On Apr. 23, 1926, Bessie Coleman made the last payment on her new airplane and arranged for the second-hand Jenny to be flown to Jacksonville, Florida, site of her next air show.
“Brave Bessie” was born in 1893 less than a dozen miles from the Arkansas border in the northeast Texas community of Atlanta. Her father, who was three-quarters Cherokee, returned to his reservation roots around 1900, and …