Ruth Carol Taylor becomes the first Black flight attendant
On this day · 11 February 1958
In 1958 a young nurse stepped aboard a Mohawk Airlines flight and quietly broke aviation's color barrier in mid-air.
On February 11, 1958, Ruth Carol Taylor worked her first flight aboard a Mohawk Airlines turboprop bound from Ithaca, New York, becoming the first African American flight attendant in the United States. A trained nurse who had graduated from the Bellevue School of Nursing in 1955, Taylor had first applied to Trans World Airlines (TWA) and been rejected, prompting her to file a discrimination complaint. When the regional carrier Mohawk sought minority cabin crew, she was chosen from roughly 800 Black applicants.
Her breakthrough was brief. Within six months Taylor was forced out under the era’s common “marriage ban,” which barred stewardesses from being wed. Yet her hiring cracked open a closed industry: months later TWA hired its own Black flight attendant.
One quiet flight from a small upstate airport rewrote who was allowed to fly the cabin.
Taylor went on to a life of activism, journalism, and nursing, and in 2008 the New York State Assembly formally honored her pioneering flight.
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