Darn it. I knew it, Tony thought. I should have planned a good argument —
“You can stand over there with all the other niggers and get a view of the whole sky,” the man said blandly. “Nobody’s charging admission. It’s a free country.”
Tony’s face grew hot at the hated word. What infuriated her most of all was the casual way people used it: Outta the way, nigger; I’m in a hurry. Hey, nigger, which way to the train station? Tony caught her breath, clenched her toes in her worn oxford school shoes, and thought hard. No point in bringing up the questions her senior high Physics Club had put together about the flight characteristics of Bessie Coleman’s new aircraft — or Bessie Coleman’s commitment to opening an aviation school for young Negroes of both sexes. And absolutely no point in mentioning Tony’s own interest in the Dutch aircraft designer she knew Bessie had met in Europe.
Tony swallowed frustration and ambition and tried to play the part of a winning and innocent schoolgirl. Her cheeks were still aflame. She felt like she was being dishonest: hiding her interest in science, which always made men suspicious no matter what color they were, and trying to be pleasant to someone who’d insulted her without even realizing it. She tried a simpler tactic.
“I was just hoping to get Bessie Coleman’s autograph when she gets here.” It was true enough she’d like to have that autograph, and maybe if she could speak to Miss Coleman herself, things would turn around.
“You can do that tomorrow.” The policeman was growing impatient. “The air display tomorrow’s gonna be for a mixed audience — pay to get in like everyone else. I’ll be there myself.”
“I’m looking forward to that!” Tony knew the flying show would be for a mixed audience — Bessie Coleman had fought for that privilege and won it. The whole Physics Club, and probably the rest of the school, were coming to watch. Thinking of Bessie’s persistence, Tony made one last attempt to win over the policeman.
“Look!” Tony had two schoolbooks, a couple of ham-filled biscuits wrapped in paper for her dinner break, and her cardboard notebook with her newspaper clippings about Bessie Coleman and the questions for the Physics Club tied together with a piece of twine. Tony slid the notebook free; as luck would have it, it fell open to a photograph of Bessie posing beneath the wings of an aircraft with a white cameraman holding a huge Pathé moving-picture camera. The aviatrix and the filmmaker were both grinning conspiratorially, and the caption read, “Snapped in Berlin, Germany.”
“Look,” Tony repeated. “She did a tour through Europe doing test flights for aircraft designers. She flew over the kaiser’s palace! She’s not just a circus performer —”
The policeman bent over the page. The picture held him for a moment. Then he let out a grudging sigh.
“Okay, you go wait across the road with the other niggers and when she gets here you can come and ask for her autograph. But if any of those little kids follow you over here, I’m gonna chase you all away. You got that?”
It was a small victory made sour by the relentless casual insult. Stung and triumphant, Tony closed the notebook carefully. “Yes, sir,” she mumbled, lowering her eyes.
“Get going, girl,” the policeman said, jerking his head in the direction of the fence on the other side of the road.
Tony went, clutching the notebook under one arm and her schoolbooks under the other. It was unbelievable how polite you had to be when somebody cut you so low, so carelessly, that you wanted to spit at him. Would he call Bessie Coleman a nigger? He probably would. Some things never change.
Knowing Bessie Coleman was a southern girl herself gave Tony a little comfort. She knew Miss Coleman’s story, and getting people to take her seriously must have been even harder than it was for Tony. Half a generation older than Tony, Bessie Coleman had been born and raised in Texan cotton fields. Already Tony had more schooling than Miss Coleman, who’d completed eighth grade and one term of college. But even as a schoolgirl, Brave Bess had been interested in flight — she’d written an essay about the Wright brothers and their history-making flying machine.
She didn’t complete college because she ran out of money. She went home and earned her living doing people’s laundry, until the dead-end pointlessness of the work drove her north to Chicago. There she pestered and pestered people to teach her to fly. When no one would — because she was a woman or because she was black or both — she managed to get herself sponsored by a local newspaper, went to France, and learned to fly there.
And now she was trying to raise money to establish a flying school for Negro boys and girls.