MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Have you ever wanted to do something that everybody around you, maybe even you, thought was impossible, even crazy? More than a hundred years ago, Bessie Coleman, a daughter of former slaves, decided she wanted to fly. And in 1921, she became the first African American woman to earn a pilot's license. She barnstormed all over the country, performing death-defying stunts in the air.
Decades later, Carole Hopson, then a corporate executive, learned of Bessie Coleman and it awakened her own dream. Hopson became a flight instructor, then a first officer and then, at the age of 54, a captain on the Boeing 737 for United Airlines. Hopson wants more people who have dreams of a career in the skies, especially Black women like her and Bessie Coleman, to follow those dreams, so she's written a novel inspired by Coleman's life. It's called "A Pair Of Wings." And Carole Hopson is with us now to tell us more about it.
Welcome, Captain Hopson. Thank you so much for joining us.
CAROLE HOPSON: Good morning and thank you for that warm welcome. And, wow, you can sum something up pretty doggone good.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Well, thanks. Do you remember when you first thought you wanted to become a pilot?
HOPSON: You know, as early as I can remember being able to spot an airplane in the sky, I wanted to fly one. It just seemed like such a ridiculous notion, though. I was a little girl coming up in the '70s and, you know, Black, female, eyeglasses. It just seemed like a fish out of water. And it took such a long time, but I never really lost the passion or the desire to want to fly.
MARTIN: And you already had had a successful career. I mean, you started as a journalist. You have a master's in journalism. You later worked as a corporate executive. So how do you go from being a corporate executive to flying planes for United?
HOPSON: (Laughter).
MARTIN: Like, how does that work?
HOPSON: Eclectic, isn't it? So I love to say that, you know, you don't eat an apple the whole thing at once. You eat it one bite at a time. And small steps lead to big journeys. I had always, always, always wanted to fly. I met my husband. He says, you know, your background is super eclectic, right? And I said, well, if you laugh at me, that's it - I'll never see you again. And I said I wanted to fly an airplane. Couple of weeks later, he made me dinner and gave me gift certificates, and the gift certificates were to go fly an airplane.
MARTIN: Oh, wow, he sounds like a keeper.
HOPSON: He's a keeper, as they say in New York.
MARTIN: (Laughter) So, you know, you said in the book in the afterword that you didn't - even though you'd gone to some very fine schools, you didn't learn about Bessie Coleman until you were in your 30s.
HOPSON: That's right.
MARTIN: But what was it about her story that kind of pushed you to take that next step?
HOPSON: I was 34 at the time when I went to a Women in Aviation convention. And I met a woman, Captain Jenny Beatty at American Airlines, and she gave me a gift at the end of the three-day convention. And it was a coffee mug with Bessie Coleman's picture on the front and 50 words I like to say that changed my life on the back. And once I saw that and I knew that she had done this a hundred years ago, oh, heck, I could do it. And it just meant I would find out how to.
MARTIN: Talk about her story. Like, she was a huge star in her era. And I do want to point out that she had to leave the country in order to get...
HOPSON: That's right.
MARTIN: Because no one in the United States would train her. But it is a really incredible story.
HOPSON: What was remarkable to me about Bessie Coleman is that she was born the daughter of a slave. And her mother had been born in Texas, so that meant that they got two more years. And so Bessie Coleman is 11 years old when the Wright brothers make their first flight on December 17, 1903. I can't imagine what that must've been like for her. Social media of the day were newspapers. And so she leaves the state of Texas. She winds up in Chicago - very intentional. She goes to Chicago. She saves her money. She wants to fly.
She meets two men. One became her lover, one became her mentor. One was the first Black banker in Chicago and the first publisher. And the publisher says to her, you know, I've written away to people, flight schools on the East Coast and the West Coast, most liberal parts of our country. And no one's willing to teach a Black woman to fly, so you might have to go to France. She gets on an ocean liner and goes over to France, only to arrive at a flight school where women had just died in flight training. And so she wagers it all, goes to the most famous flight school in France, learns how to fly, comes back to the U.S. and she can't get a job.
MARTIN: Wow, that's just breathtaking to even think of. I mean, even if you've heard of Bessie Coleman - you know, like, you've got the Black History Month poster or calendar, right?
HOPSON: (Laughter).
MARTIN: And you've got all the pictures on it. It's still kind of incredible to think of. You know, but I have to say, you start the novel with a pretty depressing episode in Bessie's life, which is when she almost died in a plane crash in 1923.
HOPSON: That's right.
MARTIN: And, I mean, it's interesting because you describe, like - and I can see - now this is where I see your pilot training, when you talk about how she got ready for the flight, the walk around, how she prepared the plane, you know, what it felt like and all of that. But why did you start with when she crashed?
HOPSON: So I start with that because I think in pictures. I think like a movie. So we started with this amazing incident which really happens, which is this crash in 1923. And so her comeback from that is even more amazing and miraculous than even the beginning of her journey. And so when it starts with that accident, you get a chance to - (whooshing) - flip back and see who she was.
MARTIN: I see. OK. All right, I get it, but it is kind of a bummer. I mean, OK.
HOPSON: (Laughter).
MARTIN: OK, what about you? Do people do a double take when they get on the plane and realize you're the captain?
HOPSON: All day long (laughter). And I also do something that I think is very important. Almost every flight, I make it my business to go out in front of the customers. I take the flight attendant's microphone, and I speak into it. And I address each one of our customers. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome aboard. My name is Carole Hopson, and this is your captain speaking (laughter). Everybody puts down their iPad, their earbuds, their phones, their books, their Kindles, their everything.
MARTIN: And they do a double take.
HOPSON: They do a double take.
MARTIN: Carole Hopson is the author of "A Pair Of Wings." She is also a captain for United Airlines flying Boeing 737s. Captain Hopson, Carole Hopson, thank you so much for joining us.
HOPSON: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COME FLY WITH ME")
FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) Come fly with me. Let's fly, let's fly away. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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