"Jill Brown" (1950)

when she was seventeen years old.For her eighteenth birthday,she receive a Cherokee 180 Pilot,who made aviation history when she became the first African American woman to fly for a major passenger airline in the United States,the first to be admitted to the U.S. Navy's flight school, and the first in U.S.Navy's flight school, and the first in U.S. military history to qualify as a pilot. Jill was born in Millervillersville, Maryland.Her family had taken up aviation as a hobby, and she learned to fly small planes with her parents-Gilbert Brown,who was a former U.S. Air Force instrument mechanic and also owned a building construction business, and Elaine Brown, and art resource teacher in the Baltimore public schools-when she was seventeen years old. For her eighteenth birthday,she receive a Cherokee 180D airplane.In 1967 Jill flew her first solo flight in a Piper J-3 Cub.She had always dreamed of becoming a commercial pilot,but her advised her otherwise, and on her mother's advice, she majored in home economics at the University of Maryland.After graduation, in 1973,she took a teaching job at Oakmount Regional High School outside Boston Massachusetts, and kept in touch with a navy recruiter,as the dream of flying still weighed heavily on her mind.Jill soon realized that it would take more than a degree  in home economics to fulfill an urge to be somebody.Of the 49,694 airplane pilots in the nation in 1970, only 162 were black, and only five of these were women. In 1974 the U.S. Naval Air Force began accepting women for officer's training,and Jill was finally called to try out for naval officer's training school in Newport Rhode Island. She knew that the military would provide extensive pilot training, so she signed up, but she soon discovered that the military was not yet ready for minorities. According to Jill, she and the navy were not compatible, and she was honorably discharged,but because the military experience had left a sour taste in her mouth, Jill decided that she would have to find a way to fund her future pilot training herself.She returned to a teaching post in Baltimore,instructing inner-city youngsters in home economics through the spring of 1976. During a July 1978 interview with Ebony magazine, she noted that the magazine had played an important part in her success.Jill said that while reading the April 1976 issue of Ebony,she came across a story on Wheeler Airlines in Raleigh, North Carolina.The story in the magazine described how Captain Warren H.Wheeler, a pilot for Piedmont Airlines, was operating the nation's first scheduled, black-owned and-operated airline during his off-duty hours.Jill wrote to Captain Wheeler and asked for a job-she even offered to work without pay-then followed up with a telephone call.Warren called her back and invited Jill her down to take a check ride with him on a B-737 jet so that they could talk.Jill said that she knew Warren didn't need a co-pilot,but he wanted to help her, because he knew that she wanted to fly for a major airline.Jill started out working for him as a reservation's and was paid a three hundred-dollar-a month salary to write tickets, but she flew for free when there was space available.Later she was made resident co-pilot,and she flew extra time in order to earn more hours in the air.While doing this job she logged 1,200 flying hours,-the requirement for most major airlines at the time. In May 1978 she became a pilot, flying a Beechcraft 99 for Warren.Jill soon realized,that she was being assigned to more publicity shots as the first African American female airline pilot than she was to planes,so she resigned and on October 2 1978 took a job in Detroit flying cargo for Zantop International Airlines.In an earlier issue of Ebony, Jill had read about Evans McKay,an African American who was a vice president of Texas International was liberal enough to hire a black vice president,they would be liberal enough to hire a black woman pilot, and they were.When she left Wheeler Airlines, Jill had been as well qualified as any of the other applicants seeking to enroll in flight training programs with major airlines, so she began sending out applications.Jill received an immediate response from Texas International Airlines and was invited for an interview, and she subsequently enrolled in the company's training program.At that time,Jill was one of six women in a class of thirty eight to graduate as pilots from the Texas International Airlines training program, and her status caught the eyes of the national media. In 1978,still with Texas International,she also became the first African American woman to serve as captain on a major commercial airline.When asked about her tenacity during an Ebony magazine interview in 1978, Jill responded:"Somebody once said that to be a success you must find a need, then fill that need. I felt women would someday have a chance in aviation, and i was determined to be ready for it."