When Bessie returned to the United States to pursue her new flying
career, she knew she must have publicity to attract paying audiences.
She created an exciting image of herself with a military style uniform
and an eloquence that belied her background. Her first appearance
was in an air show on September 3, 1922 at Curtiss Field near New
York City. The show, sponsored by Robert Abbott and the Chicago
Defender, billed Bessie as "the world's greatest woman flyer."
More shows followed around the country including Memphis and Chicago.
On June 19, 1925, Bessie made her flying debut in Texas at a Houston
auto racetrack renamed Houston Aerial Transport Field in honor of
the time between her 1922 flying debut in New York and her 1925
Texas debut, Bessie never lost sight of her goal of opening a school
for aviators. She flirted briefly with a movie career, traveled
to California to earn money for a plane of her own, crashed that
plane once she bought it and then returned to Chicago to formulate
a new plan. It was another two years before she finally succeeded
in lining up a series of lectures and exhibition flights in Texas.
Once there, she defied not only racial barriers but gender barriers
as well. She appeared in San Antonio, Richmond, Waxahachie, Wharton,Dallas
and numerous unreported small towns and fields. At Love Field in
Dallas, she made a down payment on a plane from the Curtiss Southwestern
Airplane and Motor Company, probably an old Jenny(JN-4 with an OX-5
a brief return to Chicago, Bessie left for a series of lectures
in black theaters in Georgia and Florida. After two months in Florida,
she opened a beauty shop in Orlando to hasten her accumulation of
funds to start the long awaited aviation school. Using borrowed
planes Bessie continued exhibition flying and occasional parachute
jumping. As she had often done in other U.S. locations, Bessie refused
to perform unless the audiences were desegregated and everyone attending
used the same gates. With the patronage of a wealthy businessman,
Bessie made the final payment on her plane in Dallas and arranged
to have it flown to Jacksonville for her next engagement scheduled
for May 1, 1926.