Robbins: America's First Black-Owned Airport

Robbins, Illinois, incorporated in nineteen seventeen, holds a remarkable distinction: it was the first municipality in the North governed entirely by African Americans, and it is home to the site of the first Black-owned airport in the United States.

Two Chicago auto mechanics, John Robinson and Cornelius Coffey, were inspired by aviator Bessie Coleman. Locked out of flight training because of their race, they set out to build their own airfield. By early nineteen thirty-three, their Challenger Air Pilots' Association had built Robbins Airport on an abandoned airstrip, one hangar and a half-mile dirt runway, training a generation of Black pilots locked out everywhere else. A storm destroyed the hangar in May of that year, and the pilots moved to Harlem Airport in Chicago.