The first africanamericans in the Space Program. Moss i first heard about the africanamericans in the Space Program and nasas 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 sintins 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. Thats what is shown in the book. The stories of these men, some of whom worked for nasa, or nasa con
It looks at nasas 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 campaign. He did
The most formidable people i have seen in my life have that balance. The ioc sports as the be all were involved in another part of their life the tunes you cannot out compete them. There is a way but when you build 16 million stadiums it is hard and not fair and to expect the kids to concentrate. Thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]. Were kicking off a full day today with the new book, and president reagan talking about president interjects and present bush and the Science Behind but the whole the of civilrights and the relationship between the u. S. And israel in the American Space program. That is all, being applied today from boston for you can get the full schedule on line and follow us on twitter and facebook as well to give scheduled updates. Here is h. W. Brand from the 20th annual texas book festival live coverage on booktv from austin, texas. Good morning, good morning, and thank you so much for joining us at the 20th annual texas
In space. Now here is a Panel Discussion on the American Space program. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon everybody. Are you all ready to blast off . Had to do at least one before we started. Welcome, everybody to the texas book festival and to all of you joining us on cspan book tv listening throughout the universe or even the known or unknown its good to have you here. It is my pleasure today to itod is my pleasure to introduce two authors and two books that i thoroughly enjoyed reading. I couldnt put either one of them down x. The other perhaps unique aspects is they were extremely well written. Ch im sure youll very much enjoy reading them. The first book is called leavingll orbit. It is by Margaret Lazarus dean, to my left, who is a professor of english at the university of tennessee knoxville. And then also steven moss has written this really [laughter] steven moss has written this very, very interesting book aso well called we could not fail. Steven iswe a professor in th
Will talk about our book we could not fail the first African Americans in the Space Program. Influx at nasa role in civil rights the years before the civilrights act which is an important distinction because before the act discrimination was not against the law it was legal to say you cannot use this toilet you are black or cannot come into this restaurant because you are black. It is an important distinction as we talk about the achievements of the people in this book. To talk about the rules put in place from the Kennedy Administration how they read implemented by nasa and by contractors. More importantly the alliance whose people were touched to tell the stories of 10 men that we call the civilrights era and some employees worked for agency contractors. Kennedy was forced to deal with our space at the same time he was forced to deal with civil rights. Because they are not things he talked about his campaign. He didnt bring up either but there was a sequence of the events time to gat