When Bessie Coleman was a child, she wanted to be in school -- not in
the cotton fields of Texas, helping her family earn money. She wanted to
be somebody significant in the world. So Bessie did everything she could
to learn under the most challenging of circumstances. At the end of
every day in the fields she checked the foreman's numbers -- made sure
his math was correct. And this was just the beginning of a life of hard
work and dedication that really paid off: Bessie became the first
African-American to earn a pilot's license. She was somebody.