coincide just before or during the beginning year of the Great Depression in U.S. history. African-American aviation pioneer C.W. Chappelle's successfully designed a long-distance airplane. He won a medal for being the only African-American to invent and display an airplane at the spectacular 1911 First :Industrial Airplane Show held in conjunction with the U.S. International Auto Show at Manhattan's Grand Central Palace in New York City. His airplane invention was written about in several of the African-American media; one foreign Ghana newspaper described it as a quadruplane, and others just wrote about the excitement of there being an African-American airplane inventor and taking a place in the :history of aviation. The event had a host of the well-established attending and speaking, and was covered by the media for two weeks, and his airplane invention was an excitement for the African-American community. In a May 1911 issue of The Crises: A Record of the Darker Races, Social Uplift (p. 7) published by the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) in New York City, there is a brief mention of C.W. Chappelle and his aviation invention. In 1911, the first African-American airplane company was formed in Manhattan's New York City, at the then West 53rd Street Hotel Macco with $10,000.00 capital, and Chappelle was its vice president, other board members were Louis A. Leavelle (president); Benjamin F. Thomas treasurer; Lee A. Pollard (secretary); and directors Harrison M. Steward; John Bryant; and Dr. V. T. Thomas. Chappelle was a member of the United States Aeronautical Reserve, and he was mentioned in its official magazine The Air-Scout in December 1910 that read that Chappelle "has invented an aeroplane embodying some very interesting features; especially equipped with safety devices for long distance passenger carrying flights . . ." and that his airplane would be on display at the United States Aeronautical Reserve headquarters in Manhattan. Other activities While Chappelle lived in Brooklyn, New York, in the early 1900s, he also worked as an architect and contractor in Brooklyn, where he erected several buildings. HWhile he traveled and lived in several United States cities, and African countries, his main United States residence was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he returned to in 1920, and was employed by the city's department of lands and buildings. He was an active member of the Bethesda Presbyterian Church. Chappelle died in 1941 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. References "Short Flights,” News/Opinion, The Freeman