Public school teacher Willa Brown Chappell also taught Tuskegee Airmen to fly airplanes. Photo Credit: Aviation Heritage Park

Many exceptional teachers can boast achievements outside of their classroom. One of these is Willa Brown Chappell, the first African American woman licensed to fly in the United States.

Willa was born on Jan. 22, 1906, in Glasgow, Kentucky. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Education from Indiana State Teachers College in 1927. She also completed the requirements for an MBA from Northwestern University in 1937. Following her college graduation, Willa was employed first as a high school teacher at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana, and later as a social worker in Chicago.

Willa was always seeking challenges and adventures in her life, especially if they could be found outside the limited career fields normally open to African American women at that time. She decided to learn to fly airplanes. She studied with Cornelius R. Coffey, a certified flight instructor and expert aviation mechanic at a racially segregated airport in Chicago. Willa earned her private pilot’s license in 1938. Later, Willa and Cornelius married and founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics at Harlem Airport in Chicago, where together they trained Black pilots and aviation mechanics. Willa conducted the classroom instruction and Cornelius conducted the in-flight practice.

In 1939, Willa, Cornelius, and their friend Enoch P. Waters founded the National Airmen’s Association of America. Their goal was to secure admission for Black aviation cadets into the US military. As the organization’s national secretary and the president of the Chicago branch, Willa became an activist for racial equality. She persistently lobbied the US Government for integration of Black pilots into the segregated Army Air Corps and the federal Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), a system established by the Civil Aeronautics Authority just before the outbreak of World War II. The CPTP’s purpose was to provide  civilian pilots for service during national emergencies. Willa was given the rank of an officer in this first integrated unit.

In 1948, when Congress finally voted to allow African Americans to participate in civilian flight training programs, the Coffey School of Aeronautics was one of the few private aviation schools selected to provide training. Later, her flight school was selected by the US Army to provide Black trainees for the Air Corps pilot training program at the Tuskegee Institute. Willa was instrumental in training more than 200 students who went on to become Tuskegee pilots. Eventually, Willa Brown became the coordinator of war-training service for the Civil Aeronautics Authority and a member of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Women’s Advisory Board. 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.

This remarkable educator and pioneer aviatrix passed away on July 18, 1992. In 2010, Willa was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award by the Indiana State University Alumni Association. She was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame in her native Kentucky in 2003.

To find out more about this remarkable Chalkboard Champion, you can read a chapter about her in my book, Chalkboard Heroes, which is available on amazon.com and the website for Barnes and Noble.