Willa Brown: The Pilot Who Helped Train the Tuskegee Airmen

November 10, 2026

How Willa Brown Opened the Door to Aviation for Black Americans

In 1936, Willa Brown walked into the Chicago Defender newsroom wearing white jodhpurs, a flying jacket and boots. She wanted the newspaper to cover an air show featuring Black pilots at Chicago's Harlem Airport.

City editor Enoch Waters agreed to come along. Around 200 to 300 people turned up, and Brown offered to take him flying in a small Piper Cub.

Waters later recalled feeling rather nervous as she put the aircraft through figure eights, stalls and other manoeuvres. He wasn't convinced she knew what she was doing until they landed safely.

The newspaper covered the event, and Waters became a longtime supporter of Black aviation. Brown had got exactly what she'd come for, although her passenger might have appreciated a slightly quieter flight.

That was Willa Brown. She loved flying and knew how to get people's attention, but she wanted more than a place in the cockpit for herself.

At a time when many American flight schools refused to train Black students, Brown helped build opportunities for people who wanted to fly. She became a pilot, mechanic, instructor and aviation organiser, eventually helping prepare around 200 future Tuskegee Airmen.

She also became an officer in the Civil Air Patrol during World War II. Yet when she applied to fly military aircraft with the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), she was rejected because she was Black.

From the Classroom to the Cockpit

Willa Beatrice Brown was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, on January 22, 1906, and grew up in Indiana. She earned a college degree, became a schoolteacher and later moved to Chicago, where she worked as a social worker.

Chicago had a growing community of Black aviators, and Brown began taking flying lessons in 1934. Among her instructors were John Robinson and Cornelius Coffey, two experienced pilots who were helping more Black Americans get into aviation.

Finding somewhere to learn wasn't straightforward. Many flight schools refused Black students, while segregation was still part of everyday life at airports.

Brown trained at Harlem Airport, where Black and white pilots could share the same runways but had separate hangars.

She also wanted to understand how aircraft worked. Alongside her flying lessons, she studied mechanics at Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical University and earned a master mechanic's certificate in 1935. She also completed a master's degree in business administration at Northwestern University.

In 1938, Brown became the first Black woman to earn a private pilot's licence in the United States. She followed that with a limited commercial pilot's licence in 1939.

She wasn't the first Black woman in the world to become a licensed pilot. Bessie Coleman had earned her licence in France back in 1921, after American flight schools refused to train her.

Coleman's career helped inspire Brown and other Black aviators who followed. Brown even took part in memorial flights honouring her.

But Brown wasn't satisfied with earning her own qualifications. She'd experienced how difficult it was to get into aviation, and she wanted to make that path easier for the people coming after her.

The Flying School That Helped Build the Tuskegee Airmen

In 1938, Cornelius Coffey established the Coffey School of Aeronautics at Harlem Airport, with Brown helping to run it. The two later married, and Brown eventually became the school's director.

The school trained pilots and aircraft mechanics, giving Black Americans access to skills and qualifications that were difficult to obtain elsewhere.

Brown's work went well beyond flying lessons. She helped organise training, handled the business side of the school and ran a small lunch counter at the airfield.

Running a flying school wasn't cheap or easy. Aircraft needed maintaining, students needed instructors, and the school needed enough money to keep operating. For students who couldn't afford their training, Brown and Coffey sometimes helped cover the costs.

There was plenty of work on the ground before anyone could get into the air.

Brown also knew that earning a pilot's licence wouldn't mean much if Black Americans were still being denied the chance to use it.

She helped establish the National Airmen's Association of America in 1937, joining other aviators in campaigning for better training opportunities and access to military aviation.

As World War II approached, the United States began preparing more civilian pilots. Brown and her colleagues pushed for Black flying schools to be included in the federally funded Civilian Pilot Training Program.

In January 1940, the Coffey School was authorised to take part.

The school went on to help prepare approximately 200 future Tuskegee Airmen, including men who later entered military pilot training and became instructors.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the Black military aviators and support personnel who served during World War II. Their military flying programme was based in Tuskegee, Alabama, but some of its future pilots had already gained experience at civilian schools like Coffey's in Chicago.

Brown wasn't herself a Tuskegee Airman, and her school wasn't where those pilots completed their military training. Her role was helping them gain the skills and experience to get there.

The Tuskegee Airmen rightly earned recognition for what they achieved during the war. Brown and the instructors working behind the scenes helped give many of them the chance to prove themselves.

Why Willa Brown Was Rejected by the WASP

In 1942, Brown and Coffey helped organise Squadron 613 of the Civil Air Patrol. Brown was commissioned as a lieutenant, becoming the organisation's first Black officer.

The Civil Air Patrol used civilian pilots and aircraft to support the war effort. Its work included coastal patrols, transporting supplies and other duties that helped free military pilots for combat.

By then, Brown had years of experience as a pilot, mechanic, instructor and aviation organiser. She had also helped train men who would go on to serve in military aviation.

When the Women Airforce Service Pilots programme, known as the WASP, was established in 1943, she applied to join.

The WASP recruited women to fly military aircraft on non-combat duties. They delivered aircraft between factories and military bases, tested planes and towed targets for gunnery training.

It was demanding work, and Brown had good reason to believe her experience would count.

Instead, her application was rejected because she was Black.

Other qualified Black women pilots, including Janet Harmon Bragg, were also turned away. No Black women were accepted into the wartime WASP programme.

Brown continued contributing through the Civil Air Patrol, but that was a separate organisation. She never served as a WASP pilot.

She'd helped prepare future military pilots, yet when she wanted the chance to fly military aircraft herself, the programme wouldn't accept her.

It wasn't her flying ability that stood in the way. She'd already spent years proving that.

She Took the Fight Beyond the Airfield

Brown knew that training pilots was only part of the problem. Black Americans could earn their qualifications and still find themselves shut out of jobs, military positions and further training.

She worked with other aviators to challenge those restrictions, promote Black flying schools and pressure officials in Washington to change the rules.

That meant letters, meetings, campaigns and plenty of persistence.

In December 1941, Brown wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt about her work in aviation and the difficulties she was facing.

She acknowledged that she'd made progress, but admitted some of the obstacles had been "far too great for me to master."

It's a revealing admission from someone who had already achieved so much. Brown was confident in her abilities, but she understood that some barriers were bigger than any one person could overcome.

She continued looking for ways forward.

In February 1943, she wrote to Truman Gibson, a civilian adviser to the Secretary of War, proposing that the Coffey School help train more Black military pilots.

She had instructors, facilities and years of experience available. She wanted the military to make better use of them.

Her campaigning continued after the war. In 1946, Brown became the first Black woman to run for Congress, although she wasn't elected. She ran again in 1948 and 1950, without success.

In 1948, President Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the US armed forces. It was a major change, and one Brown and many other Black aviators had spent years pushing towards.

Brown continued working in education, teaching business and aviation-related subjects in schools until her retirement in 1971.

The following year, she became the first Black woman appointed to the Federal Aviation Administration's Women's Advisory Board.

Nearly four decades after taking her first flying lessons, she was still involved in making aviation more accessible.

She Never Lost Her Love of Flying

With all the campaigning, teaching and work running a school, it's worth remembering that Brown genuinely enjoyed being in an aircraft.

During World War II, artist Charles Alston created an illustration celebrating her work as a pilot and instructor. It described her as a maker of pilots and mentioned her fondness for aerobatics, including loops, rolls and wingovers.

The woman who spent years arguing with government officials and keeping a flying school running also enjoyed putting an aircraft through its paces. She knew the freedom that came with flying and wanted other people to experience it too.

Brown remained connected to aviation and education long after the war. She died on July 18, 1992, aged 86.

By then, the aviation world had changed enormously from the days when she'd first trained at Harlem Airport.

Black pilots had served in combat, the military had been desegregated, and opportunities that once seemed out of reach had opened to more people.

Those changes came through years of work by many pilots, instructors and campaigners. Brown was among the people who kept pushing, even when progress was painfully slow.

What Willa Brown Made Possible

The Tuskegee Airmen earned their place in history through what they achieved in the air. But before those wartime missions came the people fighting to get Black pilots into flying schools in the first place. Willa Brown was one of them.

She helped keep the Coffey School running, trained future pilots and spent years pushing officials to take Black aviation seriously. She also knew how to get someone's attention.

In 1936, she took newspaper editor Enoch Waters flying in a Piper Cub, put him through a few nerve-racking manoeuvres and brought him safely back to the ground. He went on to support Black aviation for years.

Brown knew there was no shortage of Black Americans capable of flying. The problem was getting them through the door. She spent much of her life trying to change that, and helped others achieve things she'd been denied herself.

There's more history, unusual lives and original interviews to explore in Wyld Peak's Adventurers Who Inspire, if you enjoy getting to know the people behind the familiar names.