African-Americans were integrated into the U.S. military in 1948, and a Kentucky-born woman helped to make that happen.

Willa Brown Chappell was the first Black woman to get a pilot’s license in the United States, and she trained over 200 Black pilots in a test program in World War II that led to the creation of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black aviators in the U.S. armed forces.

Born Willa Beatrice Brown in 1906 in Glasgow, Kentucky, she was the daughter of a preacher. The family moved to Indianapolis when she was 6 years old, then to Terre Haute, Indiana. Willa Brown graduated from Indiana State Teachers College in 1927. She worked as a teacher in Gary, Indiana, and in Chicago.

Chicago and Los Angeles were centers of black aviation in the 1930s. Willa Brown’s aviation career began in 1934 when she began flight lessons at Chicago’s Aeronautical University.