A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie Coleman was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads. Bessie was fearless. She knew there was freedom in those wings.

The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the Great Migration. She moves to Chicago and wins the backing of two wealthy, powerful Black men—Robert Abbott, creator and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, the founder of Chicago’s first Black bank. Abbott becomes her mentor, while Binga becomes her lover. Her true first love, though, remains flying.

In 1920, no one in the United States will train a Black woman to fly. So, Bessie sets off for Europe. Two years ahead of Amelia Earhart, Bessie earns her pilot's license, later learning death-defying stunts from French and German dogfighting combat pilots.

While she finds no prejudice in the air, Bessie wrestles with other challenges on the ground and cannot help but wonder if the freedom she finds in the sky means she must otherwise fly solo.

Carole Hopson is a captain for United Airlines, based in Newark, NJ. After a twenty-year career as a journalist and executive for brands like the National Football League and L’Oréal, Carole followed her dream to become a pilot. A century after Bessie Coleman soared over seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Black women in the U.S. account for less than one percent of all professional pilots. Inspired by Bessie, Carole founded the Jet Black Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to sending one hundred Black women to flight school by 2035.