--- title: Google Doodle Celebrates Pioneering Aviator Bessie Coleman description: Coleman was the first female pilot of African-American and of Native American descent to hold a pilot's license. canonical: https://time.com/4649711/google-doodle-bessie-coleman/ author: Joseph Hincks article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-01-26T02:47:15.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T12:41:47.000Z og:title: Google Doodle Celebrates Legacy of Aviator Bessie Coleman og:description: She was the first licensed female pilot of African-American descent og:url: https://time.com/4649711/google-doodle-bessie-coleman/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6f4cea50036030ca/6988b74d0b72e364476ec682/bessie-colemans-125th-birthday-5751652702224384-hp2x-2.gif?branch=production&width=764&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 764 og:image:height: 430 og:image:alt: bessie-colemans-125th-birthday-5751652702224384-hp2x-2 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Google Doodle Celebrates Legacy of Aviator Bessie Coleman twitter:description: She was the first licensed female pilot of African-American descent twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6f4cea50036030ca/6988b74d0b72e364476ec682/bessie-colemans-125th-birthday-5751652702224384-hp2x-2.gif?branch=production&width=764&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Google Doodle Celebrates the Legacy of Pioneering Aviator Bessie Coleman > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_ by [Joseph Hincks](https://time.com/author/joseph-hincks/) ## Joseph Hincks Updated: Dec 13, 2023 12:41 PM UTCPublished: Jan 26, 2017 2:47 AM UTC  Google Doodle celebrating what would be aviator Bessie Coleman's 125th birthday. Google Doodle celebrating what would be aviator Bessie Coleman's 125th birthday. by [Joseph Hincks](https://time.com/author/joseph-hincks/) ## Joseph Hincks Updated: Dec 13, 2023 12:41 PM UTCPublished: Jan 26, 2017 2:47 AM UTC The letters spelling Google were rendered in the vapor trails of swooping, looping biplanes in a Doodle marking what would be the 125th birthday of aviator Bessie Coleman, Thursday. Coleman became the first female pilot of African-American descent, and also the first woman of Native American descent, to hold a pilot’s license. And she soared despite the many forces attempting to ground her, Google writes on a [page](https://www.google.com/doodles/bessie-colemans-125th-birthday) commemorating her life. After excelling academically at a segregated, one-room Texan school Coleman would walk four miles to reach each morning—all the while helping her sharecropping parents harvest cotton—the would-be pilot moved to Chicago and worked two jobs in order to earn enough to enroll in aviation school. But despite five years of of saving, she was barred from entering U.S. aviation schools on account of being black and a woman. Undeterred she traveled to Paris where she earned her wings in just one year. She would later return to Europe to train as a stunt pilot when U.S. schools again refused her admission. As a barnstorming airshow performer “Queen Bessie” wowed American audiences with daring, complex stunts before an equipment failure led to her death at 34. Coleman had dreamed of opening an aviation school for pilots of color before her life was cut tragically short. Instead, her indomitable spirit inspired generations: “Because of Bessie Coleman, we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream,” wrote pioneer aviator and civil rights activist Lieutenant William J. Powell. ## Transcript >> The Doodle team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on this project. >> We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, flowers and things like that. But Ira and his team are awesome. >> They were able to pull stories that they have collected over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and they're all about love in all different respects of the word. They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really fun and really sweet. >> The stories run the [ unk ]. There is a story about middle school love. >> I was in the cafeteria, just got on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. >> There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that she made a mistake. >> My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and I-- and I called the police because I thought he got lost or something happened. >> When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. >> One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just drew everyone as a dog. >> Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. >> And when you click on it, the heart will flip, the audio will play and you will also see the images that we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, now we are all going to brainstorms together because we need the creative side and we also need the technical side to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we needed a dedicated team. >> Some of our most like ambitious to those have come from engineers that are just incredibly talented and spare similar time for our projects. >> Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." >> We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what you're gonna get. 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