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October 25, 2024 • 44 mins

Yves stops by to illuminate the life of pilot, teacher, advocate and politician Willa Brown.

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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
I've never told you a production of iHeartRadio, and it
is time for another edition of Female First, which means
we are once again joined by the wonderful, the magnificent,

(00:26):
the well traveled Eve. Welcome Eve. Thank you. What an introduction.
Thank you. I do get in my head about them,
but that's when it gets worse. So you just got
to go with the flow, you know, overthick things. It
feels like lifetime says We've seen you. I was thinking

(00:47):
about this today. So much has happened. We were catching
up before. So much has happened in all of our
lives since the last time we recorded. How are you?

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yes, I'm doing good today.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
You know. I am like enjoying the crispy, cool weather.
I was out, I was outside of shorts and a
T shirt on earlier, and usually I'm not that kind
of person. So I'm like, am I becoming a fall person?
Because I usually think of myself as a spring and
summer person. But pretty soon I'll be headed into climates
that are a lot colder than the one that I'm
used to in the South. I'll probably run into some snow,

(01:24):
so I'm gonna see if I really am a fall.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Girly pretty soon.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
This is this fall is a fall, this is light
fall light one, right, you know that we get in Atlanta,
so once I go farther north they hit fall full on,
then I'll see if I can make that determination for sure.
But yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling well rested and
also excited at the same time, which I feel like

(01:49):
is a good space to be in.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, what about y'all? I feel better today. There's been
a lot of stress. I think everybody should still lot
of stress right now, and we have been really busy
if the listeners show, no, we've had a lot of
surprise things happen in the past few weeks. But I
woke up early today, and you know, when your life
is just in chaos and you can't, things just build up.

(02:14):
I like took out my trash, I broke down the boxes.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
I did.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
I just did a bunch of stuff that I have
not had time to do, or if I had the time,
I did not have the energy to do. So I
also got to go outside. That was nice. So you're
getting rid of things, Yeah, yeah, it was really nice.
I took a shower last night. Oh my gosh, I'm
living the dream. That's how like stressed I've been though,

(02:41):
Is that like if I can check off these things, Yeah,
I feel a lot better.

Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah, I think I Yeah, I'm with you with the Giant.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
I love fall.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
We just don't get a lot of it.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
I think we've talked about us enough that I'm trying
to get into the spirit of it, and I think
it's working. We've talked about soup on the on our
show Eves because I love soup, and last week was
like a great week of like weather for soup, so
I was very excited for Gus split second, I was like, yeah,
I'll me get some of that. Halloween is coming up.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
I don't really have good.

Speaker 4 (03:19):
Not much planned, going to see some friends and hopefully
I'm not super awkward.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
That's the plan. We'll see.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
I'll take my anti anxiety mess just in case, so
I'm feeling prepared at the very very least. I think,
like there, I don't know what this year has been
about except for.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Anxiety plus planning, and that's.

Speaker 4 (03:38):
Been like the entirety of I don't know why this
year has become that, but every time I do this,
some things have happened, like and it gets jelly duty,
but then like coming out of it and being like, hey,
we made it feels really relieving. So I don't know
exactly what looks like in the future, but I'm very
like optimistic as well, which is odd for me. That

(04:01):
is not that is not usually my go to. Yeah,
but hey, that's a good place to be today.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
It is. I love that for you, Samantha. Thank you.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
Someone we're recording this, so we've got this.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
On record accountability.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yes, yes, well, I'm so excited to talk about the
person you brought today. Used this has got like a
crossover from someone else we've talked about. It's got like
a lot of different first going on. It's just such
a great story. Can you tell us who we are
discussing today.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yes, So we are talking about Willa Brown, who was
the first black woman to have a commercial pilot's license
from the US and she advocated for black pilots to
be accepted into the aviation community. So I think in
the past we've talked a little bit about Ava TRIX's.
I remember saying that, yes, that's the word they use

(04:59):
for female pilots. I won't be saying that word today,
but if you read some of the articles about her
and some of the texts that are about her biography,
you'll see that they use the terminology ava stricks. But
it's a pretty cool thing to do to fly as
a woman in the early nineteen hundreds, and Willa Brown

(05:22):
was a person who did that, who who's biography and
legacy have been uncovered and uplifted. But you know, she's
been in Hall of Fames, which will get to a
little bit more at the end of her story, but
it's definitely worth talking about more because she was kind
of integral in bringing more black people into aviation and

(05:46):
like being an actual force for that. So she did
that as virtue of being a pilot herself, but she
also advocated for that, like she spoke up for other
people doing it, other black people getting invested in, other
women being coming in investing in aviation.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, she did so much. And that's something we've talked
about before on the show of how inspirational it is
to see people who care to teach the next generation
and are bring in more people. And she was definitely
living that embodied that. So shall we get into her story.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, Well, start when she was born, which was on
January twenty second, nineteen oh six, in Glasgow, Kentucky, and
her parents were Hallie Mae Carpenter and Eric Brown. And
in nineteen fifteen, she and her family moved from their
farm in Kentucky to Indianapolis, Indiana. She had several siblings,

(06:41):
several brothers, and their family was looking for relief from
dem crow in Kentucky, and they were also looking for
more opportunities like so many people, so many black people
were seeking at the time. But Indianapolis still was a
racist play Like it's not like they were leaving out

(07:02):
of you know, you know, out of the frying pan
and into some sort of heaven.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
They went to another place where they still had more difficulties.
So then they moved to Tara Hope in Indiana, but
same thing there. They still faced difficulties and discrimination. And
in Indiana she went to Wiley High School, which was
a desegregated school there in South Tara Hope, and there

(07:28):
weren't many black people there. So I think I saw
that there were less than fifteen black people who went
to that school. And Willa also worked part time as
a domestic worker while in school, so We've seen this
often for people who were going through their studies, but
they still had stuff that they had to do at home,

(07:48):
They still had to take care of their families. They
were responsible in some way for the economic stability of
the family, and so that was probably the case for Willa.
But she graduated high school in nineteen twenty three and
she went to Indiana State Normal School, which is now
Indiana State University. She majored in business and she minored

(08:12):
in French.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
And I'm not.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
So sure what drove her to major and minor in
those things. I mean, I would love to know a
little bit more about what drove her to be interested
in business in French, but I'm not quite sure about that.
But it is known that she also joined the Black
sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, and before she graduated, she got

(08:36):
a teaching job at the Roosevelt Annex in Gary, Indiana.
She taught typewriting and stenography when she was there, and
she also sponsored the writing club and she was faculty
advisor for the school's newspaper. So at the beginning of episode,
we talked a little bit about how she advocated for

(08:58):
other people. Once she gets into her aviation career. But
I just wanted to stop to think about how some
of her early interests in teaching and in developing her
own writing and other her own communication skills and other
people's communication skills probably would have been a great foundation
for that kind of public relations, kind of promotional work

(09:23):
that she did later when it comes to piloting. So
I imagine at this point she has clearly, if she's teaching it,
a great foundation in communications and writing and knowing how
to speak to people and knowing how to develop her voice,
how to use it in a persuasive manner, and things
like that. So when she was working in Gary, she

(09:44):
met Wilbur J. Hardaway, who was a Black Republican alderman
who represented the fifth ward on the city council. He
was also a member of the local chapter of the NAACP,
and he graduated from the Tuskegee Institute and was one
of the first black firefighters in Gary. He also I'm

(10:06):
not so sure about much of the conversations that they
had in their relationship, but he also probably had to
do with the development of her consciousness around blackness, around politicism,
around investment.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
In your community.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
It seems like he might have had some sort of
role in her life in helping encourage the development of
those things in her or the way that they spoke
to each other and worked together was part of that development.
They got married on November twenty fourth, nineteen twenty nine,
and they divorced in nineteen thirty one. And she later

(10:42):
explained that she wasn't cut out to be a housewife.
And once we start going through her story a little
bit more, it feels like that'll kind of make sense.
This was her first time getting married, it won't be
her last time getting married in her life.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
And also she was.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
Very, very invest in fine and in developing her career
in aviation. So she got her degree from Indiana State
in nineteen thirty one, and in nineteen thirty two she
moved to Chicago. So at the time, Chicago was largely segregated,

(11:18):
with most of the black folks living on the South Side.
But I'm sure y'all have talked about the history of
Chicago during this time, Like it was very vibrant. It
was full of lots of black culture, social social movements,
and arts, and there was a lot of there was

(11:39):
a lot of movement around black people developing themselves professionally
and developing their social consciousnesses in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
So when she was in Chicago, Willow.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
Worked as a secretary to the director of the Chicago
Relief Administration. She also worked as a social services worker
for the Cook County Bureau pub Welfare. She worked as
a clerk for the US Department of Immigration and Naturalization,
and she worked for the US Post Office. And she
was at some point as secretary for the scholar Horace Kitton.

(12:12):
She was also the first black person to work at
the Social Security Board's Chicago office. So moving on to
where she became interested in aviation, she, like many other
black women at the time, was very inspired by Bessie Coleman.
So I think a lot of people are probably familiar
with Bessie Coleman, another person who has a huge legacy,

(12:35):
a Black woman who has a huge legacy in aviation
in the United States and overseas because she was like
when I think about Bessie Coleman, I think about she
was like one of those foundational people in Black History
Month for me, Like when I was in kindergarten, she
was one of the people who was on the little
contour drawings that they would do and we would have

(12:56):
to color them in and they would put them up
on the wall. Bessie Coleman was one of those people
you know, next to George Washington Carver or Garrett Morgan.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
So I think.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
About that when I think about Bessie Coleman and how
foundation of a legacy she is. So it's nice to
see her show up in Willa Brown's legacy because she
too was a pioneer, and it's nice to see how
that lineage and line kind of continued. And Willa was
able to be inspired by Bessie and actually wrap that

(13:25):
history into the work that she was doing herself. So
Bessie Coleman was the first black woman and Native Americans
to have a pilot's license, and Bessie got her license
in nineteen twenty one in France. So Willa in nineteen

(13:51):
thirty four she worked at a Walgreens in Chicago and
she met a black pilot named John C. Robinson, and
he was also an important person and her becoming inspired
to get into aviation. John Robinson convinced her to take
flying lessons, and Chicago was like a hub for black

(14:16):
pilots and aviation in the country. So Willa Brown was
in a good place. So this is where she starts
to fall into. I've met the right people, and I
have interest, and I'm in the right place to actually
see this interest to go somewhere. And all the sources
and the different sources that I've read about Willa Brown,

(14:37):
they all kind of mention his intro, his encouragement of
her to get into aviation, and also her inspiration by
Bessie Coleman. But there has to be so much more
of a story here because and I don't know it,
because I'm not a scholar in Willa Brown's life, and
the sources that I've read haven't gone super super deep

(14:58):
into that, and I'm not sure it's fully known because
to be a black woman, to be black, to be
a woman at the time, to want to get into aviation,
there has to be some sort of strong impetus, even
if it's not the picture perfect movie version of Like
I had this tada aha moment of I was like, Oh,

(15:19):
I can you know I can do this thing that
nobody else is really doing or not many people at
all are doing in in this way, and I feel
confident enough to go into it. Not so sure about that, also,
not sure how her parents may have raised her or
what it was in her childhood that would have given
her the gumption, the you know, strength, the fortitude and

(15:40):
the will to be able to go into this field.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
And also, I mean I would like to We.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
May have talked about this last time, we talked about
polist but I would like to learn how to flop places.
But it's the thing I know I'm not going to do,
but it is apocalyptic and apocalyptic skill that I would
like to have because I feel like it would be
very useful. But it seems so scary, so like to
want to do something that is so so like to me,
fearless in a way, and requires a lot of knowledge

(16:10):
to learn how to do at this time when you're
facing so many direct challenges, direct challenges because there were
direct challenges for her as a black woman, Then that
seems like that takes a lot of will for sure.
So wish I knew more about that. I do not,
But I think there's a little bit of room to
bring our imaginations and you know, educated guesses into play here.

(16:34):
So John Robinson introduced her to Cornelius Coffee and John
and Cornelius taught at the Curtis Right Aeronautical School which
they had attended before, and fought to bring more black
students to so as part of them trying to get
enrolled into this school, they were like, hey, no black
students are here, but I can come here. And basically

(16:55):
they later got the approval. They were like, Okay, if
you can bring twenty five I think it was more
black students into this school, then you can start a
separate black y'all can be together with the white folks,
but y'all can start your own separate black situation and
where you're teaching the black students how to fly. So
John and Cornelius taught the first all black class at

(17:15):
the school in nineteen thirty two. So Willa Brown was
in good company, in good pioneering company. Willa started taking
lessons at the segregated Harlem Airport, which was in Oaklawn, Illinois,
and she did have some setbacks though, so off to
a good start, lots of momentum, but in nineteen thirty
four she was in a car accident that broke a

(17:37):
lot of her bones, and after recovering from her injuries,
she started flying lessons again and she took classes at
the Curtis Write School and she took them with Cornelis coffee.
So in nineteen thirty five she got a master's mechanics
certificate and her student pilot's license Student because she'll get

(17:58):
other pilot's license later. This is her student pilot's license,
and she joined the Challenger Air Pilots Association, which was
a black flying club in Chicago. Willa wanted more black
women to be pilots, so she tried to get more publicity.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
In nineteen thirty.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
Six, she went to the Chicago Defenders Newsroom, a black newspaper,
to cover an air show that would be sponsored by
the Challenger Air Pilots Association, and so there is a
recounting of this incident. Enoch Waters, who was the paper's editor,
covered the show and even took a ride in Willa's

(18:39):
plane and they did figure eights and flipovers, and Enoch
said that he wasn't convinced of her competence until they
landed smoothly, so he had to see it until he
believed it. I guess, I mean, I'm like, you did
all those you didn't figure as and flipovers, and you

(18:59):
weren't convinced then, I don't know. He said it was
a little scary, but that went well, and black newspapers
in general did kind of follow Willa Brown and cover
her accomplishments when she got new licenses and covered some
of the events that black pilots were participating in, so

(19:22):
they she helped in being forward and going to people
and trying to get the coverage to make sure that
what they were doing people knew about it, because there were,
of course, not only detractors, but people who were outwardly
hateful about black pilots and their ability, literally their competence,

(19:45):
Like you know, I think Enoch was kind of joking,
but literally people were questioning their competence. I mean that
was probably a tongue of a pretty tongue in cheek
because there were a lot of comments about how black
people can't do that, like they don't have the the
sound judgment, they don't have the capability mentally, you know,
I'm sure sometimes they probably tried to back that up

(20:07):
with forms of scientific racism. They don't have the actual
capability of flying planes. They can't do it, so what
are you talking about? Especially black women. So you know,
as we know today and all the disinformation and misinformation
that spread online, the intentional effort to put out the
truth was an important part of combating the disinformation that

(20:30):
was happening from the people who just didn't want black
people to exist at all in any way, shape and
form anyway, and definitely not pilot planes. So Willa and
other black female pilots formed the Chicago Girls Flight Club.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
And I think when I.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
Was looking stuff up, there was also so this was
a for the black women. There was another group called
the Chicago Girls Fly Club or something like that that
was very close a name which had to be had
to have been purposeful, like, you know, if people were
hearing about this thing they accidentally, you know, they could

(21:09):
have confused one for the other, which probably worked out
well for them. But that is just me speculating. But
the names are very close. So Willa, John Cornelius, and
other black pilots also formed the National Negro Airmen Association
of America in nineteen thirty seven. The organization later was

(21:30):
renamed the National Airmen Association of America, and Cornelius in
nineteen thirty seven opened the Coffee School of Aeronautics around
the same time, so Willa had to have been going
to school up until this point. She got her master's
degree in business administration from Northwestern University in nineteen thirty seven.

(21:52):
So this track that she started on before she got
into aviation, she was still on. She was still interested
in business administration. I'm not it definitely came in handy
in the work that she was doing. I'm not sure
why she continued to go on this path, but her
background knowledge and business administration clearly was helpful for the

(22:13):
work that she was doing and helping run the coffee school.
Because she helped Cornelius run the coffee school and helping
how she kind of had the wherewithal to market the
accomplishments that they were making. Clearly, it was a good
base for her to become the person that she became
an aviation and speaking of. In April nineteen thirty eight,

(22:35):
she got her solo pilot's license, and then in June
she got her private pilot's license, and that license allowed
her to fly non paying passengers in her plane.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
So I'm curious just jog my memory for y'all. Do y'all.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Are y'all okay with flying on the smaller planes or
planes at all?

Speaker 1 (22:59):
I am? I am. I've been on two really small
planes like and that you it is a little scarier
because it's moving all around and I can only imagine
at this time different technology. So I don't know how
cool I would have been with it back then. Generally, yes, recently,

(23:20):
because we keep hearing news about how the planes are
falling apart, I've gotten a little more nervous, but generally yes, okay.

Speaker 4 (23:28):
I don't have many experiences with smaller planes, but in general,
it's going to what medication I'm on at that point
in time, a B, how big the flight is, and
how rough the flight is, because I do get motion
sickness pretty badly, so all of that kind of encompasses that.
And then like, yeah, after years, I've seen all the

(23:50):
reports of like all the planes falling apart that I'm like,
I'm a little nervous, but not like it's not debilitating.
But I don't know about small planes, Like I think
I've on one small plane. I can't remember my reaction
other than oh God, it's small, that's it, okay, cool.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, I'm just trying to think about what it was
like for her back then to fly those smaller planes.
She did end up, I think it was by nineteen
forty she ended up getting her She ended up buying
her own airplane, so she was definitely moving forward pretty quickly.
And there is there was in the Pittsburgh Courier, which

(24:29):
was a black newspaper, they covered her accomplishment of getting
her private pilot's license, and she responded to that coverage
with a letter to the editor and she said this,
when I whipped my airplane through the designated spins spirals,
figure eights, verticals and passed the written tests last month
to get a private pilot's license, I was overcome with

(24:50):
joy to have accomplished my desire. But there also came
a deep satisfaction to know that our newspapers and magazines
showed such curtis as to carry articles and pictures concerning
this event. So she, in this kind of made a
narrative situation, was expressing her love for knowing that people

(25:12):
were actually paying attention and people were doing the work
to cover it. She had to take her written and
her flight tests a couple of times though, after failing
portions of the exam and not getting passing scores on
her flights. But on August nineteen thirty nine, she got

(25:32):
her limited commercial license and also Willa and Cornelius Coffee
got married. And I've seen different days for this, but
it looked like it was nineteen thirty nine, and it
was that same year that President Franklin Roosevelt signed the

(25:53):
Civil Pilot Training Act into law. So this is kind
of where we start to see Willa Brown's reach expand
beyond their circle in Chicago. So this act authorized the
Civil Aviation Authority to train civilian pilots through educational institutions.

(26:13):
According to the rules of this act, the program had
to include black folks, so they were like, it's got
to have black folks in it. And another stipulation was
that some of the trainees had to be non college students.
And the National Airmen Association of America applied to the

(26:34):
Civil Aviation Authority and it planned on using the Coffee
School of Aeronautics for flight training. So from now on,
when I bring up the National Airmen's Association, I'm just
going to say in AAA because it's kind of a mouthful,
and I won't say that too often, so don't worry, y'all.
So Willa worked to get the NAAA accepted to the

(26:59):
Civil Pilot Training program, and in nineteen thirty nine, it
was accepted as a training provider. Huge deal. So now they,
through their school can train black pilots. And Time magazine
reported on this accomplishment and a September nineteen thirty nine issue,
and this is what they said. One civilian flyer who
was highly pleased by ciaa's announcement was a cream and

(27:23):
coffee skinned negress of twenty nine. There is a small
chance that Willa Beatrice Brown will ever fly for the.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Army or Navy.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Sorry for laughing, but as secretary of the National Airman's Association,
in 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 ceaa's training program. And so I'm just laughing because

(27:53):
they're like, oh, she can do this, but she's definitely
not gonna do that. She's never going to fly for
the army or navy. So they had to reel back
the complimentary attitude just a little bit. They had to
temper that. They were like, calm down, you know, you're
not going to get all that so soon, not so fast.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
But the person who was assigned to write that was like,
I don't want to do this, but fine, I'll do
it this way.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
That's true, Samantha, They probably really did it.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
They're probably like, I have to write I have to
write a complimentary passage about a black woman today.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Oh God. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
So, Willa and her colleagues from other colleges and institutions
who were involved in the training program formed the Aeronautical
Association of Negro Schools, and she became the organization's vice president.
And they wanted to address students' concerns like getting college
credits for program courses and getting adequate equipment. In nineteen

(28:50):
forty she got her ground instructor rating, which allowed her
to teach ground school courses and as kind of an
example of how she was starting to reach beyond and
really trying to make her reach massive and the scope

(29:11):
of how she was trying to get more black people
into aviation more massive. In nineteen forty one, she wrote
a letter to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and she said,
during the past three years, I have devoted full time
to aviation, and for the most part, marked progress has
been made. I have, however, encountered several difficulties, several of

(29:31):
them I have handled very well, and some have been
far too great for me to master. So she's acknowledging
some of the difficulties that she went to, some of
the discrimination that she was facing and facing in her
attempted advocacy for other more black people to get into aviation.
And she's writing to the first Lady, so she knows

(29:53):
how big of a deal this is. Not just because
she feels that more black people should be entire and
allowed to be an aviation and have the resources and
the means to learn how to do so, but also because,
like you know, the country could probably benefit from this too,
and from having more people in aviation, especially at this time.

(30:17):
So when new rules for federal pilot's licenses were passed
in nineteen forty one, Willa took tests to get her
commercial airmin certificate because they were changing the rules and
I think they were going to get rid of the
limited commercial license that she had, so she took those tests. However,
she failed, and she reverted back to a private pilot's license.

(30:39):
When the US entered World War Two in nineteen forty one,
though the pilot training program, which was civilian, switched to
training pilots for serving in the military. So at this
point women couldn't go to training classes, and many of
the black training schools closed. But in nineteen forty two,
the CAAA and that it was authorized to train black

(31:02):
people as non combat pilots, and initially they approved training
one hundred and fifty black pilots. Half of those would
be at Tuskegee and the other half would be at
Coffee School, which is where Willa was. So the Tuskegee
Institute and the Coffee School stayed open and they kept

(31:22):
training black students, and Willa and the Coffee School trained
some students who became Tuskegee Airmen, and Willa was gaining
popularity for her own flying. She was described as a
quote woman who swears, occasionally, plays cards once a week,
likes to sip cocktails at the bar, and simply craves

(31:43):
gospel music. So there's a little bit more of her
personality showing up beyond her piloting that she did, and
besides the advocacy work that she was a little bit
more of her personality showing up, so we can know
a little bit more about Willa the p And she
also helped establish the first desegregated Civil Air Patrol unit

(32:05):
in the country. The Civil Air Patrol supported using civilian
resources to aid the war effort, and the first black
unit of the Civil Air Patrol was established in Illinois
in February of nineteen forty two, and Willa more first
became the first black member and first female officer in
the Civil Air Patrol on February twenty fifth of that year,

(32:28):
and she had different appointments and she was commissioned as
a second lieutenant and the one hundred and eleventh Flight
Squadron of the Illinois Civil Air Patrol began operations in
March nineteen forty two. Most of those pilots, I think
there were twenty five where there were men and women,
and most of those pilots in the unit were from
Coffee school. So in nineteen forty three, when Willa got

(32:52):
her mechanics license, she became the first American woman to
have both a mechanics and a commercial pilot's license. So
Willa's getting more into bringing other people up. So she's
got her own accomplishments. Now she's trying to bring more
young people into flying. So in nineteen forty four, she
started a recruiting drive to enroll five thousand children as

(33:14):
members of a junior airman's group. But soon she decided
that she was gonna kind of leave that effort behind.
She passed it along to someone else. I believe it
was Cornelius who took over after her, but she left
it says she was temporarily retiring from aviation to fight

(33:35):
the New Deal's racist policies, so she wanted full integration,
not segregated units. So the segregated units wasn't good enough
for her, and she said, quote, the only way Negro
people can tear down the network of New Deal dishonesty, prejudice, crookedness,
mistreatment of Negro soldiers, and emptied gestures to the Negro

(33:57):
race is to out the New Deal administry.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
She started to focus.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
More on politics, and in nineteen forty four she was
a second ward Republican precinct captain. So what she did
was organized efforts for people to go door to door
advocating for the election of Republicans. And she said, I intend,
through the Crusader organization to expose the New Deal's pretended

(34:24):
friendliness to the Negro race.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
So you can see how she is.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Bringing more of her politics into the work that she
had already been doing as trying to bring more black
people into aviation, and her calling out this falsity which
still happens today, of pandering but not actually instituting well
thought out and actually things that productively and significantly changed

(34:54):
conditions for black people. So things that looked really shiny
on the outside that, by Willa's estimation, wasn't good enough.
Now there's of course a longer and deeper argument amongst
black people about whether integration or continuing segregation segregated units

(35:15):
was well.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Lots of different layers to it, whether.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
Segregated units was good enough, whether integration was as a
whole great better for black people in terms of what
black people would have gotten out of it, Lots of
other layers of arguments and debates along those lines, But
in terms of Willa, she was not interested in segregated units.

(35:41):
So Willa also said that the Republican Party was quote
the party of the people, the party of redemption, the
party of law and order, in the party of justice
and equality. So Willa was definitely thinking from a partisan
way this time, thinking of, Okay, this is a party
that's you know, this is these are the ideological lines

(36:01):
that I want to be aligned with. So the war
ended in nineteen forty five, and by the end of
the war, the Coffee School had trained more than fifteen
hundred black students, including some that went to the ninety
ninth Pursuit Squadron, which was an all black unit that
went to North Africa. But Cornelius and Willa they were

(36:22):
against desegregated units and they wanted integrated once and Willa said,
there is not segregation in the CAAA programs, and there
have been no race riots or violence because of this fact.
So she was saying, look at these examples of situations
in which there was integration and there weren't just segregated units,
and everything's going just fine. Like the fear that you

(36:43):
might have of there being race riots or something some
extreme hostility because of integration isn't actually one that's based
on anything legitimate, is what she was saying. The Coffee
School closed once the war ended, the government contracts were done,
and Willa became involved even more heavily in politics. In

(37:06):
nineteen forty six, she became the first black woman to
run for a congressional.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Seat in Chicago's first district.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
She ran as a Republican and lost in the primary election,
and Willa and Cornelius divorced in nineteen forty seven, and
she ran for Congress in nineteen forty eight in nineteen
fifty as well, but she lost, and I guess that
kind of got out. She was like, Okay, the people
have spoken to what it seemed like. She tapped out

(37:34):
of politics, and in nineteen fifty five, in her third marriage,
she married Reverend J. H. Chapel or Chappelle, I'm not
sure how you pronounce it, who was a minister of
the Westside Community Church in Chicago, and she was active
in the church. She later discovered herself during this time
as being a church woman, and in nineteen sixty two

(37:56):
she started teaching in schools again. She taught typing, hand
and secretarial classes, so back to the beginning, kind of
like a full circle because she was teaching typing and
writing and secretarial classes earlier too. But in nineteen seventy
one she retired from teaching, and the Federal Aviation Administration

(38:17):
appointed her to its Women's Advisory Board. Three years later,
she resigned from the board and her husband died in
nineteen eighty four, and Willa herself died on July eighteenth,
nineteen ninety two, from complications of a stroke. At the
time of her death, she was eighty six years old,
and she was buried in Lincoln Cemetery in Chicago. So

(38:39):
posthumously she was recognized. Two thousand and three, she was
inducted into the Aviation Museum of Kentucky's Hall of Fame.
In twenty sixteen, she was inducted into the Illinois Aviation
Hall of Fame, and in twenty twenty two she was
inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.
So her legacy has been acknowledged in those very visible ways.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
And that's her story in a nutshell. It's quite the
story to wrangle. This is like she just did so
much and she was such an advocate for other people,

(39:24):
and she was very she was involved in teaching in
a lot of ways. And this kind of makes me regret,
Like when I was in college, you just want to
get stuff done. I should have talked to my teachers more.
Who knows what they did, Like this is wild, that's true. Yeah,
if I was to like taking like a penmanship class,
which is important, and I didn't never thought about the
teacher but you ask her about her life and she's like, well,

(39:46):
I ran her office, I was a pilot, I did
like all of these different things. It's just quite the
story she has.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, And I think I've read that when she was
appointed to the Women's Advisory Board, she was listed as
a school teacher, which she would have been most recently,
but they didn't mention anything about her aviation history. And
I'm not sure if that's because they were like, oh,
she's an a Women's Advisory Board of the FAA, like
they know she had something to do with aviation. But

(40:18):
I also wonder if she was like, well, I haven't.
This is what I'm doing, this is what I've been
doing most recently, this is who I am now. And
it's not like that's any less than all of the
aviation that I did. And clearly I'm here on the
board for a reason. I'm just curious as to if
that was something that was self chosen, or if that
was a slight maybe, or if it wasn't a slight

(40:41):
and that was just somebody else who communicated it that way.
But it is interesting to think about the reasons behind that.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
Yeah, especially because it was such a big part of
her life for so long. Yeah, I love that Bessy
Coleman showed up here as well, because we did talk
about we've done an episode on her. Right brain is
not We've done so much stuff.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
I know.

Speaker 4 (41:05):
I know.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Time I'm like convinced I've never talked about something, and
I find out a good episode on it in another half,
it turns.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Out we haven't ep.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yeah, So I was like, I think we've done Bessie
cole Man. We definitely talked about pilots before, Yes, we.

Speaker 4 (41:24):
Have, right, Yeah, I'm pretty sure we talked about it.
We did because like it's she's one of those that
when you don't have actual teachings and you come from
a very white background, you might not not have known
about her until college or after the fact when you
had to do your own research. Like definitely one of
those conversations.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
And so so if anybody wants to go and listen
to more about Bessie Coleman than y'a can go back
and listen. So by my estimation, by my list, it
was the fifteenth episode that we did female first. I
went back and look because I'm like, didn't we because
we've done a lot of episodes.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
We talked about it.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
I just don't know where that would have been years ago,
probably too, probably.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Through three years ago. Maybe was it before me? So
what you said? Any No, I thought it would have
been before the pandemic. Yeah, since the fiftieth we did
in office. Yes, well, that makes me feel better. You
remember correctly. I was convinced because I remember how she died,
and we had that conversation in that episode about flights

(42:35):
and would you fly? I remember it the pilot. I
remember that conversation. Yes, but this was I'm so glad,
as always you brought this story to us because I
had not heard everything about Willi Brown and what she
had done. And so it is such a great story,

(42:56):
and I hope more people hear it. And we always
appreciate you giving us all these details and doing all
of that work. No problem. I'm happy to share these
stories truly. Yes, well, we are always happy to have you.
Where can the good listeners find you?

Speaker 3 (43:13):
So y'all can find me online? Y'all can just go
to my website, which is Eves Jeffcote dot com.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Eves is spelled Yves. My last name is Jeff j
Eff cot Coat.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
Just like the Thing you Wear dot com, so you
can go there and you can get to a lot
of other places From there, you can join my newsletter.
If you go to my contact page, you'll find a
contact box. If you scroll down, you'll get to the newsletter.
You can also just go to Instagram and you can
find me there at not Apologizing And if you're a
social media person then that will be basically the only

(43:48):
way you can find me directly on social media. And
you can also find me on the podcast on Theme,
which is a podcast about black storytelling. And you can
also go to listen to all the other episodes of
Female First that we've done here on stuff Mom Never
Told You.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yes, Yes, the many episodes we have done. And Eves
makes great content, as hopefully you all know if you
listen to this, So go check u'se out in all
of the places and listeners. If you would like to
contact us, you can you can email us at stuff Medium,
mom Stuff at a heeartmedia dot com. You can find
us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts, or Instagram and

(44:28):
to talk at Stuff I Never Told You. You have
a tape of bookstore and a book you can get
wherever you get your books. Thanks as always, to our
super producer Christenior executive producer My and your contributor Joey,
thank you and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I
Never told you is protection by Heart Radio. For more
podcasts in my heart Radio, you can check out the
heart Radio Apple podcast wherever you listen to your favorite
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