NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement by Brian C Odom

NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement by Brian C Odom

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.

“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

“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.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780813069470
ISBN 10	0813069475
Title	NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement
Author	Brian C Odom
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University Press of Florida
Year published	2022-04-30
Number of pages	266
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable