Happy International Women’s Day! Today, we’re taking a look at America’s first female international pilot, manicurist Bessie Coleman. She was of African American and Native American descent, and her flying tricks earned her the nickname of Brave Bessie. Coleman’s lifelong goal was to encourage women and African Americans to reach for their dreams. Though she only lived to the age of 34, the young woman’s brief life has served as an inspiration to later generations just as she hoped.

Coleman was one of 13 children born in 1892 to black housemaid Susan and mixed-race sharecropper George Coleman. When George moved to Oklahoma to escape discrimination, Susan and the children stayed behind in Waxahachie, Texas. Though Bessie did enroll briefly in college, she was forced to drop out after only one semester because they couldn’t afford it. She then attended beauty school and became a manicurist. Her brothers served in WWI, and knowing her fondness for planes, they came back full of stories about the female pilots they had encountered in France. Bessie applied to many U.S.-based flight schools, only to learn that no American flight schools would accept a black woman student. Undaunted, the young woman worked as a manicurist by day and taught herself French at night. Once she had saved up enough to make the trip and enroll in flight school, she headed to France to attend Caudron Brothers’ School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France, where she immediately distinguished herself as a natural student and pilot. After graduation, she returned to the stunt-flight-obsessed U.S., got her license, and quickly gained fame on the aerial show circuit, teaching, speaking, and performing stunt flights across the country in hand-picked venues and shows.

Throughout her career, Bessie Coleman refused to speak or perform anywhere that was segregated or which discriminated against African Americans. She was eventually able to purchase her own plane, and used it to give flying lessons to other African American students. Bessie died in a plane accident in 1926, but her legacy of activism and determination lives on.

You can learn more about the amazing Bessie Coleman on the Smithsonian’s Air and Space website.