>> we're here to talk about our book, we could not fail: the first african-americans in the space program. it looks at nasa's role in civil rights in the years before the civil rights act passed, and that's an important distinction. because before the civil rights act passed, discrimination was not against the law. it was legal to say, no, you can't use this toilet, you're black. or, no, you can't come into this restaurant, you're black, which is an important distinction that will become even more so as we talk about the achievements of some of the people in this book. we'll be talking about the rules put in place by the kennedy administration to try and address workplace discrimination and how they were implemented by nasa and by its contractors. but more importantly, we'll be talking about the people whose lives were touched by those rules. our book tells the stories of ten men, most of whom came to work in the space program during the years that we call the civil rights era, and some of them were nasa employees, and some of them worked for agency contractors. now, president kennedy was forced into dealing with outer space at the same time he was forced into dealing with civil rights. i say forced, because these are not things he talked about during the campaign. but there was a sequence of events tying space and civil rights together that all happened over the course of about six weeks in 1961. i'm talking about april 12th, uri get garre ran becomes the first human in space, and the soviet union has now won this important cold war victory. they have gotten into space before the united states. april 20th, it becomes clear that the bay of pigs, the bay of pigs has failed. and the soviet union now has a base, essentially, 90 miles off of florida. when it becomes clear that the bay of pigs has failed, president kennedy calls vice president johnson -- who is the chairman of the space council -- and asks him to come up with something fast in space. because space is going to be the big hail mary pass that's going to change the subject and divert everybody's attention from the loss in cuba. so may 5th, alan shepard becomes the first american in space. may 14th, nine days later, the freedom rides start. the freedom rides, as many of you know, seven black, six white young people get into a bus headed for washington -- started in washington, d.c., headed for new orleans with the whites in the backseat and the blacks in the front. they head down south, and on may 24th, their bus is fire bombed in aniston, alabama. that's may 24th. may 25th, the next day, president kennedy says we're going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. a week later mobs riot in montgomery, alabama, and the governor of alabama declares martial law, and president kennedy is now thrown in with both feet 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, in part -- the fact that this is in the heart of the jim crow south -- is going to mean that african-americans are going to have a role, but steven also has another very important piece of the story about something that happened a little bit before that that guarantees that civil rights will be a part of this story. >> now that richard has everyone very excited, i get federal hiring policy. [laughter] so president kennedy signed executive order 10925 on march 6, 1961, and he did this because he understood the political realities of his time. he couldn't get civil rights through congress, so he had to do manager through executive power. -- do something through executive power, and that's exactly what he did, an executive order. and this slide shows how that order affected federal agencies and their contractors. when the order was issued, it covered 38,000 contractors, and so the impact of the anti-discrimination clause was potentially immense. at the time nasa was a young and relatively small agency, but it and its mission grew. and as that happened, so did the importance of this order and the pceeo on agency affairs. lyndon johnson believed there was a link between southern poverty and southern racism. if an activist federal government could solve one, he thought, it could solve the other and transform the south away from farming and towards technology. thereby bringing it into the nation's social and economic mainstream. and it was common knowledge in some african-american communities that johnson intended to use the space program to reconstruct the south. johnson was not shy about promoting this idea. after kennedy placed him at the heads of both the national space could be -- council and the pceeo, the vice president found himself in a position to implement his plan. the 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 on the moon, national firms with connections to the marshall space flight center in alabama began to advertise for engineers and technicians around the country. nasa contractors very quickly proclaimed themselves to be eeo compliant. but not every vendor embraced the order. in july of 1961, houston power and light cut power to the pelican island destroyer base in galveston, texas, thus jeopardizing houston's hope to host the manned space flight center. the company objected to the inclusion of an anti-discrimination clause in its contract with the navy. vice president johnson called albert thomas and told the houston congressman shall i tell the president you cannot supply power to the navy? to a navy installation there because of the negro question? and what are you going to do about space? the navy got its power, and houston remained a viable site candidate. now, this is just one of the several brushes that houston would have with civil rights in the space age. and richard has one of the other ones. >> president kennedy made probably his most moving speech about space at rice university. he did not do it at rice by accident. the rice institute became rice university in 1960, and the school's president was a man named kenneth pitzer. and whenever nasa would come down to houston, kenneth pitzer would be their tour guide. it was his desire to get nasa to put mission control in houston. so the school's president, kenneth pitzer, he arranged for -- humble oil gave rice a thousand acres near clear lake. and rice promised the land to nasa for the manned space center building. congressman albert thomas said this is what tipped the scales and put mission control in houston. in exchange, in 1962 rice got some money from nasa, and that's where the problems started, because william marsh rice's original 1891 bequest provided for the free instruction of white texans. and with federal money involved, that just was not going to work. so the board of trustees at rice, they had really no appetite for desegregation, but they did file a lawsuit to change rice's charter and admit black students. they filed a separate suit to remove the words "white" and "free" from the founders' indenture, and when they did that, a group of alumni screamed bloody murder, they were outraged, and they filed an intervention plea. and rice's relationship with nasa hung in the balance until 1965 when a ruling was finally made. now, the experience with rice was typical of the problems that nasa faced as it interacted with its southern facilities, and steven has a little bit more on that now. >> the national academy of sciences did an evaluation of the principal space communities in the early 1960s, and there was a popular belief then that technological advancement will lead to major social change. and as the national academy put it, communities with advanced types of industry with their people employed in research laboratories and in the development of new engineering techniques should display a high level of social innovation. the academy sent a socialologist named peter dod to the space communities in florida, alabama, texas, mississippi and alabama to see if that was true. it wasn't. many people then, and still now, believe that the space program brought legions of social hi-liberal yankee -- socially-lib y'all yankee rocket scientists to the south. it didn't do that either. dodd found that the space centers recruit heavily from technicians and technologists raised and trained in the south. the personnel chief of the huntsville center told them 50% of its employees came from alabama. dodd found the same was true at cape canaveral in florida. in her book "the political economy of the space program," economist mary holdman found much the same thing. around 38% of the people working in huntsville in 1965 worked in the area this 1960. -- in 1960. nearly 18% worked elsewhere in alabama. 30% of the labor force was from out of state, though largely from the south. in florida she found that about 28% of people employed in brevard county in 1965 worked outside of florida in 1960. dodd wrote that there seems to be no evidence of strong pressure for negro rights, nor of strong sympathy among technologists around civil rights. negroes appeared to be an outside group, presenting demands which would have to be dealt with in some way but which are no concern of theirs. >> we see this attitude playing out in the stories of the men who we tell in the book, and we're going to tell a few of those stories here. one of them is a hand named julius montgomery -- a man named julius montgomery. he was the first african-american ever hired as anything other than a janitor at cape canaveral. cape canaveral, as you all know, is where the rockets lifted off for the moon. he was hired as what was known as a range rat. and what that was was if a missile misfired, the range rats would go down range, get the missiles, figure out went wrong and fix it. julius was hired in the mid 1950s at a time when the ku klux klan controlled east central florida. the sheriff of orange county was a klansman. one person we talked with said local businessmen joined the klan almost like joining the rotary club. so considering all that, this is what julius montgomery faced on his first day of work. >> i was there, nobody was shaking my hand. i got to the last fellow -- [laughter] how are you, i'm julius montgomery. boy, you don't talk to a white man like that. [laughter] i said, oh, forgive me, oh, great white bastard. [laughter] i really did say that. [laughter] and he laughed, i laughed, and then we shook hands. >> which gives you a sense of day-to-day life for julius montgomery working with a bunch of klansmen at cape canaveral. in addition to being the first african-american professional, julius montgomery also integrated a southern college. we hear a lot of stories in the civil rights literature about the integration of southern college. i know you have not 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. now, because it was a public school, that meant blacks were not allowed in. julius montgomery signed up to be in the first palace of brevard engineering college, and the superintendent of schools -- when he saw that a black man who had gotten his undergraduate at tuskegee, -- was trying to enrol in this college, he told them the school would not open if julius montgomery was a student there. the president of the college begged julius montgomery to, please, drop out of the school so that the school could open. and in an act of what i consider to be immense selflessness, julius montgomery agreed. he enrolled a year later, and the school did open, they did allow him in a year later, and now the florida institute of technology every year offers the julius montgomery pioneer award to an african-american who has made a contribution to the community. to thank him for this selfless act. now, not everyone in our book worked for the space program. the next story that steven is going to tell involves three men who used the space program -- in this case space age imagery -- to achieve a civil rights victory in houston. >> notice we're going from coast to coast here on the space crescent. now, this is in 1963, and the three men who are instrumental this using houston's space politics to advance racial politics were quinnton meese who was executive director of the bag by street ymca. and he would let student protesters use the y as a headquarters during their events. another was -- [inaudible] sterns. he was a political activist and a student organizer. he was the first president and a co-founder of the tsu progressive youth association. and he also helped organize the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins in houston. and with him was otis king, a law student at tsu at the time. he also helped with the 1960 sit-ins and co-founded the pya with sterns. they started planning something in may 3rd of 1963 when police officers in birmingham, alabama, used dogs and fire hoses on protesters and arrested 2500 people. angered by these events, sterns and king began to plan what is arguably the most successful civil rights protest that never happened. may 15th, gordon cooper -- the astronaut -- leaves earth for a 34-and-a-half hour space flight, and that's the longest up to that time ever taken by an american. houston, the home of the astronauts, planned a ticker tape parade through the down to town for cooper on may 23rd. so the plan from otis king and sterns, have protesters infiltrate the crowd along the parade route. and on the appointed time and signal, they'd all signs out from underneath their clothes, run into the street, stop the parade and bring national media attention to their cause, because all of the networks were going to be there covering this parade live. and on the day of the parade, the pya protesters took their places. they hid homemade signs under their shirts and jackets. they went along the parade route, and they kept an eye out for the nearest pay phone to call headquarters because that's the only way they could do it. we had an audience this morning where nobody really knew what pay phones were. [laughter] and so runners would go from these phones and call and receive calls from headquarters, and then they would go up to the people on the side of the parade route and whisper instructions. meanwhile, king and sterns and the other pya leaders went to their headquarters at the wheeler avenue baptist church which had been recently opened by the reverend bill lawson, a tsu bible professor. and the parade is set to begin at 11 a.m. and by 10:30 the staging area is set, children are holding american flags, they're lining the parade route with their parents, people are in buildings ready to shower down paper and ticker tape, and the negotiations still went on. then at 10:40, 20 minutes before the protesters reach their fail safe, meese calls the church. the pya had won. the parade went on without protest, and 30 days later -- without press coverage or fanfare -- downtown restaurants and movie theaters desegregated. two years later, in april of 965 -- 1965, black leaders with the help of high school students, students from texas southern university and the university of houston organized 2,000 blacks for a protest march against gradual desegregation. they turned houston's space age symbolism against the city with signs that read space age houston, stone age schools. >> another pioneer who we talk about in the book is a man named frank crossley. he never worked for nasa, but the work that he did developing alloys for the skins of rockets and missiles was vital to nasa's success. he was one of the u.s. navy's first black officers during world war ii. after the war he decided on a career in engineering. his family had said, no, become a doctor, maybe become a lawyer. he said he was going to become an engineer, but as a black man in america at that time, he knew he always needed to have a plan b. >> if i couldn't get a job as an engineer, i would either go to canada or mexico. canada had the virtue of speaking english, and mexico had the virtue of having colored people. [laughter] >> he said he figured his chances of getting a job in the united states as a black man were about 50/50, so maybe he'd go to canada or mexico instead. today the terms equal opportunity and affirmative action are common place, but that was not the case in 1961, and frank's story illustrates that. he was refused a management job because of his race, and his mentor challenged the decision saying to the higher-ups, you cannot do that. we are an equal opportunity employer. and crossley says when he heard those words, he jumped up with a start. he had never heard the phrase equal opportunity employer before. and this is an example of equal employment actually having a role in a person's life. now, despite being the first african-american to ever receive a ph.d. in metallurgical engineering, he would meet a race bar more than once in his career. this is how he described a talk that he said he had more than once with a supervise. >> oh, yes, you're qualified to be a senior member, but because you're so advanced for a negro, we thought you were content. >> we thought you were content because you were so advanced for a negro. fixing racial equality in the workplace was going to take more than just a presidential signature. oh, i'm sorry. and now i stay at the podium because i've got something else to talk about. nasa's first co-op students from a historically black college came from southern university in baton rooming. and when they started at -- baton rouge. when they started at nasa, it caused a sensation in the black press. negro college youth to first moongoer into orbit. the black press saw these young men going to that is saw as an achievement for the nation's african-americans as a whole. the space program was america's single accomplishment at this time, and this showed that the black community, too, was going to help get america to the moon. now, it wasn't just the black press that noticed. this was "the new york times." it called the young men social pioneers. it also said that nasa was having trouble recruiting african-american engineers to come south, and the experience that the co-op students had in alabama demonstrates why that was the case. the group included tommy -- [inaudible] frank williams, george borda and morgan watson. and in the book we talked principally with george borda and with morgan watson. the co-op's experience demonstrated the problems "the new york times" talked about. when they got to alabama, no one would rent them a hotel room or an apartment to live in. morgan watson told us about the guys all went to a ray charles concert in huntsville, and there was a rope right down the middle of the aisle with blacks on one side and whites on the other so that, god forbid, nobody would dance together. he said the same thing happened at the muhammad ali fight with a rope right down the middle of the field with the blacks on one side and the whites on another. an african-american recruiter at nasa in huntsville got the young men homes in the black community in huntsville, and that's where they lived during their time there. despite nasa's efforts to integrate its work force, this is the way things were at nasa at the time that the co-op students got there according to morgan watson. >> black professionals at all. i don't even think there were any clerical workers. i remember some groundskeepers and janitors -- >> he says there were no black professionals at all. in fact, he told the story about the young men walking through the nasa facility one day in their white shirts and skinny black ties and said, oh, excuse me, are you visiting dig in tears from -- dignitaries from africa? it hadn't occurred to them that black americans could be working at nasa. morgan watson said the young men felt the expectations that the black press had placed upon them. >> and we went out of our way to study late, to work hard and do whatever it took to -- well, we felt that the whole image of black people were riding on us as professionals, and we couldn't fail. we had to go forward and do our best. >> and while nasa struggled to hire more african-americans, the 1964 presidential election provided a new political challenge that engulfed the agency and the marshall center. that is saw administrator webb announced in late october that huntsville management personnel might be transferred to new orleans or even to california. now, how much of webb's statement actually had to do with race is all a matter of conjecture. we do know that qualified blacks and whites refused jobs at marshall because of alabama's race laws and the violent enforcement of those laws. the state's reputation for bigotry also contributed to recruiting and retention problems for nasa is. putting race aside, the threat to move 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. jim dunn, the president of the home builders' association of huntsville, telegraphed the white house within days of webb's announcement to report that financial institutions had stopped construction loans. republican national chairman dean birch likened webb's statement to political blackmail. the baltimore afro-american gave the story front page coverage and editorialized that a that is saw transfer and the subsequent -- nasa transfer and the subsequent loss of federal money would teach alabama governor george wallace that he is free to curse and damn the central government and have all the states' rights he wants in alabama, but he can't have his cake and eat it too. johnson won the election but lost alabama and other southern states. and by late 1964, werner von braun, the head of the center, the former nazi and the wartime head of the missile program became nasa's point man on civil rights in alabama. [laughter] yea, we laughed too. in november in a move demonstrating new federal activism on civil rights, nasa sent van brawn to -- von braun to mills college. it served as the intellectual nerve center for the black community during the birmingham unrest. and that wasn't the only time that von braun stepped out in the cause of race relations. and in a december 1964 speech to the huntsville chamber of commerce, he requested that attendees ask themselves are you doing everything in your power to strive for fair employment and improvement of racial relations in our city? he acknowledged that we should all admit this fact: alabama's image is marred by civil rights incidents and statements. he went on to urge everyone to familiarize themselves with the equal opportunity section of the civil rights act of 1964 and the rights afforded and the obligations imposed by its provisions. >> now, tonight we have really only scratched the surface of information in our book. there are a number of other stories we didn't tell. the story about a nasa employee who revived and then governed a defunct blacktown, how george wallace's stand in the school mouths door was originally -- schoolhouse door was originally supposed to happen in huntsville, a direct challenge to the federal power nasa represented and to an agency employee who wanted to take a math class. we didn't tell the story of the first would-be african-american astronaut or about the african-american inventer of the first telescope ever placed on another planetary body. now, there's an important question to ask here which is did any of this matter? did it have a positive impact? morgan watson, one of nasa's first black engineers, says as far as he was concerned it certainly did. >> certainly helped change not only nasa, but the whole federal government lay the groundwork from the military on for blacks to be integrated into the workplace. by showing that there were black professionals who could do that, you proved the fact that people were available that could do it. it helped to break the walls down. it helped change people's perception of black people in the south. >> president kennedy said that america had to pursue a space program because there was new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won and used for the progress of all people. now, of course, he was not talking about american race relations when he said that, but an accident of timing and coincidence insured that the space program would help win rights and create roll for african-american people -- and create progress for african-american people in ways that the president could not have imagined. and in doing so, the space program would help white americans gain new knowledge about their black fellow citizens and their abilities. thank you very much, and we're happy to take questions. [applause] i'm told that for c-span there's a microphone, and if you have a question, raise your hand and someone will come to you with the microphone. do we have any questions? yes. >> you guys are profiling black men. is black women -- is that a topic in your book? >> well, so there was an extra layer of, an extra degree of difficulty when it comes to african-american women. the -- all of the documents that i found in looking this the nasa employment and equal employment materials would say things like, well, we brought in 110 negro women from alabama a&m, and we gave them the typing test, and none of 'em passed. it never occurred to anybody that women might be mathematicians, might have engineers -- well, engineering skills was difficult. i did a documentary on the first african-americans in the space program which is one of the places where this got started, but i also did one in that same group about the first women in the space program. and one of the women i talked to in that program said that she had wanted to go to emory university to study engineering. women were not allowed in the engineering school. i mean, you couldn't go. and i think that that was the case in many other engineering schools around the country. so, number one, it didn't occur to anybody at nasa to ask women to be anything other than typists. but, you know, they might not have been able to -- so, i mean, it was an extra hurdle to get over. it was tough enough to be african-american, but to be a woman on top of that was even harder. did you have -- >> yeah. there are some instances at some facilities, i think, of african-american women in non-clerical. but that is a double discrimination area. first, the african-american issue and, second, women were largely confined to clerical, secretarial jobs within most federal agencies, i think, definitely within nasa. and even into the 1970s if you start to look at some of the demographics, women weren't really working in very large numbers in the so-called hard sciences. they were in nutritional sciences and other things like that. so an african-american woman trying to enter the nasa work force as an engineer is a rarity and faces an almost impossible job interview given the nature of the time. that shouldn't excuse the nature of the time, but it, as richard said, it's almost inconceivable that anyone would have hired that person if that person had even come along. it was hard enough for -- well, to give you an idea in 1963 and 1964 and '65, there were 11 african-americans employed by nasa at cape canaveral. 31 out of -- 11 out of 1500 employees. at mississippi in 1965 there were zero nasa african-american employees, but 750 african-americans employed by nasa contractors. now, we don't know if those were all male or female, but given the discrimination practices of the time and gender issues, it would be really until the 1970s and 1980s that women really started to make an impact. >> do we have any other questions? yes. wait for the microphone. >> one of the most interesting parts of this story i always think is werner von braun's involvement. can you talk a little bit more about how he got involved in the first place? i know this would have been 18-20 years after the end of world war ii, and so how did he get involved with nasa in the first place, how did he get involved with the u.s. government in the first place, kind of how was he brought in? he seems like a really unlikely kind of ally. >> so at the end of the second world war, there was a scramble by the americans and the soviets to see who was going to get hold of the best german rocket scientists. you know, the nazis were really advanced. the germans were really advanced with rockets and missiles. and all of the best scientists were germans. and there was a desperate scramble between the americans and the russians. there's a great new book out at auburn university called "german rock tiers in the heart of dixie." that tells the story really, really well. and the americans got von braun, and a lot of his key men, and shipped them off first to texas -- >> i think first they were in new mexico -- >> they were in new mexico. white sands, new mexico. then they brought them to fort bliss in texas, and then they settled in huntsville, alabama. and so in the 1950s when the eisenhower administration is finally convinced through a lot of arm twisting to start a civilian space program, werner von braun is put in charge of what is now, what then becomes the marshall space flight center which is the place where the rockets are built and tested. so von braun is a very significant person in huntsville, alabama. and, steven, you talked in your original paper about the influence that the germans had -- >> well, the germans came -- i don't want to say it was a civilizing effect on huntsville, but they brought a european coz 40 poll tan sense -- cosmopolitan sense to the community. and if you talk to people who were there at the time and read the reports from the mayors and all of that, the germans saved huntsville and created this whole culture. and that actually helped a lot as huntsville became much more progressive relative to the rest of alabama in the 1950s and '60s. von braun is central to nasa's success as an engineer, and he's central to nasa's success in standing up to george wallace, because there was no federal politician that had that credibility to people in alabama. not president kennedy, not attorney general kennedy, not later president johnson. this is von braun. he had gone to the legislature several times to get money for universities, research centers. this was von braun. he was one of us. and when he starts standing up to george wallace and the alabama legislature on race issues, that means something. he's not a yankee, he's not somebody from somewhere else, he's not a washington bureaucrat, he's the guy this huntsville. >> that's right. >> and if you ever get a chance to read the hate mail that he received -- [laughter] there were a lot of people who wrote him bringing up his past during the war and saying we thought you understood us. and, essentially, calling him a race traitor for standing up and and advocating civil rights here in alabama. so his was an evolution. now, whether he was truly a civil libertarian, he had seen the light and been converted or whether he just wanted to build rockets and he would say and do whatever cleared that path -- >> yeah. >> -- depends on which biography you want to read. [laughter] and who you want to believe. and there are some very good biographies. mike new fed's von braun is a wonderful place to start and possibly even finish. >> yeah. and we have a story in the book of george wallace when he was preparing to run for president -- he ran for president in 1968, and he's gearing up to run for president. and he decides that he's going to invite the national press to come along on something that he called the real alabama tour. he's going to show them the real alabama, not all this stuff that you hear about in the media. and he makes a decision to come to nasa because he loved to sort of glom on to nas is -- nasa and say look what i brought to alabama. and he decides at the last minute that he is going to come along with this cadre of national press, and he also makes a last minute decision to bring the entire alabama legislature along with him. and mike newfeld, who was von braun's biographer, gave me a transcript of -- von braun's phone was bugged. and it's a conversation between von braun and jim webb, the head of nasa, and also the head of the army ballistic missile agency which was right next to the marshall space flight center talking about, all right, how are we going to box out george wallace? wallace is coming here, how are we going the turn the tables on wallace and make this a nasa event rather than a george wallace event? and it's von braun who comes up with the idea why don't we have a saturn 5 engine test. now, it's a rocket launch except the rocket never leaves the launch pad. they strap it down, it's got the countdown and the tension and the flames and the noise, and the rocket just sits there. and von braun says we'll have a saturn 5 engine test, and we'll pan all of the alabama legislature and george wallace, and we'll pen them in where they can't go for security reasons. we'll tell them it's for security reasons. and when they're all sitting there, we'll go over and talk to them. and so they have the rocket test. the alabama legislature's there, george wallace is there, the national press is there. and after the engine test is done, webb and von braun come in and lecture george wallace and the alabama legislature about civil rights. and that was the number one story in the newspapers the next day. george wall hayes had a press conference that -- wallace had a press conference that night. nobody asked any questions. the reporters were, like, we don't care about this. but as steven said, there was nobody who had the gravitas and the, and who had done as much for alabama and could step in and take on somebody like george wallace, there was no one like werner von braun who was able to do that. do we have any other questions? anyone? yes. >> all right. well, i just got the book. i just read the preface, and it tells the story of the first kind of failed phone interview with frank williams. so it got me thinking, you know, you're talking to these guys, were they all phone interviews, or were you ever actually able to get face-to-face time with them? if so, are there any interesting interpersonal anecdotes that you might want to share probably not appropriate in the context of the book but might help shed some light -- >> my favorite, i got a large grant from the national science foundation to create the documentary and then create a series of programs for kids at the national air and space museum. and so all who we could bring who, all of the men who had been interviewed in the book who we could bring came up to washington for events. and we had -- well, first of all, julius montgomery who was probably 89 at that point, he -- i called him up, and i said, so, can you come? he said, well, yeah, i can come. one thing, my girlfriend has to come with me. and i said, your girlfriend? he said, yeah, yeah. and we got a problem because she's 90, and she don't get around too good. [laughter] so julius and his girlfriend and also morgan watson, and they were on a panel. so it was morgan watson, the first african-american engineer at nasa, julius montgomery, who was the first african-american hired as a professional at cape canaveral on a panel with may gemson who was the first african-american woman in space and leland melvin who was african-american and had just gotten back from the international space stationing like a week ago. station, like, a week ago. you've got the whole legacy right up there at this table together. we had a q&a, and we did an event. and afterwards in the green room, julius went up to leland. leland melvin had originally played football for the detroit lions. i mean, the guy is enormous. and julius is not a big guy. and he's there, and he's talking to him, and they're talking about this and that and talking about florida and stuff is. and julius says to him, he says, you know -- and julius had told this story about the first day on the job, no one would shake my hand, ku klux klan, all of it. and he says to leland melvin, he says, you astronauts, you're the bravest people i ever met. and leland melvin looks down at him, and he says, no, sir, he says, i hared your story out there -- i heard your story out there. you are the bravest person i've ever met. it was such a beautiful moment, just such a beautiful moment. and i said in the book, and i said and leland laughed, and julius laughed, and then they shook hands. so that was, it was a really, really nice moment. do we have any other questions? anyone else? everybody, we'll be signing books over here, i think. thank you all very much. thank you so much for having us, and thank you to c-span. 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