Career
She was the first African-American woman to earn her pilot"s license in the United States, the first African-American woman to run for the United States Congress, the first African-American officer in the United States Civil Air Patrol, and the first woman in the United States to have both a pilot"s license and a mechanic"s license. A lifelong advocate for gender and racial equality in flight and in the military, Brown not only lobbied the United States. government to integrate the United States. Army Air Corporation and include African Americans in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), but also co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, which was the first private flight training academy in the United States owned and operated by African Americans. She trained hundreds of pilots, several of whom would go on to become Tuskegee Airmen.
Well after the Coffey School closed in 1945, Brown remained politically and socially active in Chicago.
Willa Brown Chappell was born in Glasgow, Kentucky. In 1927 she graduated from Indiana State Teachers College with a degree in business.
She received an Master of Business Administration from Northwestern University in 1937. As a young high school teacher in Gary, Indiana, and later as a social worker in Chicago, Willa Brown felt that her talents were not being used to their greatest use.
She sought greater challenges and adventures in life, especially if they could be found outside the limited career fields normally open to African Americans.
She decided to learn to fly, studying with Cornelius R. Coffey, a certified flight instructor and expert aviation mechanic at one of Chicago"s racially segregated airports. In 1938, she became the first African American woman who earned a private pilot"s license in the United States. (Fellow Chicagoan and aviator Bessie Coleman had to go to France for her license in 1921).
Together with Cornelius Coffey and Enoch P. Waters, Willa Brown helped form the National Airmen"s Association of America in 1939, whose main goal was to get black aviation cadets into the United States military.
As the organization"s national secretary and the president of the Chicago branch, Brown became an activist for racial equality. She continually lobbied the government for integration of black pilots into the segregated Army Air Corps and the federal Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), the system established by the Civil Aeronautics Authority to provide a pool of civilian pilots for use during national emergencies.
Subsequently, when Congress finally voted to allow separate-but-equal participation of blacks in civilian flight training programs, the Coffey School of Aeronautics was chosen for participation in the CPTP. Brown became the coordinator for the CPTP in Chicago. Later, her flight school was also selected by the United States. Army to provide black trainees for the Air Corps pilot training program at the Tuskegee Institute.
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.