William Jenifer Powell was recognized as a pioneer aviator and a civil rights activist along with James Banning and an American civil aviator who was the first woman of African-American descent to hold a what?
pilot license
Bessie Coleman
Bessie Coleman (January 26, 1892April 30, 1926) was an American civil aviator.
 She was the first woman of African-American descent, and the first of Native American descent, to hold a pilot license.
William J. Powell
William Jenifer Powell (July 27, 1897 – July 12, 1942) was an American engineer, soldier, civil aviator and author who is credited with promoting aviation among the African American community.
 Along with Bessie Coleman and James Banning, he is recognized as a pioneer aviator and a civil rights activist.
 Powell was optimistic about the prospects of African-Americans in aviation, and believed that their involvement in the industry would help end racial prejudice at a time of widespread segregation under the Jim Crow laws.
Willa Brown
Willa Beatrice Brown (January 22, 1906 – July 18, 1992) was an American aviator, lobbyist, teacher, and civil rights activist.
 She was the first African-American woman to earn her pilot's license in the United States, the first African-American woman to run for the United States Congress, the first African-American officer in the US Civil Air Patrol, and the first woman in the United States to have both a pilot's license and a mechanic's license.
 A lifelong advocate for gender and racial equality in flight and in the military, Brown not only lobbied the U.S. government to integrate the U.S. Army Air Corp and include African Americans in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), but also co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics with Cornelius Coffey, which was the first private flight training academy in the United States owned and operated by African Americans.
 She trained hundreds of pilots, several of whom would go on to become Tuskegee Airmen. Karen Narasaki
Karen K. Narasaki (born April 4, 1958) is an American civil rights leader and human rights activist.
 In July 2014 President Barack Obama appointed Narasaki to serve as a Commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
 She is the former president and executive director of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC.
 Advancing Justice | AAJC is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonprofit civil rights organization whose mission is to advance the human and civil rights of Asian Pacific Americans through advocacy, public policy, public education and litigation.
 Prior to her post at AAJC, she served as the Washington, D.C. representative to the Japanese American Citizens League. Myrlie Evers-Williams
Myrlie Louise Evers–Williams (née Beasley; born March 17, 1933) is an American civil rights activist of the Civil Rights Movement and journalist who worked for over three decades to seek justice for the murder of her civil rights activist husband Medgar Evers in 1963.
 She was also chairwoman of the NAACP, and published several books on topics related to civil rights and her husband’s legacy.
 On January 21, 2013, she delivered the invocation at the second inauguration of Barack Obama. James Banning
James Herman Banning (November 5, 1900 – February 5, 1933) was an American aviation pioneer.
 In 1932, James Banning, accompanied by Thomas C. Allen, became America's first black aviator to fly coast-to-coast. M. Athalie Range
M. Athalie Range (born Mary Athalie Wilkinson; November 7, 1915 in Key West, Florida - November 14, 2006 in Miami, Florida) was a Bahamian American civil rights activist and politician who was the first African-American to serve on the Miami, Florida City Commission, and the first African-American since Reconstruction and the first woman to head a Florida state agency, the Department of Community Affairs. Jonathan Daniels
Jonathan Myrick Daniels (March 20, 1939 – August 20, 1965) was an Episcopal seminarian and civil rights activist.
 In 1965 he was assassinated by a shotgun-wielding construction worker, Tom Coleman, who was a special county deputy, in Hayneville, Alabama while in the act of shielding 17-year-old Ruby Sales.
 He saved the life of the young black civil rights activist.
 They both were working in the Civil Rights Movement in Lowndes County to integrate public places and register black voters after passage of the Voting Rights Act that summer.
 Daniels' death generated further support for the Civil Rights Movement. George T. Downing
George T. Downing (December 30, 1819 – July 21, 1903) was an abolitionist and activist for African-American civil rights.
 His father was a caterer and Oyster seller in Philadelphia and New York City and George followed the same career path in New York, Newport, Rhode Island, and Washington, DC.
 From the 1830s until the end of slavery, Downing was active in the abolitionist movement and in the Underground Railroad, with his restaurant serving as a rest house.
 During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Downing helped recruit African American soldiers.
 After the war he moved to Washington, DC where he ran the Refectory for the House of Representatives.
 He was a prominent member in the Colored Conventions Movement and worked to join the efforts of women's rights and black rights.
 He became close to Charles Sumner and was with the legislator when he died.
 Late in his life he returned to Rhode Island where he continued to be a community leader and civil rights activist. Neta Snook
Neta Snook Southern (February 14, 1896 – March 23, 1991) was a pioneer aviator who achieved a long list of firsts.
 She was the first woman aviator in Iowa, first woman student accepted at the Curtiss Flying School in Virginia, first woman aviator to run her own aviation business and first woman to run a commercial airfield.
 Yet "Snooky", as her friends called her, was fated to be remembered for her relationship to Amelia Earhart.
 Her autobiography "I Taught Amelia to Fly" aptly captures the essence of her fame, she was forever linked to the Earhart mystique as her first instructor.