Bessie Coleman never set out to be a trailblazer, but history made her one anyway. Born in 1892 in Texas to an African American mother and a Native American father, Coleman grew up during the Jim Crow era, in a society structured to exclude her on the basis of both race and gender. Discrimination and segregation were not abstract concepts; they shaped the reality of her everyday life from an early age. In 1915, Coleman moved from Texas to Chicago, joining the Great Migration