When Casey Grant started flying with Delta Airlines in 1970, she became one of the very first African American flight attendants to work for a major carrier. Thirty-five years later, she hung up her wings and wrote her first book titled “Stars in The Sky,” an account of the wonders and dangers of being a flight attendant of color.
Grant and her colleagues paved the way for people of color to become frontline employees in aviation while battling racism from co-workers and passengers alike. They were sometimes banned from the cockpit by pilots, forbidden to work first class, and even denied hotel rooms during layovers because of their race.
“When I first started writing my book,” Grant said, “I wanted people to understand the hardships of being a stewardess, the loneliness of it, the psychological impact it had on us that people just didn’t understand the things that we did.”
