Willow Park is one of six properties identified for park development in the late 1960s as part of the Hyde Park Kenwood Urban Renewal Project. The Chicago Park District improved the Drexel Avenue park site with playground equipment, a sand box, a spray pool, and curving planted areas. On the east side of the park, a slide was inventively built into the side of a hill. In 1990, the park district thoroughly rehabilitated the property, removing the playground equipment and slide, and installing new soft surface playground areas. Officially named Willow Park in 1973, the property was renamed as part of a Chicago Park District effort to honor the contributions of significant Chicago women in 2005. Bessie Coleman (1896- 1926) was the nation’s first female African American pilot. She worked as a manicurist in a barbershop across the street from Comiskey Park and later ran a chili parlor at 35th and Indiana Ave. After learning from her brother John, who was a veteran, that there were women pilots in Europe, she decided to become a pilot. She went to flight school in France and became the first African American to hold an international pilot license. Bessie Coleman performed various flight stunts in exhibitions in the US and abroad, and campaigned against the segregation of audiences to these exhibitions.