But the racial strife continued. Election officials in the South still found ways to deny Negroes the right to vote, which prompted more protests. On March 7, 1965, hundreds of protesters attempted to march from Selma, Alabma, to Montgomery, the state capital, but as they headed over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they faced a wall of local deputies and state troopers, including some on horseback. The officers moved forward, attacking the marchers with tear gas, billy clubs, and electric cattle prods. One of the young leaders, then twenty-five-year-old John Lewis, who eventually would become a longtime congressman, was beaten so badly that his skull was fractured. But television broadcasts of the attack, known thereafter as “Bloody Sunday,” pushed President Johnson a week later to announce in a nationally televised speech that he was sending additional civil rights legislation to Congress.
“There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem,” President Johnson said in the speech. “And we are met here tonight as Americans—not as Democrats or Republicans—we are met here as Americans to solve that problem.”
After congressional approval, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law on August 6, 1965. By then, the United States was engaged in a controversial war in Vietnam. And once again, the country began drafting young men to fight overseas. At about this time, the whole country seemed to take a chaotic turn. Young white activists primarily were protesting the Vietnam War, and young Negroes were parting ways with Dr. King and the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement for a more radical approach. They began growing their natural hair into Afros (and in my girls’ case, trying to curl it tight to resemble an Afro), and “black” soon replaced “Negroes” and “colored” as the preferred term for our race. The “Black Power” message of racial pride, self-love, and economic empowerment was appealing. Those values had been ingrained in me from childhood. But I felt out of step with the changing styles and more combative rhetoric.
My adult children were living on their own, embracing our evolving culture, sporting their Afros, and wearing African-inspired head wraps and clothing. Lawrence and Joylette had settled in East Orange, New Jersey, and she became a homemaker for several years to take care of Laurie and later a son, Troy. Lawrence eventually enrolled at Columbia University and earned an MBA degree. Connie and John, also in New Jersey, eventually added three children to their family—Michele, Greg, and Doug. Kathy had married her college sweetheart, Donald Moore, in a July 1965 ceremony at Carver Memorial, and they were living in Texas. He had graduated from Hampton as an architecture major and second lieutenant from the army’s ROTC there. We worried that he would be deployed to Vietnam, but fortunately he was stationed in El Paso in a teaching role. With our nest empty, Jim and I enjoyed a busy social calendar, and I continued doing what I had always done in good and bad times: serving the community through my church and sorority and working harder than ever.
The pressure was intense at work to meet President Kennedy’s goal of a moon landing by the end of the decade, though he did not live to see us get there. The space project designed to follow Mercury had been named already during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower. It was called Apollo, reminiscent of the Greek god who rode his mythical gold chariot across the sky to bring light to the world. Apollo had been envisioned to carry three astronauts on a variety of missions that included an orbit of the moon. With President Kennedy’s pronouncement, Apollo was dedicated to landing on the moon and doing so under an advanced timetable calculated to beat the Soviets. At the time we were still behind in the Space Race, and our astronauts had yet even to orbit the Earth. There was still so much to learn before conquering the moon. NASA engineers soon recognized that they would need a bridge project to develop and test the technology to accomplish their ultimate goal. That bridge was christened Project Gemini, Latin for “twins,” which would carry two astronauts and use two vehicles.
While Project Gemini was under development, NASA’s first space venture, Project Mercury, wrapped up its missions. It had accomplished its goal of determining that a human could survive in space. On May 16, 1963, astronaut Gordon Cooper flew on Project Mercury’s final mission with a twenty-two-orbit trip over a period of more than thirty-four hours—the longest time yet for one of our astronauts in space. The next year, the first unmanned Gemini test flights were launched, followed in 1965 and 1966 by ten flights with crews that laid the groundwork for Apollo. Gemini astronauts performed a number of important missions that involved changing orbits, rendezvousing with other spacecraft, docking maneuvers, walking in space for the first time, and spending long periods of time there to evaluate the effects. It was also determined that a larger Mission Control Center, which directs each space flight and provides around-the-clock monitoring and technical support, would be needed to send astronauts to the moon. So the Mission Control Center operations moved from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston with the Gemini 4 mission in 1965.
All the while, I worked closely at Langley with engineer Al Hamer on trajectory calculations for the trip to the moon and contingency plans in case of disaster, including how to navigate the spacecraft back home using the stars as a guide if there were an electrical failure. Al and I examined these and other technical topics in four papers that we would publish together between 1963 and 1969. He and I also became great friends. We played bridge at lunchtime with John Young and other engineers in our department. When Al married his wife, Virginia, he planned to invite me to his wedding, but he came to me one day with a pained expression on his face. He said he had gone to his pastor in advance of the wedding to let him know that some friends of his, who happened to be Negro, would be attending. He didn’t want there to be any trouble. He was surprised and disappointed when the pastor told him that Negro guests would not be allowed to attend. Al was so apologetic and angry when he told me, but I just shrugged it off. I was not going to allow his pastor’s backward views to change my opinion of the lovely couple. We would socialize in one another’s homes many times in the years to come.
Finally, NASA was ready to launch the first Apollo flight. On January 27, 1967, less than a month before their scheduled launch, astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom (one of the original seven astronauts in Project Mercury), Edward H. White II, and Roger E. Chaffee climbed aboard the spacecraft for a launch countdown rehearsal at the site in Cape Canaveral. The command module spacecraft was attached to the powerful Saturn 1B rocket, but it was not fueled. Several minor problems caused significant delays, and then at 5:40 p.m., more than four and a half hours after the astronauts boarded, the communications system failed. At 6:30 p.m. Grissom remarked, “How are we going to get to the moon if we can’t talk between three buildings?” A minute later something went terribly wrong, and a fire broke out in the cabin. The flames and toxic smoke quickly intensified and overwhelmed the three astronauts, who were unable to open the inward-opening emergency hatch because of the cabin’s internal pressure and several safety latches. Thick black smoke and toxic fumes flowed heavily from the aircraft and kept pushing nearby technicians back. It was later determined that their gas masks were ineffective. By the time workers outside the cabin were able to remove the hatch and get to the astronauts, all three were dead.
It was late on that Friday evening when I heard the devastating news. This was an unspeakable tragedy that deeply shook everyone even loosely connected to the space program. It made the risks that these space explorers were taking with each journey—and in this case, even preparing for the journey—more real than ever. It was even more difficult, I think, because this catastrophe occurred on Earth, on the ground, in full view of everyone onsite. Yet no one was able to save our guys.
The main cause of the fire was determined to be electrical, but because the rocket wasn’t fueled, the flight test wasn’t deemed hazardous, and emergency preparedness had not been adequate. These were among the findings of an exhaustive investigation into the caus
e of the fire and the astronauts’ deaths. There were also congressional investigations and hearings that questioned NASA’s leadership. While none of us employees knew what the political fallout would be or what the future would hold for the moon mission, we just kept working. We all seemed more determined than ever to do our parts, to learn from any mistakes, to work harder and smarter, and to do all within our power to avoid this kind of devastation again. The spacecraft was redesigned, and every weakness that was identified was addressed.
We had shot for the moon and watched the dream go up in flames. But while the destruction was great, the dream itself was not consumed. As in life, we at NASA learned from the remnants of the Apollo 1 tragedy. We grew stronger, wiser, and kept our sights on the moon.
Chapter 10
Finish Strong
Just eleven months after the three Apollo 1 astronauts died in that tragic fire, another space program tragedy consumed the life of the country’s first black astronaut. But the fatal supersonic jet crash that killed Major Robert H. Lawrence Jr. on December 8, 1967, at Edwards Air Force Base in California, went largely unnoticed. Few people, including me, had even heard his name. Three more decades would pass before he received the proper recognition.
Major Lawrence was among seventeen air force pilots chosen for a space venture, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), a joint project of the US Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office, according to multiple published reports. The program’s secret mission was to launch crews into space and use mini-space stations to obtain high-resolution photographs of our country’s Cold War enemies. But Major Lawrence never got to carry out that mission. He was the backseat instructor in an F-104 Starfighter supersonic jet with another pilot, who was practicing a landing technique—one that would be used in future space shuttle landings—when the jet crashed. Both pilots ejected, but Lawrence, then age thirty-two, was killed instantly. Because of the secrecy of the MOL project, Lawrence’s role was not widely publicized. But controversy erupted in May 1991 when the Astronauts Memorial Foundation dedicated its new Space Mirror Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral to sixteen astronauts who had died in the line of duty, and Lawrence’s name was not included. Under the air force’s rules, Lawrence was not considered an astronaut because he had not completed his training and had not flown at least fifty miles above the Earth’s surface. At NASA, however, a person is considered an astronaut upon acceptance into its astronaut training program. So the name of Apollo 1 astronaut Roger Chaffee and other NASA astronauts killed before making it to space were included on the memorial. It took years of lobbying by Lawrence’s widow, Barbara; his son, Tracey; other family members; and political supporters before the decision-makers did the right thing and finally added Lawrence’s name on the memorial in 1997, thirty years after he died. The MOL program that had trained Major Lawrence for space was canceled in 1969, and its seven youngest astronauts, Major Lawrence’s contemporaries, were transferred to NASA’s space program.
I’m often asked if I knew Major Lawrence, but I can only imagine how much I would have enjoyed meeting such a brilliant young man, who not only had graduated from high school at age sixteen but also earned a PhD in physical chemistry from Ohio State University in 1965 and was a classical pianist. I can only imagine the bridge he could have been to connect NASA to a skeptical Black community that in 1969 felt excluded and left behind as the space agency explored the heavens on the way to the moon.
Many in the black community had never forgiven NASA for the mistreatment of Ed Dwight, who in the early 1960s seemed on track to become the first black astronaut. Dwight was a promising US Air Force pilot with an aeronautical engineering degree from Arizona State University when the Kennedy administration chose him in 1962 to enter the test pilot training program at Edwards Air Force Base in California. NASA selected its astronauts from the training program, and President Kennedy had been eager to find a black pilot who met the qualifications for selection. Black voters had helped to catapult Kennedy into office, and a black astronaut surely would provide an inspiring symbol of hope during tense racial times.
I never met Dwight during those years, but his selection and ultimate completion of the program quickly caught the attention of the black press, and his picture appeared on the covers of the major Black magazines, with accompanying stories touting him as the one most likely to break the color line in space. But when NASA announced its next group of astronauts in October 1963, the ones who most likely would explore the moon, Dwight was not among them. The introduction of the fourteen members of Astronaut Group 3—all white men—punctured the inflated hope of an entire community, which felt betrayed. The June 1965 issue of Ebony magazine featured a long, investigative story that raised questions about Dwight’s experience in the training program. “Still unavailable is a complete accounting from the military-space bureaucracy of the reasons for the apparent stunting of Dwight’s career in space before it ever actually began,” the story said. “Was Dwight rejected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for additional astronaut training at its big manned spaceflight center in Houston for purely technical reasons? Or did other factors—such as Dwight’s race—enter into the decision to deny him a possible role in NASA’s earth-orbiting Project Gemini or the moon venture, Project Apollo?”
Frustrated, Dwight ultimately resigned from the air force in 1966. He later discussed in interviews and in his autobiography the racism he had experienced during the training program at Edwards Air Force Base. He said he was derisively called “Kennedy’s boy” and that when President Kennedy was assassinated a month after the Astronaut 3 group was announced, any chance he might have had to become an astronaut died, too. But despite that searing pain and disappointment, Dwight would go on to pursue his first love, art, and he ultimately became an internationally acclaimed sculptor of African American history. He became a shining example of how to persevere and finish strong when life dishes out devastation beyond your control. I was honored in 2016 to receive an award that was sculpted by Dwight and named in his honor from a black aviators’ nonprofit organization, Shades of Blue.
By working inside the bubble of NASA and rarely talking about my work outside of the office, I had little understanding of the wide gulf between my employer and my people in the late 1960s, as NASA inched closer to the moon. But that tension soon would bubble to the surface for all the world to see at the most critical moment. First, though, the country would suffer another devastating loss. On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. His assassination left a hole in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, and to those of us who believed in the ideals he espoused so eloquently, his death felt personal and gut-wrenching. It didn’t make sense that a man who had spent so much of his life advocating for peace and justice died so violently. But in times like this, I knew better than to lean to my own understanding. I sought solace in my faith. Jim and I grieved with our church family at Carver Presbyterian. Kathy called us from Hampton Institute and told us that the chapel bell on campus was ringing solemnly. She and other students on campus were gathering in their dorm rooms to mourn together and comfort one another. Jim and I prayed for the safety of Joylette and Connie and their families over the next few days as television news reports showed riots spreading to Washington, DC, Baltimore, New York City, Chicago, and other major cities in response to Dr. King’s murder. Enraged rioters set businesses on fire, broke windows, looted from stores, clashed with police, and many lives were lost. We were all hurting, but the retaliation and destruction were so opposite to everything Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement had represented. I wondered when these troubled times would end.
But things only got worse. Just two months later, Robert F. Kennedy, by then a US senator, was shot to death at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just won two important victories in the primary elections and seemed on his way to becoming the Democratic nominee in
the upcoming presidential election. Our country seemed to be dissolving into chaos. Our soldiers were dying in record numbers in Vietnam; students on college campuses across the country were protesting the United States’ involvement in the war; and younger, angrier black voices for change were drowning out the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement.
All I knew to do was burrow into my work. Ironically, the work that I produced during this time would make me prouder than anything else in my entire career at NASA. With the Gemini flights behind us, the Apollo crew was finally ready to get started. My job was in general the same as it had been in previous missions: to compute the orbit to the desired destination and back and compute the launch window, telling the engineers what time the astronauts would get to their destination and what time they would get back to Earth. The calculations for the moon orbit were quite intricate because there were so many factors involved. We had to consider, for example, the rotation of the moon—where it was at that moment, the number of days it would take the astronauts to get there, how far the moon has moved in that time, and where the moon would be by the time the astronauts made it there. The process reminded me a bit of what I was once told about hunting rabbits. A good hunter doesn’t shoot right at the rabbit. You aim where you think the rabbit will be by the time your bullet gets there. We had to know where the moon would be by the time the astronauts arrived. Then, after computing the trajectory to get to the moon, I had to reverse the calculations to get them home. This time I had to consider how far the Earth has rotated. My partner at work, Al Hamer, was an expert in guidance and navigation. One of the interesting studies I worked on with him determined the amount of error that could be tolerated in an orbit. It was called the “error ellipsoid,” which let the astronauts know at what point they would have to make corrections if they were not on the nominal trajectory. That was Al Hamer’s baby.
My Remarkable Journey Page 18