Black History Month - Page 5

By Faith Karimi, CNN Frederick McKinley Jones was orphaned by age 8 and raised by a Catholic priest before he dropped out of high school. That didn’t stop him from pursuing his calling as an inventor whose work changed the world. A curious youth with a passion for tinkering with machines and mechanical devices, he worked as an auto mechanic and taught himself electronics. After serving in World War I, he returned to his Minnesota town and built a transmitter for its new radio station. This caught the attention of a businessman, Joseph Numero, who offered Jones a job developing

By Leah Asmelash, CNN Born to sharecroppers in a small Texas town, Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman became interested in flying while living in Chicago, where stories about the exploits of World War I pilots piqued her interest. But flight schools in the US wouldn’t let her in because of her race and gender. Undeterred, Coleman learned French, moved to Paris and enrolled in a prestigious aviation school, where in 1921 she became the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license. Back in the US, Coleman began performing on the barnstorming circuit, earning cheers for her daring loops, acrobatic figure-eights and