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Here are the amazing adventures of a group of
space pioneers marooned on an uncharted planet.
Adventure as challenging as tomorrow.
Good landing, Flash.
We're right near the tunnel entrance.
We're headed for the planet Saturn.
Seven, six, five, four, three, two, fire.
In our modern world, everywhere we look we see
the influence science has on our daily lives.
Many of the things that seem impossible now
will become realities tomorrow.
When you look at the history of space exploration
within the United States, there were no Black astronauts.
Astronauts were white male test pilots
who were all 5'10" on average.
They called it the right stuff.
Three, two, one.
In America, space exploration was
never something for Black folks.
But the people of the African diaspora have always been
scientifically and spiritually connected to the cosmos.
This connection is something that's been around for
a long time, but we've been robbed of our history.
In its symbolism, space allows you to see what's possible.
SUN-RA: They say that history repeats itself,
but history is only his story.
I'm not a part of history.
I'm more a part of a mystery.
Well, good afternoon.
It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Kennedy Space Center,
and it gives me great honor and pleasure to
introduce our administrator, Charlie Bolden.
Thank you all very much.
Um, you know,
it is here that so many giant leaps have been made,
but what's really important is that it is here
that many of our future dreams will be made to come true.
My name is Charles Bolden. I go by Charlie.
I spent 34 years on active duty in the Marine Corps,
flew four times on the shuttle.
I was in the pilot for the Hubble Space Telescope mission.
Discovery, go for Hubble release.
And I was the NASA administrator during the
Obama Administration,
the only Black to ever be the NASA administrator.
Very few people today even have a clue about
Black people's contribution to human space flight,
because they weren't written in history books.
In Africa, the griot is the master in a village
that carries the history of the people.
And unless you're very fortunate to have a parent or
a mentor or somebody else who teaches you about it,
you might miss it.
If you're really an observer of Black people's
accomplishments in America,
we've only made progress in certain areas.
And it seems like in the larger scheme of things,
there are areas that are inviolate.
And this space thing falls right into that category.
I get questions about, you know, what really happened,
and my answer to that question is I don't think America or
anybody knows how complex the situation was.
In 1961, Captain Dwight received a letter from
President John F. Kennedy offering him the opportunity
to become the first Black astronaut.
Well, it wasn't Black then.
It was Negro astronaut.
♪ Kennedy. Kennedy. Kennedy ♪
♪ Kennedy for me ♪ ♪
When this whole thing went down,
Kennedy was trying to get elected president.
And he knew that he needed the Black vote.
♪ Kennedy ♪
And so supposedly, a group of Black community leaders
set up this meeting with Senator Kennedy,
and all these guys had their agenda about what they wanted.
The story goes, there were people like Roy Wilkins and
A. Philip Randolph, and Whitney Young went on last.
He was affiliated with the Urban League and he said,
"Senator, we can't get our Black kids into the
engineering and science schools.
But we've got military academies, and we can
fill these military academies up with Black kids.
I'll find the Black kids."
Kennedy is, "Huh, this is interesting.
What do you want from me?"
And Whitney's answer was,
"Make me a Black astronaut, and give him to me."
Here inside the Armory the once very junior senator
for Massachusetts, now at the age of 43, the president-elect
of the United States and his wife, Jacqueline.
Kennedy won the presidency.
But as far as this Black astronaut thing,
that was the last thing that was on his mind.
And Whitney was calling him,
"What about my astronaut? What about our deal?"
General LeMay was Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The President called him and asked him,
"How long would it take you to make me a Black astronaut?"
And the response was five years.
The President said, "That's not good enough.
I want some information on my desk by Friday."
And that's how fast this whole thing evolved.
Back in those days, there weren't too many
Black pilots in the world.
Many of them were Tuskegee Airmen left over
from World War II.
And so now, it was easy for them to come up with
a set of credentials that eliminated everybody.
You had to have 1500 hours of jet time.
You had to have a degree in engineering or natural science.
Your last three effectiveness reports had to be rated
outstanding, and you had to be young,
which eliminated the entire Tuskegee Airmen.
From their point of view, they came up with criteria
that no Black person in the universe could ever meet.
So they were trying to figure out...
who the hell is Captain Dwight?
From the time I was two, mom would take us to the
airport every day.
It just blew my mind, the whole idea of flying,
and I went straight into the military out of college.
I was 27 years old, and I had a pretty good career going.
At that point in time,
I was the only Black officer on the base,
and so I'm living in this white universe.
But I was happy doing what I was doing,
and I had no reason to be racially conscious.
I had no intention of being an astronaut.
That was the last thing on my bucket list.
But once I was given the challenge,
then everything changes.
And so I polled all of my superior officers.
Until a person, they told me,
"They would make hamburger out of you, Dwight."
But then I called my mom, and she introduces this race factor,
"You're uplifting the race if you did this."
And so I went back to Colonel McDonald.
Colonel McDonald said,
"The hell with your race. You save yourself,"
and I said something absolutely stupid to him.
I said, "You know, if I do this,
I'll be on the cover of Ebony Magazine."
And this guy says, "What the hell is Ebony Magazine?"
Interesting enough, people asked me if I wanted
to be an astronaut when I was a kid.
Flash Gordon.
You didn't think you'd get away with this.
Did you, Ming?
And I tell them no,
because astronauts were science fiction things
and aliens and all that sort of stuff.
And so I never really had a strong feeling for it.
Math and science were the driving force in my life,
and I was curious of a lot of different things.
But the thing that I loved most,
I was crazy about airplanes.
I didn't look at them from a pilot point of view.
I looked at them from a how are they built?
Is it a nice-looking airplane?
Will it fly fast?
So I looked at it from an engineering point of view.
And interesting enough, my father was an engineer,
and I never really recognized that that was
a strange occupation for a Black man.
I didn't think that was unusual.
And so I got accepted to Penn State in the
aeronautical engineering department.
I showed up on a campus, and they're not,
they're just not there.
And I realized I was the only Black student in
aerospace engineering.
Growing up, my mom and dad, you know,
they always talked about possibility.
But growing up in the Jim Crow South,
you just, you knew what you could and couldn't do,
and you didn't press the system.
You were taught you don't have the right to do that.
You don't have the right to drink from that fountain
because that says white, so don't even think about it.
And it was the same thing with NASA.
I loved the space program, I was enamored with it,
but nobody doing that stuff looked like me.
Ed was in consideration for the NASA program,
which is America's civil space program,
and there is no organization that is more effective in
promoting our greatness than NASA.
But having a Black man as the face and voice of America
in space, that's different.
That's real different.
Only two years before this whole Black astronaut thing
were the first seven astronauts named.
It's my pleasure to introduce...
these, ladies and gentlemen,
are the nation's Mercury astronauts.
They spent millions of dollars making the first seven
astronaut heroes with the implication that
they were superheroes.
And there was no way in God's green earth
they would allow me to be equal to these guys.
Because if a Black guy could qualify to be among these guys,
then the first seven guys were not heroes anymore.
That meant anybody could do it.
With Ed, there was a lot of politics involved.
And in my career, I learned
never get yourself associated with a political.
Never.
I mean, as long as that political person is in power,
then you'll progress.
But at the same time, you get a lot of enemies
when you do it that way
because they think you're in a special group.
The rest of them think you're in a special group.
From the time I got down to Edwards for test pilot school,
I was set up to fail.
When you think of test pilot, do you think edge of
the envelope and all of that sort of stuff,
like Chuck Yeager, you know, breaking the sound barrier?
On October 14th, 1947,
Air Force Captain Charles E. Yeager
made the world's first supersonic flight.
And he does it.
The first human to crack the sound barrier.
Chuck Yeager was the head of the test pilot school.
He was one of my idols.
We're turning out an entirely different breed of
pilot here at the school.
These guys will be working on programs all the way from the
surface of the earth to space.
And he called all the instructors in and
the students before I got there and tells the people,
"Washington is trying to cram a nigger down our throats,
and we can't let him graduate."
There was a lot of denial that this ever happened,
but the story was told to me by a person that was
in the room so I have no reason to doubt it.
The other students were instructed not to speak to me,
not to drink with me, not to socialize with me.
It's like walking into a deep freeze.
But this is a lot more complex than just being racist.
The President should've had him on board in the beginning
with this Black astronaut idea,
but he was upset because, you see,
nobody called him.
They called everybody in this whole aerospace,
test pilot thing, and they did not call Yeager.
He actually told me this because he was constantly
calling me into his office and asking me to quit.
He would pull out a piece of paper and says,
"There's 150 white boys here
that are more qualified than you.
You don't belong here."
The isolation and all the lack of support that I was getting,
this gave me the... the balls
to stand up Yeager, and we'd go head to head.
I mean, I told him to kiss my ass, to go to hell,
I don't believe you, you're a liar.
Any one of those meetings that I had with Yeager,
I could've been court-martialed.
But I did that, and I was never intimidated.
Never intimidated.
So I told him, "I'm not going anywhere."
After I graduated from test pilot school,
Kennedy announced me as the first Negro astronaut.
That was the headline.
And so all of a sudden, my schedule was full with
all of these extraneous things that I did not expect.
Whitney Young was, got a laser focus on using me
as much as he could use me.
And his thinking was, this is the last frontier,
this whole space thing, and we could use this politically
to do all kinds of things.
I would be away from training
from Thursday until Monday afternoon,
and I'd be making speeches all over the country about
the whole concept of this Negro astronaut.
I was making contacts.
I was spreading the word.
When I got back to Edwards,
the press wanted to talk to me.
They won't talk to none of the rest of those guys,
so I was getting backlash from the other students.
From their point of view, they're going,
"What in the world's going on here, man?"
A 29-year-old Negro says he is anxious
to go into space.
He's Captain Edward Dwight of the Air Force,
selected to be an astronaut,
the first of his race to be so designated.
When I was first announced, everybody tried to make
a real big hero out of me, and all they could think
about was that, you know,
I could be the first guy on the moon.
But they didn't have any concept whatsoever
what it took to be a test pilot or an astronaut.
Cheating death and all that kind of,
that didn't occur to these people.
I was a body in a way.
When I was chosen for this thing,
I was actually divorced.
And they said, "Where is she? Go find her."
So I had to play the game.
You know, I had to bring the wife and
I had to bring the kids.
I had to bring the whole thing together.
This was all orchestrated by the White House,
by the Pentagon, and it was imaginary.
It was a lie.
Ed Dwight was being used for propaganda purposes
because they wanted to show that they were engaged in
civil rights and equality for all.
I suppose you could say that this is definitely
a sign of progress for the Negro in the country.
PR is a big thing.
NASA is real sensitive to that,
and you have to be able to do that
without being eaten up by it.
My job was go educate these people about space traveling.
That was supposed to be my role in all this stuff,
but I caught hell from the NAACP and all the
Black organizations because I wasn't militant enough.
I was in there talking about space and they
"Man, what's wrong with you, man?
You got to talk about the struggle.
Who wants to hear all about that space stuff and
all of the space part.
Who wants to hear that?
Man, you got to talk about how bad they treating us, man."
And if I did that, I would've been deported,
you know, immediately.
I was a special person with a built-in audience
that somebody else created for me,
and I got on the cover of all these magazines
so I felt that I was better than these guys, really.
I mean, I'm getting 1500 fan mail letters a day and I was,
I have people tell me I was
the most incredible person on earth,
and I had to be the bravest person in the world
to even think about going in space.
And you hear all that, you start believing this stuff.
Okay, I guess y'all know why you're here today.
When the announcement came, I mean everybody was
there from all over the country with cameras.
I mean, there was more cameras than people.
You know what I mean?
I just knew that all the work that Whitney had done and that
Kennedy had done, that I was going to be on that list.
I'd like to introduce to you the new group
of 14 astronauts that we've been in the process of
selecting for about the last four months.
Was there a Negro boy in the last 30 or so that
you brought here for consideration?
No, there was not.
Okay, I guess we're through, Paul.
He finishes the list and for that split second of time,
I said to myself, "Hmm, maybe it didn't work."
When you began looking at who had been selected from
the program, it was very clear
that there was no attempt
at that time to integrate.
Right after the announcement,
I'm calling my parents and people were calling me and
don't worry, you're still good.
And I was bolstered by that
because I knew for a fact that
they were not going to walk away from this thing.
About a month later, we were in Seattle, Washington,
going through what they call a full mission simulator.
And all of a sudden somebody says,
"They just killed the president."
And everything came to a screeching halt and I said,
"Dude, that ain't funny worth a damn."
and he says, "No, this is real. The president is dead."
Here is a bulletin from CBS News
from Dallas, Texas.
The flash, apparently official,
President Kennedy died at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time,
2:00 Eastern Standard Time. Some 38 minutes ago.
When I found out the president was killed,
they shot us back to Edwards,
and nobody was saying anything to anybody
because everybody knew what everybody was thinking,
"What's going to happen to Dwight?"
Within a few years, that entire support system
that Ed Dwight had disappeared.
Why aren't you an astronaut?
Are you now in fact completely out of the astronaut program?
Did you write a 15-page report?
When President Kennedy was killed,
people who opposed having Ed Dwight get into the
astronaut program said, "That's it. Terminate it. Stop."
You feel that what's happened to you is
a setback for the civil rights opportunities in this country?
I would rather not comment on that.
My hope was just getting into space in any kind of way.
But they were not going to let that happen,
and they said, number one, I wasn't tall enough.
I was Catholic.
I wasn't Black enough.
I was not the model of the negro race.
I felt very, very used and I made a decision to resign.
Had all of the things being equal,
I would've made it to the moon.
I had the capability and I was not given that opportunity.
For a second or two microseconds,
you wrap that around and then you throw it in the trashcan.
When I think about Ed Dwight, I sometimes wonder
if things had played out differently and
he indeed went to space.
Let's think about what a difference that would've made.
At that moment in the Black community,
this was a difficult time.
As for America, Black people have
been here for more than 400 years.
We have contributed dearly in all of the gains
this land has made.
And we have suffered disproportionately in
all of its failures.
Space really allows us to realize the hope that's
within all of us as human beings,
and so to see a Black man in space
during that period of time,
it would've changed things.
REPORTER If all goes well,
some 112 hours and 50 minutes after liftoff,
Neil Armstrong will step on the lunar surface.
It shows what the richest nation in history can do
when it puts its mind to it.
I was a student naval aviator.
As a matter of fact, I was, I was in Meridian, Mississippi.
My wife and I had rushed back from a, from a raucous weekend
in New Orleans to sit before the black and white television
and in the bachelor officers quarters
at the Naval Air Station Meridian,
so we could see human beings land on the moon.
Leading up to that, there was a protest to the
NASA administrator that he should stop the launch.
♪ No more mean white folk ♪
♪ Over me, over me ♪
Ladies and gentlemen of the press,
on the eve of one of man's noblest ventures.
I am profoundly moved by our nation's scientific achievements
in space and by the heroism of the three men
who are embarking for the moon.
I have not come to Cape Kennedy merely to experience
the thrill of this historic launching.
I'm here to demonstrate in a symbolic way the tragic and
inexcusable gulf between
America's technological abilities
and our social injustice.
They said NASA should take some of the money that
was going into the space program, if not all the money
and put it into, into poor people in social needs.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here because you invited
me to be here and because I want to be here.
If it were possible for us tomorrow morning to not push
the button and to solve the problems to which you are
concerned, believe me, we would not push the button.
I would make a counter request, and that is when you
have your prayer vigil tonight that you'll pray for the
safety of our astronauts.
This would mean a great deal to all of us in the space program.
The NASA administrator told them,
we believe that down the road this is going to benefit
what you're trying to do.
That was his argument.
They didn't buy it, but nonetheless,
they launched and the rest is history.
Five, four, three, two, one, zero.
All engines running.
We pray for these brave, courageous heroes,
make their way to the moon home tomorrow.
May they never forget their suffering brothers and sisters
down here on the earth.
May they think about us tomorrow and pray for us
as we will be praying for them.
It's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
For this little Black kid to not see any
you know, Black people being part of the space program
just egged me on.
I said, "Well, they may not want us there.
I may not see someone who looks like me, but we're going
to prove them wrong and I'm not the only one."
We tend to equate progress with concessions.
We can no longer make that mistake.
You see, when they gave us that nigger astronaut,
you said, "We were making progress."
But I told you, "They were going to lose him in space."
He didn't get that far.
Black power means Black dignity.
We don't want any more than you have and
we're not going to accept any less than you have.
That's Black power.
After the early days of the civil rights movement,
you had Stokely Carmichael and organizations like the
Black Panthers that were incredible in their ability
to build pride in the Black community.
We don't need anybody to tell us to
stand up anymore.
Not only are we going to stand up, we going to right the
wrongs of our people in this generation.
♪ When you wish upon a star ♪
And then you had other people who had their
eyes somewhere out on the future.
Growing up as a poor painfully shy child,
author Octavia Butler found a refuge in the limitless world
of science fiction.
♪ Life ain't always what it seems, oh yeah ♪
You got to make your own worlds.
You got to write yourself in.
Whether you were a part of the greater society or not,
you got to write yourself in.
♪ You're a shining star ♪
♪ No matter who you are ♪ ♪
As a kid, space was never something for the
Black diaspora, but Afrofuturism was this cultural aesthetic
that gave Black people the opportunity to
see ourselves in space.
Nobody's seen a Black in outer space.
That was not even a concept of nobody's mind,
especially sitting on a spaceship like it's a Cadillac.
♪ Shining star for you to see ♪
♪ What your life can truly be ♪
♪ Shining star for you to see ♪
And so Afrofuturism provides a vision of the
future with our flavor added to the mix.
♪ Shining star for you to see ♪
♪ What your life can truly be ♪ ♪
SUN-RA: I am Sun-Ra, ambassador from the
intergalactic regions of the council of outer space.
How do we know you for real?
Shoot, I know I'd probably take off running if I
see somebody walking down the street talking about
going to outer space.
SUN-RA: How do you know I'm real?
Yes.
SUN-RA: I'm not real. I'm just like you.
You don't exist in this society.
If you did, your people wouldn't be seeking equal rights,
so we are both myths because that's what Black people are.
Myths.
They take frequent trips to the moon.
I noticed none of you have been invited.
How do you think you're going to exist?
The year 2000 is right around the corner.
When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon,
the restless American spirit began asking the question,
what next?
Well, this morning we start to get the answer.
This is Orbiter 101 as it rolled out of
the hangar in Palmdale, California.
A lot of people talk about the technological
marvel of the space shuttle.
A transportation system capable of
delivering 65,000 pounds of payload into orbit.
And I said, true, but that's not its
most important contribution to humanity.
It was a big vehicle like the size of a 737 airplane that
could carry a crew of seven, but it only needed two pilots,
so people who were scientists and engineers could fly along
as crew members while the two pilots up front
took care of flying the vehicle.
All of a sudden we were able to hire astronauts
who didn't look like the classic NASA astronaut,
so it revolutionized the makeup of the space program.
I had been a test pilot for NASA for about six years,
but every day I came in and did the same thing.
I felt like I was in a rut,
and then I saw something that to this day, uh,
it just still, still overwhelms me.
Hi, I'm Nichelle Nichols,
but I still feel a little bit like
Lieutenant Uhura on the Starship Enterprise.
There was a young lady that we all knew and
her name was Lieutenant Uhura.
Frequency open, Mr. Spock.
Come in, star base.
Come in Captain Kirk.
She was Nichelle Nichols and she was on Star Trek.
Star Trek projected a future in space that
included all of us, so I became very involved with NASA,
with the idea that especially Black people
had to have an awareness of those possibilities.
It's still an all white male astronaut core.
People are somewhat well, the credibility is rather zero
with NASA in the minority and female community.
I remember her saying, "I don't see me here."
And she went out on a campaign and crisscrossed the country.
Suddenly there was this connection going from
fantasy to fact, and I was that spokesperson.
I saw her on TV.
I'm speaking to the whole family of humankind,
minorities and women alike.
I know she was talking to me.
Others claim she was talking to them.
No, she was talking to me.
If you qualify and would like to be
an astronaut, now is the time.
This is your NASA.
A space agency embarked on a mission to improve the
quality of life on planet earth right now.
The last NASA astronaut selection was in '69,
so there was a gap.
One program was shutting down, a new one was beginning.
Camera. Speed.
Fred Gregory, scene 28.
Guion Bluford. Scene 26.
Ron McNair, scene 27. Take one.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration
today chose the 35 persons who will ride the space shuttle
into orbit and back in the 1980s.
Among them are three Blacks, one oriental, and six women.
It's my pleasure to introduce Guy Bluford.
♪ All eyes on me alright alright alright ♪
When I applied, I wasn't sure that I'd ever make it.
You'd read in the newspaper, these people have been
selected for the astronaut program and they all
leap tall buildings with a single bound.
I went down to Houston and I saw the competition and
I'm sort of saying, "Hey, I want to see who these people are
that are better than I am."
I'd like to welcome Major Frederick Gregory
from the United States Air Force.
♪ Help him find the funk ♪
At this time, my goals in life were not something
specific like to be a pilot or be a doctor or something.
I wanted to have fun and make a contribution.
I was one of the first Blacks in integrated schools
in Washington DC, the only one in my class at the academy,
so if there were a barrier,
it would have to be a big one to stop me.
♪ Hey, yeah ♪
♪ Shine the spotlight on him! ♪
♪ Help him find the funk ♪
Chosen as a mission specialist, Ronald McNair.
Being a scientist, I see it as something that's part of
man's nature to explore as far as he can and
as deep as he can into the unknown.
Becoming an astronaut is something that I've wanted to
do for a long time, but I didn't see how it was possible
until a mission specialist position was created.
At that time, there was nothing standing in my way
except to pursue it.
To say that we're pleased with the selection
is an understatement.
They are undoubtedly the best looking group we've ever had
as astronauts, and that's the 35 new astronauts.
♪ Help him find the funk ♪
♪ Ha da da dee da hada hada da da ♪
♪ Help him find the funk ♪
♪ Most of all he need the funk ♪
♪ Everybody's got a little light under the sun ♪
After I left the military,
I was very quiet and I didn't say anything.
I was just numb.
And this was an interesting time for me because
I didn't know what to do with myself
after 13 years in the Air Force,
but I did have a background in art
since I was a little bitty kid,
and so I wanted to do something creative.
I had a construction company at the time, and so I started
picking up all the junk from my construction sites and
next thing you know, I got the house all decorated
with my sculptures.
Lieutenant Governor George Brown
purchased one of my little pieces of art.
He was elected our first Black lieutenant governor in the
state of Colorado and he said,
"I've been watching you with your art, and
they want a sculpture of me to adorn the capitol building."
That started my art career that I didn't know I was going
to be starting, to be totally candid with you.
After I completed the sculpture of him,
he awarded me a big project for the state of Colorado,
a series that had to do with the Black migration west,
and I asked him, "What did they do?"
He got rather irate.
"What are you talking about?
Have you ever heard of Harriet Tubman?"
And I was 42 years old and
I had never heard of Harriet Tubman.
I grew up with basically a white education and
I didn't realize that I had been told every day of my life,
anything of reality that we experienced today
was done by white people.
And it didn't come into my reality what George was
talking about until I read all, all this Black history
that I had didn't know existed.
That obviously had to change my whole internal agenda
and I got very angry.
In the beginning, I never thought about Black history,
but as this thing went along,
I began to realize the power of, you know,
this storytelling, uh, idea,
and so my motivation
was 100,000% with educating people.
Times have changed to the point where Black men
can enter areas that were heretofore some sort of,
you might say, prohibited.
To some youth, particularly in our youth who felt that
such goals were not reachable or unattainable.
Do you feel that three is an adequate number
at this point in time?
Well, certainly I don't feel three is adequate.
I think as many as you can get in, but three is a start.
Let's do it.
Boy, Guy, Ron, and Fred.
How are they similar?
They're all three Black.
They're all three male.
♪ I wanna come back ♪
That is about the end of it.
♪ 'Cause I like it like that ♪
Fred came from the helicopter community and then
worked his way into fighters while he was serving at
Langley as a test pilot.
And so Fred is the classic NASA astronaut.
♪ Your sweet phalanges ♪
Guy is not the typical fighter pilot.
You know, we're accustomed to fighter pilots who are
braggadocious and, and boastful and everything.
That's not Guy.
Guy is an engineer and an engineer first
and he'll tell you.
And so he was selected as a mission specialist,
not as a, not as a pilot.
♪ What I say ♪
And then Ron's the brilliant engineer
with his doctorate in laser physics.
He's a renaissance man.
I always admired the fact that he went to MIT.
I, I would've been blown out at MIT, you know.
Ah, ugh, whoo!
♪ Let me stop procrastinating ♪
Fifth degree black belt in karate,
could have been a very successful
professional saxophone player.
That was Ron.
I was very thankful of the fact that
when we came in in '78, there were three of us,
but Fred and Ron as well as myself,
all recognized that one of us would be
the first Black astronaut.
The 35 candidates begin two years of unisex,
interracial training at the Johnson Space Center,
July 1st.
Those who pass will become astronauts, ready for advanced
instruction as members of the seven person crews
who will fly the Space Shuttle in the 1980s.
There were 15 pilots and 20 mission specialists of
very brilliant scientists and engineers and
that's when we all started.
We had, uh, briefings on how the shuttle flew.
These were classroom instructions and
I assumed Fred would be the first guy to fly in space,
'cause he's a test pilot.
Test pilots were the king and, you know, mission specialists
were just those lowly guys who ride
in the back of this vehicle.
Certainly, um, people say,
"Well, were you competing to be the first Black astronaut?"
I don't remember competing,
but I'm told that there was competition.
Everybody jockeyed around to figure out,
how can I fly before such and such and such and such.
It was sort of a, I'm better than you if I fly before you.
And you were dealing with people who knew
how to play the game.
Each of the astronauts knew who the decision maker was.
So everybody ran around kissing the rump of this guy
named George Abbey,
and I did just the opposite.
I avoided the guy.
I figured the less he knew about me, the better, you know.
I didn't really want to be the first Black astronaut.
And then the other thing is,
Blufords are all introverts.
I am not a um, party-goer.
I treasure what few friends I have.
I never joined the frat.
I'm not a frat guy.
I recognize I didn't want all that hoopla, you know.
I would go to the gym five days, six days a week.
Guy was always there.
He was a runner.
I'm not a runner.
And so it was more, you know, waving and saying, hi.
I don't bring my work home.
No.
I, I left it at work.
I had two kids that were going into eighth and ninth grade.
They needed my time.
It's easy for me to be an average guy.
Sometimes I need to be reminded that I am
better than I think I am.
The flight of STS-8 is now about 18 hours away.
That's when Challenger will be thrown into space.
Official liftoff time set for 2:15 tomorrow morning.
It's the first nighttime launch for the shuttle,
but not the only first for this mission.
Colonel Guy Bluford will make history when
the shuttle lifts off.
He'll become the first Black American to fly in space.
All through my training, I was told by friends and
enemies alike, "You're 20 years too soon, buddy."
This is something that has to be resolved by
the American public.
And sure enough, 20 years after I went into the program,
Guy Bluford went up.
20 years.
I was surprised when I got selected,
but being the first Black astronaut
was just a toss-up between me and Ron McNair.
But then in the end, the killer was I was a flyer.
Ron McNair was not a pilot.
T minus 11, ten, nine, eight, seven.
As the clock counts down, the three main engines of the
shuttle light up and the thing that strikes my mind is,
"Wow, this thing moves."
And the shuttle has cleared the tower.
It takes an awful long time for our society to change.
There's all of this inertia that you have to overcome,
but we eventually do it over time.
ASTRONAUT Standing by for
shuttle rocket separation.
Challenger, Houston with you on TDRS.
Houston, Challenger loud and clear.
How do you read the CDR?
Roger. Loud and clear also.
People ask me did I get a spiritual uplifting, um,
one with nature, all that sort, I said, "No, no."
On STS-8, my biggest concern was do the best job possible.
You can see we have a smooth spin up.
it spun all the way up to 40 rpm and uh...
stayed very stable right at 40 rpm.
I was less concerned about the hoopla associated
with a historical perspective.
I'll handle that when I get down.
But I wanted to make sure I did a good enough job that
when I got down people would say,
"Bluford did a good job and we can fly
African-Americans and we don't have to sweat it."
Challenger, Houston with you.
The president is on the line.
REAGAN Guys, congratulations.
You, I think, are paving the way for many others and
you're making it plain that we are in an era of
brotherhood here in our land.
We're all looking forward to another successful mission and
to your safe landing here in California on Labor Day.
This question is for Guy.
Could you reflect a little bit back on your role and do you
think that your part in the mission is helping to
pave the way for other minorities?
I think the answer to the second question is yes.
Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford.
From a historical point of view, I feel as if
I'm opening the door for those behind me and, uh, you know,
I just anticipate that this will be more of a
normal operation than an un-normal operation.
It took me a while to recognize the importance
of being the first African American.
And then I learned about Ed Dwight.
An interesting time to note that a Black American
might have been into space a long time earlier.
What's your feeling about Guy Bluford?
That's incredible.
Yeah, he's done a very outstanding job and
he's to be congratulated.
People look up to you because you have done this,
even though you may have questioned if you
really deserve it or not.
I'd made it because Ed Dwight did his thing
and for me that was a biggie.
Modern day heroes, like Guy Bluford,
are emerging and aspiring new faith in our system and
new hope for the future.
When I went into the astronaut program with
Ron and Guy,
I thought that we found this torch and lit this torch.
But what we found was that after Ed Dwight,
there were other Black astronauts and
all of this history was never, ever recorded.
Oh, this one's top secret.
That's when I learned about a guy named Bob Lawrence.
Major Lawrence, do yourself feel that this
is a tremendous step forward in racial relations?
No, I don't think this is especially
a tremendous step forward.
I think it's just another one of the things that, uh,
we look forward to in this country with respect to
the progress in civil rights.
When we look at the comparison between
Bob Lawrence and Ed Dwight,
Bob Lawrence was in a classified program
and that was okay to people who resisted Ed Dwight.
They could handle somebody in a classified program
who may never be seen.
The MOL program was a very secretive DOD program.
Those who were in the program were all very successful
in their careers.
And so it was expected that Bob Lawrence would be
the first Black astronaut.
For jet training, the Air Force used the F104 and,
um, on this particular day,
Bob Lawrence was actually training another pilot.
The student was flying an approach, executed to
pull up a little bit late, and Bob Lawrence was able
to call for him to eject.
So the student got out of the airplane,
but Bob Lawrence was not able to get out.
After Bob was killed, I got a letter from some
irate citizen that said that they were glad that he was dead
because now there would be no coons on the moon.
You know, mixed in with the sympathy cards,
every once in a while you'd open an envelope and here would be,
you know, a letter or a note saying how happy they were
that the event had taken place.
He was only in the program about
five or six months and, um, it's a shame.
It really is a shame.
It's amazing.
Absolutely amazing.
And then I found out that the Soviet Union
also had a Black astronaut.
Cuba was the ninth country...
that had the chance to travel to space.
And I became...
the cosmonaut number 97.
Around the same time that we had
Guy and Fred and Ron,
there was a Cuban who was the first person of color
to fly when he flew with the Russians.
And in the case of civilian space and space exploration,
the Soviet Union was our enemy,
but the Soviets were very conscious of the
racial disparity that we have here in the United States.
And so a program was formed to show that they were
allowing people of all creeds, colors, persuasions
to have this opportunity to go to space.
That was really important,
even if it were just one person at a time.
Tamayo was the Soviet version of Ed Dwight.
They both were selected for propaganda purposes,
but the Soviets made that history,
not the United States.
.
We were competing with the Soviet Union on
the international stage where you wanted to demonstrate
that you were the power.
So we never recognized the importance of
his accomplishment.
In the United States...
everything that had to do with Cuban success,
they restricted it.
I didn't know anything at all about Tamayo.
I have no idea.
I didn't know who Arnado was.
I know where Cuba is, 90 miles south of Florida.
That's about as much as I know about Cuba.
No media has published the results on television.
They say that it's a Cuban tale.
As you begin to look back and you see a lot of
our history was never known.
And so here I thought I was initiating all of this stuff
because I'd never read about it, never heard about it,
and then I realized, no, I'm just in line, you know.
Once I became famous so to speak,
I could have easily taken off.
No.
My job was to break open the barrier,
but my accomplishment would not mean much
unless other Black astronauts fly.
I thought I had the responsibility to make sure
Ron fly, make sure Fred flies, make sure Charlie flies.
And I'm a big time, "Hey, I want to make sure you fly."
At that point, there were an awful lot of missions
going on, so we were busier than a one-armed bandit.
♪ Pack your grip, takin' you on a trip ♪
When Ron was getting ready for his first flight,
a lot of his training happened at the Kennedy Space Center
in Florida, and he needed a way to get there.
And I found out that we both grew up in South Carolina,
so I volunteered to be Ron's chauffeur.
♪ On the groove line tonight ♪
When I got my first assignment,
my job was a pilot.
♪ Ooh, ooh ♪
♪ Get this train ♪
The mission itself was a laboratory mission.
That was exciting to me because I knew that
what they then learned would be in books or in lectures.
That is the thing that keeps you excited.
It's the thrill of discovery.
I did not want to be a one-time flyer.
♪ Leave your worries behind ♪
Plus I enjoyed flying in space.
So I elected to fly my second flight in October of '85,
and then there was Charlie Bolden.
♪ Ooh, ooh ♪
♪ Yeah tonight ♪ ♪
I was in the second group of people
selected to fly the space shuttle.
And when I think about my journey into space,
I contend everybody who gets to see the planet
from that perspective will be changed forever.
♪ Tonight ♪
♪ Rain, shine, don't mind ♪
♪ We're ridin' on the groove line tonight ♪ ♪
Once you get to space, you are literally
trying to fall back to earth and centrifugal force won't
let you, and so you feel like you're floating.
So that was the feel, the sense of feel.
The knockout punch though was the sense of sight.
This planet is incredibly breathtaking and
looking through the cameras that God gave us,
it is unlike anything
that you can see through even the best cameras.
None of them compare to the human eye.
One of the things that really surprised me was
how small the earth was.
We went around the earth every 90 minutes.
Some of the very smart scientists went to orbit
knowing what they were going to see, and I found in many
cases they didn't know what the truth was.
That was exciting to me because that began to justify
the reason why we were doing these things,
was to learn and discover.
I remember the first time I looked at the
continent of Africa, I cried.
I had studied for a year,
preparing myself to be able to look down and see
Senegal and Nigeria and all these other countries,
and I couldn't tell one country from the other
because there were no lines.
You looked at that and you recognize the way God
intended the planet to be.
We all knew it was going to be something, but we had no clue
that it was going to have the impact that it had.
No words.
I'm sorry there just aren't any words.
There just aren't any words.
The blacks are blacker, the blues are bluer,
and the whole experience of
watching sunrises in a matter of a few seconds
and set just as fast is mind-boggling.
Nine days after I flew my first flight,
Ron and his crew strapped in for his second mission.
All right, now ready to go.
Okay, up on the stool there. Real tall.
Up here?
We need the jackets zipped or
you want to leave them?
Why don't we zip them up?
Casual, big smile.
We caught Ron at a good time.
Alison, how about smiling?
I only brought one smile.
I'm going to save that one.
Ron, you like you're thinking.
Ron's going to save it for the real thing.
This is Mission Control Houston,
all orbiter systems continue to function normally and
Mission Control is ready for the launch this morning.
In the space program,
everybody's got different jobs to do.
My role on the Challenger mission 51L was as the
lead Cap Com, capsule communicator.
T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6.
We have main engines start.
4, 3, 2, 1, and liftoff.
Liftoff called the 25th Space Shuttle mission and
it has cleared the tower.
All of the experts in Mission Control have
monitors in front and it's a lot of data,
and I'm looking at a monitor behind the flight door.
We got 65.
65, final.
confirms, thank you.
Challenger, go with throttle up.
And I see this, this big explosion.
And I wanted to immediately grab the microphone and say
something like, "Godspeed, Challenger,"
but I didn't, and I regret it to this day.
Um...
You know, life changed forever for a lot of us.
For me, I had to make a decision like everybody
in the office, "Was I going to stay?"
You know, "Is this really what I want to do?"
And um, it took, it took me,
I tell people it took me a nanosecond.
I mean, like, really quick.
I thought about it and instantly I said, you know,
"Ron would be really pissed if I walked away now, if, um,
if I didn't go to work and figure out what went wrong
so that it never happens again."
To be quite honest, Ron is the reason that I'm here today.
Had it not been for meeting Ron, I probably would've
never even thought about applying for the space program.
1978, when I started test pilot school,
was also coincidentally the year that NASA selected
the first group of space shuttle astronauts.
One day, three or four NASA T-38s,
each of them carrying two astronauts,
pulled up on the flight line,
and out of the backseat jumped this Black guy.
I knew there were three Blacks in the program,
but it was not until I physically met Ron McNair
that I experienced the power of representation.
I rushed over to meet him and greet him, just mesmerized.
He and I spent the weekend just talking about what it was
like in his training and how exciting it was and all that.
And the last thing he asked me, he said,
"Hey, are you gonna apply for the program?"
I told him, "Not on your life."
I said, "Ron, they'd never pick me."
He looked at me with this incredulous look on his face,
got a scowl almost, and said,
"That is the dumbest thing I ever heard."
He said, "How do you know if you don't ask?"
So I just kind of stood there startled and watched Ron
get in his airplane and blast back to Houston.
I went home and I said, you know,
"I think I'm gonna apply for the space program."
Ron was a mentor to me, much as my mom and dad had been.
He was also a brother in a lot of senses.
You don't see too many people like Ron McNair.
What lessons do we learn from this trauma?
America at its best, two women, a Jew, a Black,
an Asian, white males, at our best as a nation.
Progress always comes after sacrifice.
In the astronaut office, all the people that had been
assigned to crews, all of that was canceled.
The whole agency came to a stop.
We didn't know what to do.
In my case, I had good friends on the shuttle.
That's why I stayed.
Within weeks, I got assigned to take over
the Safety Division at the Johnson Space Center.
It gave me something to do to feel that
I was contributing to the recovery.
Charlie was a brand new guy in the office,
so to speak.
I was on the action investigation team.
We looked at everything.
And I thought, of all the things I could do
to honor those people is to make sure that we find out
what happens and we fly safely.
FLIGHT CONTROLLER And lift-off, lift-off.
America's return to space as Discovery clears the tower.
And we did return to flight.
And that was really important that we showed that
we could get knocked down, we could figure things out,
and we could get back up.
In addition to that, representation becomes
critically important to help us keep moving down that path.
We are now at the point where we can bring together
lots of different types of people and make sure that
we're using all the talents that we have.
As a Black astronaut, we are symbols of what we can
accomplish as a people,
despite what others may think of us.
I strongly believe that firsts are not important,
if there are no seconds and thirds and fourths, and that
only comes when you have a diverse workforce that is
representative of the nation as a whole.
I want the history books to represent everyone.
I don't want it to represent just one side
the way it does today.
When you fly in space, you feel this
profound connection to the legacy of those that have
been there before you and actually helped you get there.
But this sense of legacy was never more apparent
than in 2020 when Victor Glover was in space.
While I was in space, I thought about legacy
quite often,
because it is a very small group of people
that can truly understand what it's like
to be a Black astronaut.
Astronaut Victor Glover has spent
the past month and a half on the International Space Station
on a long-term mission.
Growing up in America as a person of color,
there's this double consciousness pulling
in different directions.
That tension, um, doesn't get any easier, you know,
when you get to be an astronaut.
As Black people in this country, we have always
had to navigate these two worlds,
one foot in the Black community
and the other in the white community.
And it is not a choice.
It's something that we have to do if
we're going to be successful.
I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe!
The 12th day of demonstrations in
dozens of cities, one of the biggest nationwide
days of protest since the killing of George Floyd
in police custody.
The Derek Chauvin trial over the killing of
George Floyd happened while I was in space.
I took a painting of George Floyd with me.
It was right next to me for six months, for 167 days.
It is difficult when, you know, you want to be
a part of the movement, but I also am a military officer
and a NASA astronaut, and that comes with a responsibility.
Trying to rectify the bittersweet nature of this
country that can send me to space as its representative,
but also has allowed these things to happen to Black men
and women, more so than in any other people,
it was an overwhelming and emotional time for me.
There's Victor in space.
When I think back on this really tough time
in our country, I think about what I was feeling
down here on Earth and I felt numb.
I could only imagine what my brother, Victor Glover,
was feeling up there.
Hey, everyone, how you doing?
Um, it's been a tough, uh, few days.
I, I keep talking about that juxtaposition of doing this
most incredible, audacious, heroic thing and we get
people up to space and, uh, really hard stuff.
Rocket science is pretty hard,
but civil rights in our country, it ain't rocket science.
For me, this is like deja vu.
It's frustrating and angering, and you look back and you say,
"I cannot believe that all the things that we worked for,
we're going backwards."
I was watching the news, thinking about that
could have been me.
That's the gravity of this situation, right?
It could have been any of us.
There were a lot of emotions and things that
I tried to do to unpack that.
And for me, it helps to talk to other folks
who have had to deal with it, as well.
Station, this is Houston.
Are you ready for the event?
Houston, this is Station.
I am ready for the event.
In the midst of all of this, Victor reached out
to the Black astronauts to have a call.
I was blown away to see all of these names
pop up on the screen,
Mae Jemison, Charlie Bolden,
Guy Bluford.
They were all saying, "What can we do for you?
How can we help you? How can we support you?"
And that just, they were giving me exactly what
I needed by just being there in fellowship.
That was a really transformational call for me.
Until the Victor thing happened,
I wasn't talking to Fred or Guy, or the,
I mean, if I bumped into them, we would maybe say, "Hi,"
or whatever, but it wasn't like we were having
some big legacy discussion and,
"Hey, we got your back. You can do this."
It wasn't like that.
But when Victor went to space, it changed.
We all recognized how difficult it is to get where
we have gotten and want to make sure that you've got
all the support that you can.
We have a little nickname for that group.
We call them the Afronauts.
And so, when I was able to, to have the video conference
with the Afronauts, the main thing that I walked away
from that experience with, is how important it is
to have that group and to be actively connected.
Many years ago, Ed Dwight called me up and
told me that he had been commissioned to do a memorial
for African-Americans in Texas, and, uh,
he described the concept from, you know, slave to space.
On the Texas Memorial, there's only one message that
I'm about, and it has to do with the valid place that
African-Americans should have in this whole American experience,
because every one of my memorials has a storyline
to let people know that we are people of action
and when something has needed to be done,
whether it's for the larger community,
for our own community, we've been there.
Ed told me how the first Blacks arrived in Texas,
also as explorers of this new territory,
how it led to eventually the future.
It really represented not only the development of
this country, but also where we're headed.
Slavery is a critically important part of
the idea of this nation.
It was something that we had to figure out how to overcome
if we were really going to be the kind of nation that
we think we want to be.
Good morning.
I will start with Senator Graham.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The President has nominated someone extraordinarily
talented and qualified for the new NASA administrator.
We inspire the next generation of young Americans to think
big and there is no better example of what you can do
in America than what Major General Bolden has achieved.
So, with that, I heartily recommend his nomination.
Charlie had me at his Senate hearings, so all of a
sudden all kind of wonderful things started happening.
I also would like to take this opportunity to
acknowledge the very special person, Mr. Ed Dwight,
who while not actually becoming an astronaut,
he was a trailblazer in the attempt to break the
color barrier in America's astronaut program.
Once Charlie Bolden took the helm,
NASA finally gave me a tag.
They called me a pioneer, and so that's the name
I'm assigned, a space pioneer.
And I'm an American citizen who really believes
in the idea that is this country.
And ideas are dependent upon people to,
you know, to execute them or to carry them out.
Black history is American history.
We forget it at our peril.
Uh, Victor, can you hear me?
I can. How you doing?
I'm trying to hang in there, buddy.
So, Victor, where are you? Are you in Houston?
VICTOR I'm in Houston. Yes.
I'm in our Public Affairs Building.
Oh, gotcha.
But I'm happy to do this today.
This is like, this is an honor, yeah.
Yeah.
All right, Mr. Dwight, are you ready?
I am ready.
Station, this is Houston.
Are you ready for the event?
Station is ready for the event.
Station, this is Ike.
Watty, can you hear me?
I've got you loud and clear, Ike.
How me?
Awesome. I have you loud and clear.
It's great to talk to you.
And so, Jessica Watkins, I would love to introduce to you
my good friend and mentor, Ed Dwight.
Ed, please say, hi, to,
to Jessica or as we call her, Watty.
Oh, well, hello, Jessica.
This is so exciting to me to see because back in the day,
uh, they, they were saying that Blacks are too ignorant
to be flying in space to, uh,
to hold these important positions.
And I'm smitten, uh, by, uh, by the fact that
you're up there doing all these wonderful things.
It is an honor to meet you.
We are just so grateful for the path that you laid
for us to follow behind,
so thank you so much for everything you've done.
Oh my God, thanks for remembering me.
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.