Willa Brown -- USA

Willa Brown was an aviator, politician, activist and educator, she drew strength and inspiration from the life work of her courageous predecessor, Bessie Coleman.

Willa was born on 22 January 1906 in Glasgow, Kentucky, she earned a B.A. from Indiana Teachers College and an M.B.A. from Northwestern University.  As a young high school teacher in Gary, Indiana, and later as a social worker in Chicago, Willa Brown felt that her talents were not being put to their best use.  She also sought greater challenges and adventures in life, especially if they could be found outside the limited career fields normally open to African Americans.

Determined to become a top aviator in spite of racial barriers, Willa enrolled in the Aeronautical University in Chicago studying with Cornelius R. Coffey, a certified flight instructor and earned a Master Mechanic Certificate.  

On 22 June 1938, she earned her private pilot’s license with a near perfect test score.  Later, Brown and Coffey married and established the Coffey School of Aeronautics at Harlem Airport in Chicago, where they trained black pilots and aviation mechanics.  In 1939 together with Cornelius Coffey and Enoch P. Waters, Willa Brown helped form the National Airmen's Association of America, whose main goal was to get black aviation cadets into the United States military.  As the organisation's national secretary and the president of the Chicago branch, Brown became an activist for racial equality.

She lobbied the government for integration of black pilots into the segregated Army Air Corps and the federal Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP).  The system established by the Civil Aeronautics Authority to provide a pool of civilian pilots for use during national emergencies.  Subsequently, when Congress finally voted to allow separate but equal participation of blacks in civilian flight training programs, the Coffey School of Aeronautics was chosen for participation in the CPTP.

Brown became the coordinator for the CPTP in Chicago, later her flight school was selected by the U.S. Army to provide black trainees for the Air Corps pilot training program at the Tuskegee Institute. Willa Brown eventually became the coordinator of war-training service for the Civil Aeronautics Authority and later, a member of the Federal Aviation Administration's Women's Advisory Board.  Promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, she was the first black female officer in the Civil Air Patrol and the first black woman to hold a commercial pilot's license in the United States.

Willa added another first to her prestigious career when in 1946, she became the first African American woman to run for Congress.  Her incredible contributions made an enormous impact on the country and will be felt for generations to come.  Willa helped establish the Coffey School of Aeronautics, fulfilling Bessie Coleman’s, long standing dream of a black owned private flight school, Willa Brown died in July of 1992.

In 2010 she was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award by the Indiana State University Alumni Association.