August 1939.31 On June 11, 1940, she received her federal ground instructor rating, which permitted her to teach ground school courses.32 Brown was one of a slowly growing cadre of licensed Black pilots, albeit mostly men, in the country. By January 1939, the number of licensed Black pilots in the country numbered 125: four commercial, four limited commercial, twenty-three private, twelve solo, and eighty-two student.33New federal rules for pilot's licenses issued in 1941 by the Civil Aeronautics Authority's successor agency the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) meant all solo certificates would expire on May 1, 1941, and limited commercial certificates on May 1, 1942. With the limited commercial rating being abolished, on April 28, 1941, Brown applied for her commercial airmen's certificate. She took the required written exams, but did not receive passing grades on the navigation, engine, and weather sections of the exam. She did not retake the exam, and she reverted back to a private pilot's license.34Brown's flying exploits made her a celebrity in Chicago's Black community where even the gossip pages carried stories of her professional and private activities. One such column described her as “good looking,” and someone who “admittedly likes to flirt.” It also noted that she was a “woman who swears occasionally, plays cards once a week, likes to sip cocktails at the bar, and simply craves gospel music. . . . [O]nce in an airplane, though, Miss Brown is in her glory.”35African American artist Charles H. Alston added to Brown's growing celebrity. Hired by the Office of War Information and Public Information during World War II, he created cartoons and posters designed to mobilize the Black community to join in the American war effort. Black newspapers across the country featured Alston's images. Willa Brown became one of his subjects.36Willa Brown so loved aviation and she wanted to share her enthusiasm with others. However, Black pilots often faced acute racism when trying to get a license. Most of the White Civil Aviation Administration personnel who administered flight tests refused to test and/or pass Black pilots. In addition, because of the limited number of aviation facilities available to Black pilots, their ranks grew slowly in the 1930s in Chicago and elsewhere. In 1935, the United States only had forty-seven federally licensed Black pilots. That number included four limited commercial pilots, two transport pilots, nine private pilots, four amateur pilots, one solo pilot, and twenty-seven student pilots.37To help increase those numbers, Brown volunteered to serve as the publicist for the CAPA. She wanted to use her position to introduce the Black community to the thrills of flying. To do so, however, she needed to achieve some serious marketing successes for the association's activities. Through such efforts, Brown, described as “veritable inexhaustible dynamo of energy” who worked “indefatigably to enlist members and create interest where there was none,” succeeded in getting more African Americans interested in flying.38The Chicago Defender carefully followed the exploits of the country's Black pilots. Robert S. Abbott founded the paper in 1905 and used it to attack racial inequities. One of the first mentions of Brown in the paper came in the early 1930s when she worked for the Social Security office,39 and the paper continued to follow her aviation and political career for decades thereafter. Brown would soon partner with Abbott and the paper's city editor, Enoch P. Waters, to promote Black aviation.In 1936, Brown confidently walked into the Chicago Defender newsroom wearing her flying attire—white jodhpurs, jacket, and boots—and announced, “I want to speak to Mr. Enoch Waters.”40 She needed the paper to provide publicity for an upcoming CAPA-sponsored air show. At the time, Waters explained, other than John Robinson and Hubert Julian, he had no idea there was a group of Black aviators in Chicago. “Fascinated by both her [Brown] and the idea of Negro aviators,” Waters recounted, I decided to follow up on the story myself. I didn't realize, at the time, how deeply involved I would become in aviation.”41Approximately three hundred people showed up to watch the pilots, and as a reward for his help, Brown took Waters up in her plane. According to Waters, “It was a thrilling experience, and the maneuvers, figure eights, flip-overs and stalls, were exhilarating, though momentarily frightening. I wasn't convinced of her competence until we landed smoothly.”42 Waters, like Abbott, became a lifelong supporter of Brown's efforts to desegregate the military and increase aviation opportunities for underprivileged Blacks in the Chicago area.In 1937, Cornelius Coffey opened the Coffey School of Aeronautics at Harlem airport to train both Black and White students for careers in aviation.43 Brown, who operated the lunch room at the airport and had graduated with a master's degree in business from Northwestern University in 1937, became Coffey's business partner and later his wife. The vivacious and outgoing Brown and the introvert Coffey married on July 8, 1939.44 They shared a common goal of teaching Blacks, both men and women, to fly, and to fight for Black pilots to be integrated into military units. Coffey, according to Waters “was a quiet retiring man of few words. He was completely devoted to aviation and was content being an unnoticed instructor because it allowed him to spend his days at the airport.” Brown's enthusiasm for aviation, on the other hand, “was contagious. . . . [S]he wanted to spend all of her time flying around the country,” convincing others to take up flying.45Brown not only helped run the Coffey school but also continued her public outreach efforts for the school and the CAPA. Because of such efforts, in 1938, Chicago's Black aviators, many from Coffey's school, made history when they competed with White pilots at a local air show—the first time in US history that Black and White aviators competed against one another. With Brown and the Defender publicizing the event, thirty thousand people, including five thousand Black spectators, came together at Harlem airport to watch the meet. Chauncey Spencer, a member of the CAPA, took first place in the parachute jumping competition. Another association member, Charles Johnson, earned second place in the precision flying category. Other members, such as Brown, Lola Jones, Albert Cosby, Herman Ray, Cornelius Coffey, Fred Huchinson, and Dale White, also competed.46The opportunity to compete against White pilots was not enough to satisfy Brown and her peers. Prohibited from joining the all-White Chicago Girls Flying Club and the local chapter of the Ninety-Nines, Brown and the other Black female pilots at Harlem airport established the Chicago Girls Flight Club. Original members included Lille Berras, Delores Jackson, Lola Jones, Doris Murphy, and Janet Harmon Waterford.47The group's members also worked to help broaden the scope of the CAPA. Brown, in particular, helped transform the CAPA into the National Negro Airmen Association of America on August 16, 1937.48 For its members, some of the key factors in establishing the organization centered on the need to encourage more Blacks to seek careers in aviation and to lobby for the inclusion of Black pilots in the military. The organization soon renamed itself National Airmen's Association of America (NAAA) at the recommendation of Claude Barnett, the influential founder and director of the ANP.49The NAAA incorporated in the state of Illinois in 1939. Approximately two thousand chapters soon sprang up around the country. Dr. Albert Porter Davis, a physician and Black pilot from Kansas, initially served as the first president of the national association. Other pioneering African American aviators who helped established the organization included Cornelius Coffey, Harold Hurd, Grover Nash, Marie St. Clair, Chauncey Spencer, Janet Waterford, and Dale White. Cornelius Coffey served as vice president, with Brown as its secretary.50 Brown soon became president of the Chicago group.51In the late 1930s, with war brewing in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Congress, and the military began preparing for the United States’ eventual entry into the war. Aircraft production became a national priority, as did increasing the number of pilots. On June 27, 1939, President Roosevelt signed the Civilian Pilot Training Act into law. The law authorized the CAA to train civilian pilots through educational institutions. Representative Everett M. Dirksen (R-IL) inserted a provision into the act that stated, “None of the benefits of training or programs shall be denied on account of race, creed, or color.”Instruction for Black students began in 1939 at six schools: the West Virginia State College for Negroes; Howard University in Washington, DC; Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; Hampton Institute in Virginia; Delaware State College for Colored Students; and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College. Although training, for the most part, remained segregated, some northern colleges did accept Black students into their programs. Because of the success rate of its primary instruction, the CAA approved Tuskegee for secondary instruction.52The Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) legislation also mandated that at least 5 percent (later 7 percent) of the trainees be non-college students. For these programs, the CAA required one instructor per fifty students. At the end of a twelve-week ground school course, ten students from each class would be selected competitively to go into flight training. Only one woman could be among the ten selectees.53 The CAA required a “responsible civic body” conduct the ground school and a “nearby commercial flying school” provide the flight program for non-collegiate students. The NAAA applied to the CAA to run such a program. It planned to work through the Coffey School of Aeronautics to provide the flight training.Willa Brown worked tirelessly to get the NAAA accepted into the program. Her efforts succeeded, and in the fall of 1939, the CAA notified the organization of its selection as one of the non-collegiate training providers. Time magazine noted the award of the contract in its September 25, 1939, edition: “One civilian flier who was highly pleased by C.A.A.’s (Civil Aeronautics Authority) announcement was a cream and coffee-skinned Negress of 29. There is small chance that Willa Beatrice Brown will ever fly for the Army or Navy, but as Secretary of the National (Negro) Airmen's Association and one of the few Negro aviatrixes holding a limited commercial license, she has labored mightily to whip up interest in flying among Negroes, [and to] get them a share in C.A.A.’s training program.”54The Pittsburgh Courier reported: “Announcement of the selection of Harlem Airport marked another successful step for the integration of Negro citizens into government-sponsored aviation expansion programs.”55 Edgar G. Brown (no relation to Willa Brown), president of the United Government Employees organization, an organization of mostly Black federal employees, said of the selection, “For the first time in the history of aviation, equal opportunities have been guaranteed colored youth in all sections of the country without resort to Supreme Court action.”56 Although the number of Illinois CPTP participants, both collegiate and noncollegiate, in the program expanded throughout 1939–1940, the Coffey school remained the only noncollegiate training program that taught Black students in the state.57Public reaction to the inclusion of Blacks in the training program ran the gamut from acute prejudice to wholesale acceptance. Some lauded the CAA's actions, especially the Black press. The New York Age, for example, called the inclusion of Blacks in pilot training “a victory in the long fight for equalization of opportunity for Negros in the trenches, on the sea and in the air in time of war and peace.”58 Some, however, expressed anger and hostility. After the Des Moines Register ran an article on the training program, for example, a White pilot sent a blistering letter to the editor. He wrote, in part, “Of all the races represented [in aviation] the Negro made the worst pilot and, of course, the [most] dangerous one. Why? Because he is mentally incompetent and notoriously lacking in that one vital element—judgment.”59 Such prejudice proved hard to overcome, but Willa Brown and other Black aviators in Chicago set out to prove such bigots wrong.For the CPTP program, Coffey and Brown's school provided flight training, while the NAAA arranged for ground instructors. Willa Brown served as the local coordinator of the NAAA's CPTP program, and, once she received her ground instructor rating, also taught ground school classes to adult students at night using a classroom at Wendell Phillips High School on Chicago's South Side. In addition, she was the only Black airplane mechanic instructor in the CPTP program.60 The NAAA received two hundred and fifty applications for its initial CPTP training class.61 Classes began on January 15, 1940.62The US Army provided the Coffey school one hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment for its training program. The equipment included a Boeing P-36 bomber and such items as a cylinder and crankshaft assembly, gas tanks, and motors. Ground school classes included instruction in meteorology, civil air regulations, theory of airplane flight, aircraft engine