NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement
NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement
American Astronautical Society Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award
As NASA prepared for the launch of Apollo 11 in July 1969, many African American leaders protested the billions of dollars used to fund “space joyrides” rather than help tackle poverty, inequality, and discrimination at home. This volume examines such tensions as well as the ways in which NASA’s goal of space exploration aligned with the cause of racial equality. It provides new insights into the complex relationship between the space program and the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South and abroad.
Essays explore how thousands of jobs created during the space race offered new opportunities for minorities in places like Huntsville, Alabama, while at the same time segregation at NASA’s satellite tracking station in South Africa led to that facility’s closure. Other topics include black skepticism toward NASA’s framing of space exploration as “for the benefit of all mankind,” NASA’s track record in hiring women and minorities, and the efforts of black activists to increase minority access to education that would lead to greater participation in the space program. The volume also addresses how to best find and preserve archival evidence of African American contributions that are missing from narratives of space exploration.
NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement offers important lessons from history as today’s activists grapple with the distance between social movements like Black Lives Matter and scientific ambitions such as NASA’s mission to Mars.
Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Those interested in the effects of the Civil Rights Movement upon NASA’s policies, specifically in the South, should begin with this anthology.”—Journal of African American History
“This book is important because it pushes beyond . . . well-known intersections between space exploration and civil rights and for the first time gathers together essays that all analyze this significant historical connection from a wide variety of angles.”—Isis
“Offers fresh, informative new perspectives on NASA’s experience with respect to People of Color and women.”—Technology and Culture
“A welcome addition to the complex story of the country’s Civil Rights Movement, and to the history of NASA.”—Choice
“Addresses the minority experience at NASA in the 1960s and 1970s in a more scholarly and thorough way than any previous book. . . . Historians of both space flight and civil rights history would be wise to refer to this book.”—Journal of American History
“Brings together robust literatures on two key topics in twentieth-century United States history: civil rights activism aiming to dismantle white supremacy and space exploration agendas working to widen humanity’s reach beyond the planet. Through eleven stimulating essays, the volume convincingly maintains that the two processes were, in fact, deeply entangled—materially, ideologically, and geographically.”—Journal of Southern History
Shines new light on a variety of civil rights topics within aerospace history.’—Steven Moss, coauthor of We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program ‘The essays in this useful volume present a nice blend of social, cultural, and political history that provides new and exciting insights into the intersection of race and space.’—Kari Frederickson, author of Cold War Dixie: Militarization and Modernization in the American South
Brian C. Odom is a historian at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Stephen P. Waring, chair of the Department of History at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, is coauthor of Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990.
Contents List of Figures Foreword: “How We Tell About the Civil Rights Movement and Why It Matters” Jacquelyn Dowd Hall Introduction: Exploring NASA in the ‘Long’ Civil Rights Movement Brian C. Odom and Stephen P. Waring Part I. New Frameworks 1. Space History Matures—and Reaches a Crossroads Margaret A. Weitekamp 2. Bringing Mankind to the Moon: The Human Rights Narrative in the Space Age P.J. Blount and David Miguel Molina 3. Bringing the Moon to Mankind: The Civil Rights Narrative and the Space Age David Miguel Molina and P.J. Blount Part II. Southern Context 4. The Newest South: Race and Space on the Dixie Frontier Brenda Plummer 5. “Accommodating the Forces of Change”: Civil Rights and Economic Development in Space Age Huntsville, Alabama Matthew L. Downs 6. NASA, the Association of Huntsville Area Contractors, and Equal Employment Opportunity in the ‘Rocket City,’ 1963–1965 Brian C. Odom Part III. International Context 7. Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez and Guion Bluford: The Last Cold War Race Battle Cathleen Lewis 8. The Congressional Black Caucus and the Closure of NASA’s Satellite Tracking Station at Hartebeesthoek, South Africa Keith Snedegar Part IV. Broader Context 9. “A Competence Which Should Be Used”: NASA, Social Movements, and Social Problems in the 1970s Cyrus C. M. Mody 10. The Gates of Opportunity: NASA, Black Activism, and Educational Access Eric Fenrich 11. “Petite Engineer Likes Math, Music” Christina K. Roberts Conclusion: “And Where Do We Go from Here?” Ensuring the Past and Future History of Space Jonathan Coopersmith List of Contributors Index
