#TBT - Meet Lieutenant Willa Beatrice Brown

#TBT Throwback Thursday

Lieutenant Willa Brown (January 22, 1906 - July 18, 1992)

Trailblazer, Aviatrix, Maker of Pilots Butterfly Dreamz #TBT presentations introduce students to historic women leaders.

3 Life Highlights

Educator

Activist

Trailblazer

Lieutenant Willa Beatrice Brown co-founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first Black-owned and operated private flight training academy in the United States of its sort. She was also named federal coordinator for the Civilian Pilot Training Program, a role that led to her training over 200 future Tuskegee Airmen and instructors

Lieutenant Brown advocated tirelessly for desegregation in the military and encouraged participation in aeronautics within the African American community. She became a founding member of the National Airmen’s Association of America (NAAA), the first Black aviators’ group. She was also the first African American woman to run for congress.

Lieutenant Brown is a woman of many firsts. She was the first African American woman to hold a commercial pilot’s license in the United States, the first woman commissioned as a lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol, the first American woman to have both a mechanic’s and commercial pilot’s license, along with many other achievements.

LEARN MORE

Click on the featured titles to learn more about Lieutenant Willa Brown.

Lieutenant Willa Brown – Aviatrix, Maker of Pilots

Willa Beatrice Brown: Build the Ryan ST-A

Letter from Lieutenant Willa Beatrice Brown to Eleanor Roosevelt

Changing the Equation: Willa Beatrice Brown

reflect + discuss The national WWII museum called Brown a woman "of many firsts and of fascinating energy, will-power and strength." Do you agree? Why or why not?

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"When Willa Brown....strode into our newsroom, in 1936, she made such a stunning appearance... Unlike most first time visitors, [she] wasn't at all bewildered.

She had a confident bearing and there was an undercurrent of determination in her husky voice as she announced, not asked, that she wanted to see me."

—Enoch P. Waters