Kennedy called his parents to congratulate them. That November, Dwight received a letter out of the blue inviting him to train to be an astronaut. Only Dwight met the criteria, which included 1,500 hours of flying jet airplanes, a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering (Dwight graduated with an aeronautical engineering degree from Arizona State University in 1957) and three consecutive “outstanding” ratings from military superiors. When the Aerospace Research Pilot School was established that November, the White House urged the Air Force to select a Black officer. “If your boys were to enroll and train a qualified Negro and then fly him in whatever vehicle is available, we could retell our whole space effort to whole non-white world, which is most of it.” “Why don’t we put the first non-white man in space?” wrote Murrow. Information Agency, wrote to NASA administrator James Webb. The first astronauts, the Mercury Seven, were all male and white. began pursuing a space program, political leaders were conscious of the image its astronauts could project of American democracy. “I thought these dudes going into space was the craziest thing I had ever heard in my life.”īut as the U.S. But Dwight still wasn’t thinking about becoming an astronaut. In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit, it jolted its Cold War rival into action NASA was formed the following year. He remembers sitting on Satchel Paige’s lap as a child - just one more connection to history running through Dwight’s life. His father, known as Eddie Dwight, played in the Negro Leagues for the Kansas City Monarchs. “There’s the history we know and the history that’s not had the opportunity to be highlighted.”ĭwight had experience at a young age with that. “Ed is so important for everyone who’s followed after, to recognize and embrace the shoulders they stand on,” says Lisa Cortés, who directed the film with Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. “So to see a Black man in space during that period in time, it would have changed things.” “Space really allows us to realize the hope that’s within all of us as human beings,” Harris says. In “The Space Race,” astronaut Bernard Harris, who became the first Black man to walk in space in 1995, contemplates what a difference it might have made if Dwight had become an astronaut in the tumultuous ’60s. But two decades earlier, Dwight found himself at a fulcrum of 20th Century America, where the space race and the struggle for social justice converged. It wasn’t until 1983 that the first African American, Guion Bluford, reached space. But I’m kind of glad it did because something happened here.” It’s almost amusing to me that all this furor could come up. “Now it comes back full force as one of these I-didn’t-know stories. He’s off the map,’” Dwight said in an interview by Zoom from his home in Denver. “When I left, everyone said, ‘Well, that’s over. The new National Geographic documentary “The Space Race,” which premieres Monday on National Geographic Channels and streams Tuesday on Disney+ and Hulu, chronicles the stories of Black astronauts - and their first pioneer, Dwight. “I went straight to the recruitment office and said, ‘I want to fly.’”īut in recent years, Dwight is finally being celebrated. “I said, ‘Oh my God, they’re letting Black people fly,’” Dwight says. But while in college, he saw in a newspaper, above the fold, an image of a downed Black pilot in Korea. “It was the white man’s domain,” he says. It would be years before Dwight entertained the idea of himself becoming a pilot. “There were no streets or stop signs up there. “My first flight was the most exhilarating thing in the world,” says Dwight, smiling. But when he was 8 or 9, Dwight asked for more than a dime. “They’d say to me, ‘Hey kid, would you clean my airplane? I’ll give you a dime,’” Dwight, 90, recalls. Most were flying back from hunting trips and their cabins were messy with blood and empty beers cans on the floor. An airfield was within walking distance, and, as a boy, he’d often go to marvel at the planes and gawk at the pilots. NEW YORK (AP) - Ed Dwight grew up in segregated 1930s Kansas on a farm on the edge of town.
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