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In the midst of American Airlines fighting numerous racial discrimination allegations, we’re reminded that air travel has not always been friendly to everyone. For Black Women’s History Month, meet the one Black woman, who broke the glass ceiling – at an elevation of 31,000 feet, no less – and paved the way for other Black women to become flight attendants.
Until the 1960s, Black people were excluded from making a living in the sky.
Meet Patricia Edmiston: The First Black Female Flight Attendant
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Patricia Noisette Banks Edmiston was studying at Queens College when an ad in a magazine for an airline school caught her eye. At the time, air travel was rapidly ramping up across the country. The number of passengers taking to the skies just about quadrupled between 1955 and 1972, but a peek inside the cabins of those planes would have revealed mostly (if not all) white, male passengers.
View Image of Patricia Noisette Banks Edmiston here.
But Edmiston wanted to see the world, and she saw a career as a flight attendant as her way to do it. So, she applied and was accepted to the now-defunct Grace Downs Air Career School in 1956. She did not know the discrimination she would come to face. For starters, her very first class was the makeup class, during which she was taught to put on what was essentially white face.
Despite her challenges in school, the trailblazer graduated at the top of her class. However, she fought relentlessly to find employment. After applying to several commercial airlines, she did not receive a single response. Finally, one employee at Capital Airlines informed Edmiston that the airline did not hire Black people.
Edmiston proceeded to file a complaint against Capital Airlines with the New York State Commission Against Discrimination, who promptly ordered the company to hire her.
The brave woman faced threats of violence following the ruling in her favor. Matters became so extreme that the police needed to be informed of her full-time schedule, in order to protect her. But that did not deter Edmiston from working in her dream job.
Although Black people had the option to fly at the time, the airline industry did everything it could to discourage it. Airports remained segregated, and the sections for Black travelers were notoriously poorly kept. Complaints regarding the conditions for Black flyers were generally ignored by airlines. There was no Black airline staff to empathize with or support the travelers because, until the 1960s, major airlines would not employ Black folks as pilots or cabin crew.
Edmiston’s perseverance carved out a place in the skies for other hopeful Black flight attendants around the world. She was eventually inducted into the Black Aviation Hall of Fame and honored at the Smithsonian.
