American Astronautical Society Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award
 
“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  
 
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.  
 
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.  
 
Contributors: P.J. Blount | Jonathan Coopersmith | Matthew L. Downs | Eric Fenrich | Cathleen Lewis | Cyrus Mody | David S. Molina | Brian C. Odom | Brenda Plummer | Christina K. Roberts | Keith Snedegar | Stephen P. Waring | Margaret A. Weitekamp
 
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.

Sample Chapter(s):

Excerpt

Table of Contents

There are currently no reviews available