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Azellia White, trailblazer for African American women in aviation, dies at 106
Obituaries
Azellia White, trailblazer for African American women in aviation, dies at 106
The Black Pilots of America honored Azellia White for her “pioneering spirit in forging a path to the field of aviation.” (Family photo)
By Emily Langer
November 18, 2019 at 6:25 p.m. EST
Azellia White, who said she found freedom in the skies, becoming one of the first African American women to earn a pilot’s license in the United States, died Sept. 14 at a nursing home in Sugar Land, Tex. She was 106. ... Her death was reported Nov. 18 in the London Daily Telegraph but had previously gone largely unnoted in the U.S. and international news media. A great-niece, Emeldia Bailey, confirmed her death and said she did not know the cause.
Mrs. White, the daughter of a sharecropper and a midwife, was drawn to aviation by her husband, Hulon “Pappy” White, a mechanic who served during World War II in Tuskegee, Ala., as a mechanic for the storied unit of black military pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen. ... The couple had moved from Texas to Tuskegee, where Mrs. White decided to try her hand in the cockpit, training under her husband and his colleagues. She took her maiden flights on a Taylorcraft plane that, by her telling, was a cinch to fly.
“All you had to do was get in the plane, and the pilot gets with you and tells you what he would like for you to do,” she once told an interviewer. “First thing you know, you’re flying.” She received her pilot’s license in Alabama on March 26, 1946. ... Dorothy Cochrane, a curator in the aeronautics department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, credited Mrs. White with overcoming the double barrier of perceptions, widespread at the time, that neither women nor African Americans were qualified to fly airplanes.
Mrs. White and her husband, with his service to the Tuskegee Airmen, “were there at the forefront of continuing to spread aviation throughout the African American community and prove to everyone that they were equal partners in aviation,” Cochrane said. ... Trailblazers who preceded Mrs. White included Bessie Coleman, also from Texas, who according to the National Aviation Hall of Fame became the “first civilian licensed African-American pilot in the world” when she received a pilot’s license in France in 1921. Willa Brown became the first African American woman to receive a pilot’s license in the United States, in 1938.
....
Emily Langer is a reporter on The Washington Post’s obituaries desk. She writes about extraordinary lives in national and international affairs, science and the arts, sports, culture, and beyond. She previously worked for the Outlook and Local Living sections. Follow https://twitter.com/emilylangerWP
Azellia White, trailblazer for African American women in aviation, dies at 106
The Black Pilots of America honored Azellia White for her “pioneering spirit in forging a path to the field of aviation.” (Family photo)
By Emily Langer
November 18, 2019 at 6:25 p.m. EST
Azellia White, who said she found freedom in the skies, becoming one of the first African American women to earn a pilot’s license in the United States, died Sept. 14 at a nursing home in Sugar Land, Tex. She was 106. ... Her death was reported Nov. 18 in the London Daily Telegraph but had previously gone largely unnoted in the U.S. and international news media. A great-niece, Emeldia Bailey, confirmed her death and said she did not know the cause.
Mrs. White, the daughter of a sharecropper and a midwife, was drawn to aviation by her husband, Hulon “Pappy” White, a mechanic who served during World War II in Tuskegee, Ala., as a mechanic for the storied unit of black military pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen. ... The couple had moved from Texas to Tuskegee, where Mrs. White decided to try her hand in the cockpit, training under her husband and his colleagues. She took her maiden flights on a Taylorcraft plane that, by her telling, was a cinch to fly.
“All you had to do was get in the plane, and the pilot gets with you and tells you what he would like for you to do,” she once told an interviewer. “First thing you know, you’re flying.” She received her pilot’s license in Alabama on March 26, 1946. ... Dorothy Cochrane, a curator in the aeronautics department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, credited Mrs. White with overcoming the double barrier of perceptions, widespread at the time, that neither women nor African Americans were qualified to fly airplanes.
Mrs. White and her husband, with his service to the Tuskegee Airmen, “were there at the forefront of continuing to spread aviation throughout the African American community and prove to everyone that they were equal partners in aviation,” Cochrane said. ... Trailblazers who preceded Mrs. White included Bessie Coleman, also from Texas, who according to the National Aviation Hall of Fame became the “first civilian licensed African-American pilot in the world” when she received a pilot’s license in France in 1921. Willa Brown became the first African American woman to receive a pilot’s license in the United States, in 1938.
....
Emily Langer is a reporter on The Washington Post’s obituaries desk. She writes about extraordinary lives in national and international affairs, science and the arts, sports, culture, and beyond. She previously worked for the Outlook and Local Living sections. Follow https://twitter.com/emilylangerWP