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
the law. it was legal you can t use this because you re black. it s an important distinction that will become more so as we talk about achievements of the people in this book. when we talk about the rules put in placed by the kennedy administration and how they were influenced by nasa and contractors. our book tells the story that ten men, most people that came to work in the space program in the year that we call the civil rights era, some of them went after employees and some contractors. kennedy was forced to deal with civil rights. these are not things that he talked about the campaign. he didn t bring either of these issues but there was a sequence of events that all happened during the course about six weeks in 1961. i m talking about them. april 12th, first human being in space and the solve soviet union, first than the united states. soviet union now has essentially 90 miles off of florida. when it becomes clear, president kennedy calls vice president johnson who is
the first african-americans in the space program. moss: i first heard about the african-americans in the space program and nasa s involvement with civil rights and racially quality when i was at texas tech in 1995. when i was doing research for a paper, i started noticing little back page articles about the sint-ins at huntsville. there is the marshall space flight center in huntsville. articles,smaller back page, two paragraphs, but they were all in nasa locations or nasa home states. i decided there had to be a connection, a bigger story. nasa was the federal government under president kennedy and president johnson. they were advocates of desegregation or racial equality and equal employment. there have to be some story there. there were too many little threads not to have a whole sweater somewhere out there. there was more of a story than i was able to tell back in 1995 and 1996 and 1997. that s what is shown in the book. the stories of these men, some of whom worked for
it looks at nasa s role in civil rights in the years before the civil rights act pass. before the civil rights act passed discrimination was not against of law. it was legal to say no, you cannot use this toilet, you are black or you cannot come into this restaurant, you are black and that is an important distinction that will become even more important as we talk about the achievements of some of the people in this book. we will be talking about the rules put in place by the tonedy administration address discrimination and how they were implemented by nasa and its contractors. we will be talking about the people whose lives were touched those rules. our books tell the story of men most of them who came to work at the program during the civil some were nasa employees and some of them worked for contractors. president kennedy was forced into dealing with outerspace at the same time and forced into dealing with civil rights. these are not things he talked about during the campa
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