Bessie Coleman

In 1892, the year Bessie Coleman was born in the town of Atlanta, Texas, lynchings and other violent forms of racism were common against African-Americans. Yet Coleman didn’t let bigotry stop her. She grew up to become the first African-American woman to get a pilot’s license, in an era when flight was a fairly new field.

The list of Coleman’s impressive achievements doesn’t end there. While her mother was black, her father was three-quarters Cherokee, making Coleman the first Native American woman to hold a pilot’s license. She was also the first African-American person to earn a license to fly internationally. And she did all of this during a very short life.