As NASA prepared for the launch of Apollo 11 in July 1969, many African American leaders protested the billions of dollars used to fund "space joyrides" rather than help tackle poverty, inequality, and discrimination at home. This volume examines such tensions as well as the ways in which NASA's goal of space exploration aligned with the cause of racial equality. It provides new insights into the complex relationship between the space program and the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South and abroad. Essays explore how thousands of jobs created during the space race offered new opportunities for minorities in places like Huntsville, Alabama, while at the same time segregation at NASA's satellite tracking station in South Africa led to that facility's closure. Other topics include black skepticism toward NASA's framing of space exploration as "for the benefit of all mankind," NASA's track record in hiring women and minorities, and the efforts of black activists to increase minority access to education that would lead to greater participation in the space program. The volume also addresses how to best find and preserve archival evidence of African American contributions that are missing from narratives of space exploration. NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement offers important lessons from history as today's activists grapple with the distance between social movements like Black Lives Matter and scientific ambitions such as NASA's mission to Mars.

An unprecedented examination of NASA's strong ties to the American South, exploring how the space program and the region have influenced each other over 60 years During the Cold War, federal funding for the space program transformed the southern United States as NASA built most of its major new facilities in the region and invested heavily in Project Apollo. This volume examines the economic, social, political, and cultural impacts of NASA on the South since the space program was founded in 1958 and explores how the program's strong relationship to the region has affected NASA's organizational culture, technological development, and programmatic goals.Featuring contributions by scholars from a range of backgrounds, including space historians as well as specialists in many other fields, NASA and the American South offers perspectives on how NASA provided a springboard for the complete restructuring of communities that were home to its facilities in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, New Orleans, and Texas. These changes unsettled previous patterns of life, and the chapters in this volume include assessments of NASA's influence on regional development, tourism, art and architecture, religion, and Black institutions of higher education. Bridging the gap between the history of technology and its geographical and cultural contexts, this book offers an unprecedented reevaluation of the impact of the space program on its surrounding landscape, introducing a new framework for interpreting the agency's legacy.

As NASA prepared for the launch of Apollo 11 in July 1969, many African American leaders protested the billions of dollars used to fund "space joyrides" rather than help tackle poverty, inequality, and discrimination at home. This volume examines such tensions as well as the ways in which NASA's goal of space exploration aligned with the cause of racial equality. It provides new insights into the complex relationship between the space program and the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South and abroad.Essays explore how thousands of jobs created during the space race offered new opportunities for minorities in places like Huntsville, Alabama, while at the same time segregation at NASA's satellite tracking station in South Africa led to that facility's closure. Other topics include black skepticism toward NASA's framing of space exploration as "for the benefit of all mankind," NASA's track record in hiring women and minorities, and the efforts of black activists to increase minority access to education that would lead to greater participation in the space program. The volume also addresses how to best find and preserve archival evidence of African American contributions that are missing from narratives of space exploration.NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement offers important lessons from history as today's activists grapple with the distance between social movements like Black Lives Matter and scientific ambitions such as NASA's mission to Mars.