Willa Brown, American Aviatrix and Activist
Willa Beatrice Brown (January 22, 1906 – July 18, 1992) was an American aviator, lobbyist, teacher, and civil rights activist. She was the first African-American woman to earn her pilot's license in the United States, the first African-American woman to run for the United States Congress, the first African-American officer in the US Civil Air Patrol, and the first woman in the United States to have both a pilot's license and a mechanic's license. A lifelong advocate for gender and racial equality in flight and in the military, Brown not only lobbied the government to integrate the Army Air Corp and include African-Americans in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), but also co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics with Cornelius Coffey, which was the first private flight training academy in the United States owned and operated by African-Americans. She trained hundreds of pilots, several of whom would go on to become Tuskegee Airmen. Brown remained politically and socially active in Chicago. She organized flight schools for children, she ran for Congress three times (1946, 1948, and 1950), she was an active member of the Westside Community Church, and she taught in the Chicago Public School System until 1971, when she retired at the age of 65. She died in 1992 at the age of 86. No photographer credited, 1935.
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