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The trip to space will solidify his title as the oldest person to travel to space. Captain Edward J Dwight (center), the first African American to have entered the Air Force training program from which NASA selected astronauts, pictured with fellow pilots at Edwards Air Force Base in California, circa April 1963.
Man Who Missed Shot at Becoming First Black Astronaut Will Finally Go Into Space at 90 hngn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hngn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It wasn’t until 1983 that the first African American, Guion Bluford, reached space. But two decades earlier, Ed Dwight found himself at a fulcrum of 20th Century American history, where the space race and the struggle for social justice converged. An accomplished Air Force pilot, Dwight was groomed by John F. Kennedy s White House to be the first Black astronaut. But in training, he faced discrimination that detoured his path. In recent years, Dwight s story has received renewed attention. Now 90, he s widely celebrated as a pioneer to all of the Black astronauts that followed him.