Willa Beatrice Brown was an aviator, teacher, lobbyist, a civil rights activist and a woman of influence.

Willa Beatrice Brown (1906-1992) as the first black female to become a licensed pilot in the United States. She was also the first black officer of the Civil Air Patrol, and the first woman in the United States to possess both a mechanic’s license and commercial license in aviation.

When Willa Brown was born in 1906, the Wright Brothers had been flying for just over three years. By the time Brown began taking flight lessons, in the mid 1930s, there were between 700 to 800 licensed female pilots. Brown was also an activist. Her contributions to the growing field of aviation led to many changes, including the integration of the United States military.

Brown was greatly influenced by Bessie “Queen Bess” Coleman, the first black female pilot. Due to racial and gender discrimination in the United States, Coleman was forced to obtain her license in France, through the Ecole d’Aviation de Freres Caudron, becoming the first black female pilot in the world. By the time Brown began to take flying lessons in 1934, several women, including Louise Thaden, Katherine Cheung (the first woman of Chinese ancestry to obtain a license), Phoebe Fairgrave Omelie, and Ann Morrow Lindbergh, had broken the gender barrier in the United States. Nevertheless Brown was the first black woman to break the racial barrier and obtain an aviator’s license in the United States.

Willa Beatrice Brown was born to Eric B. Brown, a minister, and Hallie Mae Carpenter Brown on January 26, 1906, in Glasgow, Kentucky. The family first moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, when Willa was six years old and then to Terre Haute, where she received most of her schooling. In 1923 Brown, who was a good student, graduated from Wiley High School. She then attended Indiana State Teachers College earning a bachelor’s degree in business, in 1927. Immediately upon graduation, Brown found employment as a teacher in Gary, Indiana, where she met and married her first husband, Wilbur Hardaway, an alderman; the marriage was short lived. In 1932 Brown moved to Chicago, where she found employment in the public school system.

Brown’s years in Chicago were extremely active. After teaching for two years, she returned to school, attending Northwestern University, where she received an MA in business in 1937. During her student days, she taught and worked at a variety of jobs.

She worked as a secretary to Calar Paul Page, director of the Chicago Relief Administration and as a social services worker for the Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare. She was also a clerk for the U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization and for the United States Post Office and was secretary to Horace Cayton. On top of all these activities, Brown began taking flying lessons from Fred Schumacher at the Harlem Airport in Chicago. In 1935 she earned a masters certificate in aviation mechanics from the Aeronautical University and later joined the Challenger Air Pilots Association (CAPA), one of the first black pilot organizations. The CAPA was founded by Colonel John C. Robinson, one of Brown’s flight instructors, who was one of the first black graduates of Curtiss Wright Aeronautical University. It was at the Harlem airport that Brown met Cornelius R. Coffey, an instructor and a mechanic, whom she married and with whom she shared her passion for flying.

Brown participated in various flying events such as the Memorial flight for Bessie Coleman and air shows that featured entertaining flight demonstrations. She was also a shameless self-promoter by many accounts. One such account, reprinted on the Aeronautic Learning Laboratory for Science, Technology, and Research website, involved Brown seeking news coverage for a “negro” air show in 1936. Brown, who, evidently was tall, very good looking, and often wore the typical flight apparel of the day—a jacket, jodphurs, and boots—decided the best way to get the media interested in the show was to go to the media first instead of getting them to come and see her. Hence, she visited the Chicago Defender newspaper office. She was so striking and had such a strong presence that everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at her. She announced who she was, stating that she was an “aviatrix” and described the upcoming show. Her tactic resulted in an audience between two to three hundred people. The event was also covered by Enoch P. Waters, a journalist who, in 1939, along with Brown and Coffey, co-founded the National Airmen’s Association of America (NAAA), an organization established and designed to facilitate the acceptance of blacks into the United States Air Force. Waters continued to cover most of Brown’s recruitment activities for several years, with the support of the Chicago Defender’s editor, Robert Abbott.

On June 22, 1938, Brown earned her pilot’s license. The following year, not only did she help found the NAAA, but she also began to teach flight lessons through the Work Project Administration’s adult education program. In 1940 Brown received her Civil Aeronautics Administration ground school instructor’s rating. In addition, she and Coffey founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics. Brown handled the administrative side of the business and taught many of the flight classes. In addition, she ran Brown’s Lunch Room, a small restaurant at the Harlem Airport. During the early 1940s Brown also taught aviation mechanics for the Chicago Board of Education.

Having established herself in the aviation business, Brown, who became the president of the Chicago branch of the NAAA, lobbied the U.S. government to integrate the U.S. Army Air Corp and to include blacks into the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP). In 1940 Congress authorized the admission of blacks into civilian flight training programs, and Brown was appointed coordinator for the CPTP in Chicago. She also helped organize Squadron 613-6 of the Civil Air Patrol, earning the rank of lieutenant, which made her the first black officer in the Civil Air Patrol. Within the following five years, Brown trained over two hundred pilots, some of whom became part of the 99th Pursuit Squadron at Tuskegee Institute, also known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

The Coffey School of Aeronautics closed in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. Brown, a tireless recruiter, went on to establish flight schools for children. She remained an activist, both in aviation organizations and politically, running for a U.S. Congressional seat in 1946, 1948, and in 1950. Although Brown did not win these elections, she attained another status as doing something “first”—she was the first black woman to run for Congress. In 1955 Brown married her third husband, the Reverend J.H. Chappell. During her marriage to Chappell, Brown became very active in the Westside Community Church in Chicago. She taught in the Chicago public school system until 1971, when she was sixty-five years old.

The following year, Brown was appointed to the FAA’s Women’s Advisory Board for her contributions to the aviation industry. Willa Brown did not have any children. She died of a stroke in Chicago on July 18, 1992 at the age of 86. She is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.

Brown was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award, posthumously, by the Indiana State University Alumni Association in 2010.

Compiled by Neil Gale,Ph.D. 

The History of the Tinker Family and the Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum and Gardens in Rockford, Illinois.

The Tinker Swiss Cottage is an historic house museum and gardens in Rockford, Illinois.

The Tinker Swiss Cottage in 1915. Note the sundial on the side of the driveway.

This house was built by Robert Hall Tinker between 1865-1870. The Tinker house was the first in Rockford to have electricity before the turn of the 20th century.

Most striking is the interior for its dimensions including the high ceilings, angled roof, and unique designs in many of the first floor rooms. Many elements of the house were created or inspired by the ideas of Tinker, including the walnut spiral staircase made by Robert out of a single piece of wood and the rooms with rounded corners. The museum contains all the original objects from the family from furniture, and artwork, to clothing and diaries.

The Victorian Living Room of Tinker Swiss Cottage. In 1855, Abraham Lincoln sat in the rocking chair during a visit to the nearby South Main Street mansion of Rockford industrialist John H. Manny.

   

The museum house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on December 27, 1972.

Robert Hall Tinker (1836-1924) was born to the Rev. Reuben and Mary Throop Wood Tinker on December 31, 1836 in the Sandwich Islands (modern day Hawaii). The family settled in Westfield, New York, when Robert was 13. At the age of 15, Robert left school and began working as a bank clerk. In 1856, William Knowlton was visiting his brother in Westfield, New York, met Robert Tinker, and was impressed with him. Arriving back in Rockford, Knowlton decided to write Robert and offer him a position as clerk in the Manny Reaper Co., where he was business manager for the wealthy widow, Mrs. John H. Manny. Robert accepted the offer and arrived in Rockford on August 12th, 1856.

Knowlton and Mrs. Manny were out of the city when he arrived, so he was given a room on the second story of a small dwelling standing opposite the St. Paul freight house. When Knowlton returned he gave Robert a position as a clerk, which he held before going to work as a bookkeeper for the Emerson-Talcott Company. Later, the eastern young man, who even then was familiarly known as Bob Tinker, returned to his first employer. Knowlton and Tinker formed a partnership to sell Manny Reapers. Tinker was later placed n charge of the Manny factory.

In 1862, Robert spent 9 months traveling extensively throughout Europe. As soon as his trip was over, he began to purchase land near Mrs. Manny’s mansion and started building his cottage. On April 24, 1870, Robert Tinker and Mary Manny married and began living in his cottage in the winter and in her mansion on the north side of Kent Creek in the summer.

When he was 39 years old he served as Mayor of Rockford in 1875. Robert was instrumental in helping Rockford to acquire a Public Library and an Opera House and was prominently identified with Rockford’s business and industrial growth for 68 years.

He became President of the Rockford Oatmeal Co., Rockford Steel and Bolt Co., and of C&R and Northern R.R. until it was absorbed by the C.B.&Q line. He was head of the Water Power for many years until he resigned in 1915. Robert also served on the Rockford Park Board until he retired on February 16th, 1924.

In 1901, Mary, Robert’s wife of 31 years, passed away. He then married her niece, Jessie Dorr Hurd, in 1904. It is thought of as a marriage of convenience. In 1908, Robert became a father, at the age of 71, when Jessie adopted a son, Theodore Tinker. Robert died in the Cottage on December 31, 1924, his eighty-eighth birthday. Upon Robert Tinker's death in 1924, Jessie created a partnership with the Rockford Park District, allowing her to remain in the house until her death. After her death in 1942 the Rockford Park District acquired the property and opened the house as a museum in 1943.

Mary Dorr Manny Tinker (1829-1901) was born August 29, 1829 in Hoosick Falls, New York, the youngest of three. She was reared in her grandparents’ stately mansion and received her education at the Academy in her native city. She became interested in the manufacturing of farm implements, and it was this lively interest in and attention to her family’s occupations, public and private, that attracted her future husband’s regard to her.  She maintained this interest in business through her life, and the great force of her character was intensified highly by just the culture and training she received in her early youth.

In 1852, she was married in her grandparents’ mansion to the young Reaper inventor, John H. Manny. They came to Rockford in 1853 and made their home in a small, white frame house on South Main Street. In January of 1856, John H. Manny died of tuberculosis and left Mary a widow at the age of 28. Mary was a businesswoman, staying involved with the Manny Reaper Company after John Manny’s death. She owned several parcels of land in Rockford, including the Holland House located on the north side of the creek. By 1857, Robert Tinker became her personal secretary, and on April 24, 1870 they were wed. Mary died September 4, 1901 at the age of 72.

Mary was a member of the Second Congregational Church and Women’s Missionary Society, Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Rockford’s Seminary Visiting Committee, and was a founding member of the Ladies Union Aid Society that has evolved into today’s Family Counseling Services of Northern Illinois.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Why Chicago Street Signs were changed from Black on Yellow to White on Green.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's "Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices" (MUTCD) is a constantly evolving guidebook showing cities the standard in street signage since 1935.

In the 1970s, the MUTCD began a national effort to help foreign visitors navigate the United States by adopting a color-coded sign system similar to Europe's. Chicago adopted the white-on-green street signs as part of that effort in 1975.

Many Chicagoans remember the yellow street signs that Chicago used.

The MUTCD's revised guidelines restricted yellow in signage to warning signs. It also mandated white backgrounds with black and red lettering or symbols for use as regulatory signs (for instance, "No U-Turn" signs were replaced with a black U with a red slash on a white background).

The guidelines recommended phasing out words on signs where possible and relying instead on universally understood symbols, like a red circle broken by a white line to indicate "Do Not Enter." Under that scheme, the color symbols for guidance were green and white – so "reflectorized" white-on-green street name signs became the new standard.

No official system was in place during the city's early years, making wayfinding pretty tough in our fast-growing city. A public call for street identification signs began around the turn of the 20th century when street names were often simply painted onto poles at neighborhood corners (if they were indicated at all).

Later, black-and-white or brown-and-white signs appeared
around the city, particularly downtown.

Finally, in 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt approved a grant for Chicago to hang 64,000 black-on-yellow steel street signs as a Public Works Administration project – but those signs didn't stick around very long. Most were removed for metal drives during World War II.

Not long after the war ended, the city began to examine new sign designs, testing out various lettering styles in the Loop. Once a style was settled, Chicago ordered new porcelain-coated steel street signs, again in the black-on-yellow color scheme, beginning in 1950. The signs were installed over the next few years, starting at the city's edges and working their way into the Loop. This time, rather than attaching the signs to the poles with straps that would rust and break, the signs were secured with bolts going into the poles.

When Chicago moved to the white-on-green signs in 1975, the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) again gradually installed thousands of signs throughout the city's more than 800 streets. But this time, the city had the brilliant idea of selling the beloved yellow signs to residents, so occasionally, you'll see a yellow sign decorating a home or business.

In my personal collection, West Arthur Avenue is the street I grew up on.

In 2009, the Federal Highway Administration announced in its MUTCD that all cities should use the upper and lowercase format for their street signs because upper/lowercase words are easier to read than all uppercase. 

According to research performed by the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, people read all-uppercase words one letter at a time but recognize upper/lowercase formatted words as a whole, making reading "MICHIGAN AVENUE" slower and more complex than reading "Michigan Avenue" while driving past. The upper/lower format also leaves more space around each letter, making the letters easier to distinguish for aging eyes.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.