came across all these different gems of information that could have been the highlight of my career now. co-author richard paul and stephen moss took about ten african-americans that broke the color barrier at nasa and the use of the space program by kennedy and johnson to advance the social change. >> when it's up for the presentation we are here to talk about the book we couldn't fail the space station program it looks at the role in the civil rights in the years before the rights act happened. discrimination was not against the law. it was easy. when we talk about the achievements of the people in the book and when we talk about the rules put in place by the kennedy administration to try to address the workplace discrimination at how they were implemented. so we will be talking about the people whose lives were touched. our book tells the stories of ten men who came to work in the space program during the years that we call the civil rights era and some of them were nasa employees. at the same time he was forced into doing with the rights and icy forced because these are not things he talked about during the campaign. there was a sequence of events that all happened over the course of about six weeks in 1961. he became the first in space and the soviet union now has this cold war victory. april 20 that he comes clear that the bay of pigs has failed and the soviet union now has a face essentially 90 miles off of florida. when it becomes clear that they failed they call vice president johnson who's the chairman of the space council and asks him to come up with something fast because space is going to be the hail mary pass that will change the subject and divert everyone's attention from the loss in cuba so may fifth shepherd becomes the first american in space and may 14, 9 days later the freedom ride starts. the freedom ride as many of you know they get into a bus headed for washington and they head down south and on may 24 day are firebombed. the next day president kennedy says we are greeted with a man on the moon by the end of the decade. the governor of alabama declares martial law and kennedy is now thrown in with both into civil rights and the space program. nasa is about to start hiring 250,000 new people principally in alabama texas, florida, mississippi and louisiana so that is in the heart of the jim crow south and it's going to mean african-americans are going to have a role but he also has another important piece of the story about something that happened a little before that that guarantees civil rights will be a part of the story. >> now that richard has everyone excited president kennedy signed executive order 10925 and he did this because he understood the political reality at the time he couldn't get the civil rights through congress so he had to do something through executive power and that's what he did in an executive order and this shows how that order affected federal agencies and their contractors. when the order was issued its covered 38,000 contractors so the impact of the clause was essentially a myth. at this time nasa was a relatively young and small agency and its mission grew and as as that happened suited to the importance of this order and the pce e. o.. it was between southern poverty and racism. if the activist federal government could sell one it could sell wanted to sell theater and transform the south of a from farming in the technology thereby bringing it into the nation's social and economic mainstream and it was common knowledge in some communities but johnson intended to use the space program to reconstruct a. of johnson wasn't shy after kennedy placed him at the head of the council and the vice president found himself in a position to implement his plan. the president's executive order president's executive order required federal contractors to be equal opportunity employers and this was the first time this would happen. soon after kennedy announced plans to land a limited national firms with connections to the space flight center in alabama began to advertise and poor engineers around the country. contractors proclaimed themselves to be compliant but in july of 1961 houston power and light cut to the destroyer base in galveston texas. the company objected to the inclusion of the anti-disco nation clause in the contract with the navy. vice president johnson called albert upon us and told the congressmen should i tell the president you cannot supply power to the navy, to the navy installation because this is the question. what are you going to do about space? the navy got its power in houston and remains a viable candidate. this is one of the several brushes that they would have in the space age and richard has one of the other ones. >> he didn't do it by accident. it became rice university in 1960 and president whenever he would come down to houston kenneth would be their tour guide. it was his desire to put the patrol in houston. so he arranged for a thousand acres near clear lake and he promised the land for the space center building. albert thomas said this is what tipped the scale and mission control in houston. in exchange in 1962, he got money from nasa and that's where the program started because the original eight p. 91 request provided for the instruction of my texans and with federal money involved, that just wasn't going to work. for the board of trustees they had no appetite for the desegregation. but they did file the lawsuit could change the charter. they would remove the words from the adventure and when they did that, the group of alumni screamed bloody murder and they were outraged and they filed an intervention. his relationship, and the balance until 1965 when the ruling was finally made. now, the experience was typical of the profits as it interacted in the southern facilities and steven has a little bit more on that. there was a popular belief that technological advancement will lead to major social change and that the national academy the communities with advanced ties to industry with the people employed in the research laboratories and in the development of new engineering techniques should display the high level of innovation. florida, alabama, texas, louisiana to see if that was true. many people now believe that it brought legions of socially liberal to the south. they didn't do that either. they found that the space center recruit was from the technicians and technologists raised and trained in the south. the personnel chief told them that 50% of the employees came from alabama. they found very much the same thing. around 38% of the people working in huntsville. nearly 18% worked elsewhere in alabama. 30% of the labor force was from out of state of the largely are largely in the south. in florida about 28% of people were in brevard county in 1965 and worked outside of florida in 1960. he wrote that there seems to be no evidence of strong pressure for negro rights nor strong sympathy among the technologists for civil rights. they appear to be an outside group presenting what would have to be dealt with and in some way which are no concerns that there's. >> bc this attitude playing out in the stories of those that we tallied the book and we are going to tell a few of the stories here. one of the man men named julius montgomerie, julius on summary was the first ever hired on anything other than a janitor at cape canaveral. cape canaveral as you all know was where the rockets left off. he was high year does what was known as a range rat and what that was as if a missile was fired they would go down and get it figured out and what went wrong and fix it. it was in the mid-50s until the time when the ku klux klan controlled. the sheriff and one person we talked with in the book said local businessmen join the clan almost like joining the rotary club. for considering all that ... with the face on the first day of work. >> you don't talk to a man like that. i say forgive me. and then we laughed and shook hands. >> working with a bunch of klansmen at cape canaveral in addition to being the first professional at cape canaveral julius montgomerie also integrated the southern college and we hear a lot in the integration of the southern colleges i know you haven't heard the story of the integration of the florida institute of technology which was founded in 1959 as brevard engineering college. its first building was in a public junior high school because it was a public school that meant blacks were not allowed in. julius montgomerie signed up to be in the first class of the brevard engineering college and when you saw that he'd gotten his undergraduate at tuskegee was trying to call the president of the new college and college of told them that a school would not open. they begged him to please drop out so that the school could open. they agreed he enrolled a year later and the school building and they did allow him in a year later and now the florida institute of technology offers the pioneer award to thank him for this selfless act. not everyone in the book works for the space program. it involves the men used the space program in this case the space age imagery. >> notice we are going coast to coast. this isn't 1963 the men that are instrumental in using the houston space politics to advance the racial politics were clinton need who was a leader as a director of the ymca and he was glad to need to lead them from the southern university during their events. he was a political activist and organizer at the first president and cofounder and he also helped organize the lunch counter sit in and there was a lawsuit at the time and cofounded with stearns. in may 301963 when police officers in birmingham alabama used dogs and fire hoses on protesters and arrested 2500 people stearns and king began to plan what is arguably the most successful civil rights protest that ever happened. jordon cooper the astronaut leaves earth for 34.5 hour spaceflight and that is the longest ever taken. the home of the astronaut planned on may 23 so the plan have protesters infiltrated the crowd along the parade route and they pull the signs off from underneath their clothes and run into the street and stop the parade and bring national media attention to their cause because all of the networks were going to be there covering this parade they had homemade signs under their shirts and jackets and went along the parade route because that's the only way they could do it. we had an audience this morning so they would go from the phones and call and receive calls from headquarters than they would go up to the people of the site of the parade route and whispered instructions. meanwhile the other leaders went to their headquarters at the baptist church which had been recently opened by the reverend bible professor and a begin at 11 a.m. and by 10:30 to staging areas is that they are holding american flags and lining the parade route with their parents and people are in buildings ready to shower down paper into the negotiations. then he calls the church. the parade went on without protest and 30 days later without press coverage or fanfare of a downtown restaurants and movie theaters desegregated previous two years later in april of 65, black leaders with the help of high school students for students from texas for southern university and the university of houston organized 2000 for the protest four the protest march against gradual desegregation. the space-age symbolism against the city were signs that read space age houston, stone age schools. >> the pioneer that we talk about in the book is frank. he never worked for nasa but the work he did for the skin of rockets and missiles was vital to the success. he was one of the u.s. navy's first black officers during world war ii and after the war he decided on a career in engineering. his family said no. become a doctor or maybe a lawyer. he said he was going to become an engineer but as a man in america at that time he knew that he always need to have a plan. >> if i couldn't get a job as an engineer i would need to go to canada or mexico. canada had the virtue of speaking the virtue. >> the chances of getting the job in the united states were about 50/50. so maybe he would go to canada and maybe he would go to mexico. today the equal opportunity and affirmative action were commonplace but that wasn't in 1961 coming into the story come into the story illustrates that. he was refused a management job because of his race and his mentor high airing of the executive saying you cannot do that. we are an equal opportunity employer. and she says he says when he heard those words he jumped up because he never heard of the phrase equal opportunity employee or before and this is an example of equal employment having the role in a person's life. despite he and the first african-american to receive a phd in the engineering he would need to be a racecar more than once in his career. this is how he described the talks that talk that he had more than once with a supervisor. >> you are qualified to be a senior member of us because we thought you were content. >> because you were so advanced. fixing racially quality in the workplace was going to take more than just a presidential signature. >> now i've got something else to talk about. >> the southern university in baton rouge it started a sensation. this is the headline in the chicago defender the college youth to boost into orbit. at the press saudis young men going to nasa. this was for the signal accomplishment at this time and this shows the community was going to help get america to the moon. this was "the new york times." they called the young men social pioneers and also said that they were having trouble recruiting them to come south and the experiences demonstrate why that was the case. it included frank williams, george and morgan watson. in the book we talked with george and morgan watson. the experience demonstrated the problems be talked about. when they got to alabama no one was renting a hotel room or an apartment. they told us about how they all went to a ray charles concert write-down the middle of the aisle. he said the same thing happened with a television set out in the field and again )-right-paren the middle. a.m. african-american recruiter got some homes in the community and that's where they lived during that time despite the efforts to integrate its workforce this is the way things were. >> i don't think there were any workers. >> in fact he told the story about the man walking through the facility one day somebody came up and said are you visiting dignitaries from africa. it hadn't occurred to them black americans could be working at nasa. he said they felt the expectations he has placed upon them. >> we went out of our way to work hard and do whatever it took. we felt that the whole image was riding on us writing on us as professionals and we couldn't fail so we have to do our best. >> they struggled to hire more african-americans in 1964 presidential elections provided a new political challenge that engulfed the agency and the center. the administrator announced in late october that huntsville management personnel might be transferred to new orleans were even california. how much of the statement actually had to do with race is only a matter of conjecture. we do know that qualified blacks and whites refused to jobs because of their race law. putting ray society was a political statement whether it was meant to scare voters in alabama or encourage them elsewhere also remains a mystery. it did however scare the huntsville business community. the president of the home builders association telegraphed that the financial institutions have stopped the construction and land loans. the chairman likened the statement to political blackmail they gave coverage and editorialized that the transfer and subsequent loss of the federal monies would teach alabama governor george wallace that he is free to condemn the central government and of all of the states rights if he wants in alabama but he can't have his cake and eat it too mac. so the other southern states by late 1964 voter bob brown the former nazi and the wartime head of the missile program became the point man on civil rights in alabama. we did the same thing. it was served as the intellectual nerve center for the black community for the unrest. that wasn't the only time that they stepped out in the cause of the race relations. and in december, 1964 speech to the huntsville chamber of commerce he requested they ask are you doing everything in her power to strive for the improvement of racial relations in the city. he acknowledged the fact that the image is marred by civil rights incidents and statements. they went on to urge everyone to federal euros themselves with the equal opportunity section of 1964 and the rights afforded in the obligations and closed by the positions. >> tonight we have only scratched the surface of the information in the book. there's a number of other stories we didn't tell. the story about "he that revised and then governed the town. how george wallace stand in the north was originally supposed to have been in huntsville, a direct challenge to the federal power that nasa represented and to the agency employee who wanted to take a math class. we didn't tell the story of the first would be astronaut or about the african-american inventor of the first telescope ever placed on another planetary body. now, there there's an important question to ask here which is did this have a positive impact. one of the first engineers says as far as he was concerned it certainly did. >> it helped change the federal government to lay the groundwork by showing there were professionals that could do that we prove the fact people that are available that could do it it helped break the wall down. it helped change peoples perception in the south. >> president kennedy said that america had to pursue a space program because there was no knowledge to be gained and rights to be run and used for the progress of all people. in the ways that the president could not have imagined and in doing so the program could help gain new knowledge about the citizens and their abilities. thank you very much and we are happy to take questions. [applause] i'm told for c-span there is a microphone and if you have a question raise your hand and someone will come to you with a microphone. do we have any questions? there was an extra layer and a degree of difficulty when it comes to african-american women. all of the documents that i found in looking after the employment. the skulls were difficult. i did a documentary on the space program which is one of the places and one of the women i talked to said she had wanted to go to emory university. women were not allowed in the engineering school. you couldn't go. number one, it didn't occur to anybody at nasa to ask the women to be anything other than typists but they might not have been able to service. it was an extra hurdle to get over. >> in a non- clerical, that is a double discrimination area. first, the african-american issue and second, women were largely confined to clerical secretarial jobs within most agencies. they were working in the hard numbers and in the nutritional science and other things like that so an african-american woman trying to enter the workforce as an engineer is a rarity and faces an almost impossible job interview given the nature into the time. we should excuse the nature of the time, but time, but it's almost inconceivable that anyone would have hired a better person if that person had even come along. it was hard enough for - to give you an idea in 1963 and 64 and 65 there were 11 african-americans employed at cape canaveral. 11 out of 1500 employees. we don't know if they were all male or female but given that his commission this commission practices at the time and gender issues, it would be for the 1970s and 1980s that starts to make an impact. >> we have any other questions? s.? >> wait for the microphone. >> one of the most interesting part of the story is about the involvement can you talk about how he got involved in the first place? i know this would have been 18 to 20 years at the end of world war ii and so how did he get involved in the first place how did he get involved in the u.s. government in the first place and how was he brought in? he seems like an unlikely ally. >> at the end there was a scramble by the americans and the soviets to see who was going to get a hold of the best. they were really advanced with rockets and missiles in all the scientists were germans and there was a desperate scramble. it was jermaine rocketeer's best tell the story really well and they shipped them off first to texas and then they settled in hunnd then they settled in huntsville alabama. it's finally convinced with a lot. they were put in charge of what is now the marshall space flight center. brown is a very significant person in huntsville alabama. >> i see this as a civilized effect on huntsville. if you talk to people that are there at the time and read the reports created this culture and that actually helped as huntsville became more in the 1950s and 60s. she is central to the success standing up to george wallace because there was no federal politician that had credibility for people in alabama. not president kennedy, not the attorney general kennedy not later president johnson. john brown had gone to the oldest pitcher to get money for the universities research centers. she was one of us and when he starts standing up to george wallace and the alabama legislature on the race issue use, that means something. he's not somebody from somewhere else or a washington bureaucrat he is at huntsville. there were a lot of people that wrote him bringing up the past saying we thought you understood us. and essentially calling him a race traitor standing up and advocating civil rights. whether he was truly a civil libertarian he's seen the light and has been converted or whether he just wanted to build rockets and would say and do whatever cleared the path. >> it depends on what you want to read. and there are good biographies on bob brown this is a wonderful place to start. >> we have a story in the book. when he was preparing to run for president, he decides he is going to invite the national press to come along. he made the decision to come to nasa to say look what i brought to alabama. he decides at the last minute he is going to come along and he also makes a last-minute decision to bring the entire legislature along with him. the biographer gave a transcript and the conversation between brown and jim webb and also the head of the missile agency which was right next to the space flight center talking about how we going to box out george wallace, george wallace is here how are we going to turn the table. they leave the launch pad and strip it down it has a countdown and in attention and the flame and the noise and the rocket just sits there. we will go over and talk to them so george wallace is there and the national press is there and after the test is done they come in and lecture the legislature about the civil rights and that was the number one story in the newspaper the next day. there's nobody that has the gravitas and that had done as much for alabama and could step in and take on somebody like george wallace. there was nobody who was able to do that. do we have any other questions? >> i just read the preface and it tells the story of the first kind of interview with frank williams that got me thinking we are talking to these guys. were they also also interviews or were you able to get face-to-face time. i got a large grant from the foundation to create the document. in the tool that we could bring for all of those that have been interviewed in the book that we could bring came up to washington for the events. he was probably a nine at that point so i called him and i said can you come? said he said one thing, my girlfriend has to come with me and i said your girlfriend? he said yes. she's 90 and she doesn't get around so they were on counseling and morgan watson the first engineer at nasa and julius montgomerie that was the first african-american hired a professional cape canaveral was on the panel with the first african-american woman in space and who had just gotten back from the international space station like a week ago. you've got the whole legacy right up there at this table together. we have the q-and-a and we did an event and afterwards in the green room they had originally played football for the detroit lions. julius isn't a big guy and they are talking about this man of florida and julius says to him - and he told this story about the first day on the job no one would shake my hand, ku klux klan - and he says you astronauts coming you are the bravest people. .. >>

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