Examines the opera Porgy and Bess's long history of invention and reinvention as a barometer of 20th-century American expectations about race, culture and the struggle for equality.

Here is the brief but intense life of Bessie Coleman, America's first African American woman aviator. Born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, she became known as “Queen Bess,” a barnstormer and flying-circus performer who defied the strictures of race, sex, and society in pursuit of a dream.