Ignoring an old friend’s foreboding premonition, Bessie Coleman took her stunt plane for a test spin prior to a Florida air show on Apr. 30, 1926. But the safety-conscious barnstormer somehow forgot to pack a parachute.
“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 t…
