\u201cMy first flight was the most exhilarating thing in the world,\u201d says Dwight, smiling. \u201cThere were no streets or stop signs up there. You were free as a bird.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would be years before Dwight entertained the idea of himself becoming a pilot. \u201cIt was the white man\u2019s domain,\u201d he says. But while in college, he saw in a newspaper, above the fold, an image of a downed Black pilot in Korea.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Oh my God, they\u2019re letting Black people fly,\u2019\u201d Dwight says. \u201cI went straight to the recruitment office and said, \u2018I want to fly.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
With that decision, Dwight set in motion a series of events that would very nearly lead to him being among the first astronauts. As Dwight progressed through the Air Force, he was handpicked by President John F. Kennedy\u2019s White House to join\u00a0Chuck Yeager\u2019s\u00a0test pilot program at Edwards Air Force Base in California\u2019s Mojave Desert.<\/p>\n That fabled astronaut breeding ground, site of \u201cThe Right Stuff,\u201d might have turned Dwight into one of the most famous Americans and the first Black man in space. But at Edwards, Dwight was discriminated against even with Kennedy championing him. After Kennedy was assassinated, Dwight\u2019s path to NASA disappeared and he was never selected for the space program. Dwight departed for civilian life and largely receded from history.<\/p>\n But in recent years, Dwight is finally being celebrated. The new National Geographic documentary\u00a0\u201cThe Space Race,\u201d\u00a0which premieres Monday on National Geographic Channels and streams Tuesday on Disney+ and Hulu, chronicles the stories of Black astronauts \u2014 and their first pioneer, Dwight.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I left, everyone said, \u2018Well, that\u2019s over. We got rid of that dude. He\u2019s off the map,\u2019\u201d Dwight said in an interview by Zoom from his home in Denver. \u201cNow it comes back full force as one of these I-didn\u2019t-know stories. It\u2019s almost amusing to me that all this furor could come up. But I\u2019m kind of glad it did because something happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until 1983 that the first African American,\u00a0Guion Bluford, reached space. But two decades earlier, Dwight found himself at a fulcrum of 20th Century America, where the space race and the struggle for social justice converged.<\/p>\n In \u201cThe Space Race,\u201d astronaut\u00a0Bernard Harris,\u00a0who became the first Black man to walk in space in 1995, contemplates what a difference it might have made if Dwight had become an astronaut in the tumultuous \u201860s.<\/p>\n \u201cSpace really allows us to realize the hope that\u2019s within all of us as human beings,\u201d Harris says. \u201cSo to see a Black man in space during that period in time, it would have changed things.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEd is so important for everyone who\u2019s followed after, to recognize and embrace the shoulders they stand on,\u201d says Lisa Cort\u00e9s, who directed the film with Diego Hurtado de Mendoza . \u201cThere\u2019s the history we know and the history that\u2019s not had the opportunity to be highlighted.\u201d<\/p>\n Dwight had experience at a young age with that. His father, known as Eddie Dwight, played in the Negro Leagues for the Kansas City Monarchs. He remembers sitting on Satchel Paige\u2019s lap as a child \u2014 just one more connection to history running through Dwight\u2019s life.<\/p>\n In 1957, when the Soviet Union\u00a0launched Sputnik into orbit, it jolted its Cold War rival into action; NASA was formed the following year. But Dwight still wasn\u2019t thinking about becoming an astronaut.<\/p>\n \u201cNot in the slightest,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought these dudes going into space was the craziest thing I had ever heard in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n But as the U.S. began pursuing a space program, political leaders were conscious of the image its astronauts could project of American democracy. The first astronauts, the Mercury Seven, were all male and white. In September 1961, Edward R. Murrow, then Director of the U.S. Information Agency,\u00a0wrote to NASA administrator James Webb.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy don\u2019t we put the first non-white man in space?\u201d wrote Murrow. \u201cIf your boys were to enroll and train a qualified Negro and then fly him in whatever vehicle is available, we could retell our whole space effort to whole non-white world, which is most of it.\u201d<\/p>\n When the Aerospace Research Pilot School was established that November, the White House urged the Air Force to select a Black officer. Only Dwight met the criteria, which included 1,500 hours of flying jet airplanes, a bachelor\u2019s degree in science or engineering (Dwight graduated with an aeronautical engineering degree from Arizona State University in 1957) and three consecutive \u201coutstanding\u201d ratings from military superiors.<\/p>\n That November, Dwight received a letter out of the blue inviting him to train to be an astronaut. Kennedy called his parents to congratulate them.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Hell no.\u2019 Why in the world would I ruin a wonderful, career to go and hang out with these guys didn\u2019t know what the hell they were doing at the beginning?\u201d says Dwight. \u201cNASA was only two-years-old and they were talking about putting a Black guy in space?\u201d<\/p>\n But he joined up. While at Edwards, Dwight was celebrated on the covers of Black magazines like Jet and Sepia. Hundred of letters hailing him as a hero poured in. But in training, he was treated with hostility by officers who resented his inclusion in the program and the White House\u2019s involvement.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were all instructed to give me the cold shoulder,\u201d Dwight says. \u201cYeager had a meeting with the students and the staff in the auditorium and announced it \u2014 that Washington was trying to shove this N-word down our throats.\u201d<\/p>\n Dwight describes one incident when he was the only pilot sent out to fly when film producers, along with Jimmy Stewart, came to the base to film the officers. He recounts private sessions with Yaeger \u201ctelling me how good the white guys were and how I shouldn\u2019t be there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAll that kind of stuff didn\u2019t really bother me,\u201d Dwight says. \u201cThe mission was the main thing. What people didn\u2019t know was that I was being handled out of the West Wing of the White House the whole time I was there. Either every day or every other day: \u2018How\u2019s it going? What\u2019s happening? What do you need?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Yeager,\u00a0who died in 2020, maintained Dwight simply wasn\u2019t as good as the other pilots. In his autobiography, Yeager wrote: \u201cFrom the moment we picked our first class, I was caught in a buzz saw of controversy involving a black student. The White House, Congress, and civil rights groups came at me with meat cleavers, and the only way I could save my head was to prove I wasn\u2019t a damned bigot.\u201d<\/p>\n The tensions were also described in Tom Wolfe\u2019s \u201cThe Right Stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery week, it seemed like, a detachment of Civil Rights Division lawyers would turn up from Washington, from the Justice Department, which was headed by the president\u2019s brother, Bobby,\u201d wrote Wolfe. \u201cThe lawyers squinted in the desert sunlight and asked a great many questions about the progress and treatment of Ed Dwight and took notes.\u201d<\/p>\n Dwight was among the 26 potential astronauts recommended to NASA by the Air Force. But in 1963, he wasn\u2019t among the 14 selected. Dwight astronaut future took a more drastic turn when Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody was wondering, \u2018What\u2019s going to happen with Dwight?\u2019\u201d says Dwight. \u201cEverything changed.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy was killed on a Friday. By Monday, Dwight says, he had papers in his mailbox shipping him out to Germany. He quickly met with Bobby Kennedy in Washington, who had the Pentagon cancel those orders. A day after that, he had papers sending him to Canada.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Dwight was stationed at Wright-Patterson in Ohio in January of 1964. He graduated the program and totaled some 9,000 hours of air time, but never became an astronaut. He left the Air Force in 1966.<\/p>\n Asked if he was bitter about his experience, Dwight exclaims, \u201cGod no!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHere you get a little 5-foot-4 guy who flies airplanes and the next thing you know this guy is in the White House meeting all these senators and congressmen, standing in front of all these captains of industry and have them pat me on the back and shake my hand,\u201d Dwight says. \u201cAre you kidding me? What would I be bitter about? That opened the world to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Dwight initially landed at IBM, then he started a construction company. In 1977, he earned his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Denver. Much of his work is of great figures from Black history such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Barack Obama. Several of his sculptures have been flown into space, most recently one aboard the vessel Orion. NASA\u00a0named an asteroid after him.<\/p>\n To the Black astronauts who followed in his footsteps, Dwight braved their path.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you talk to the other astronauts, it\u2019s never about them. They all want to make sure you understand that for them to do their job, they needed the people who came before and paved the way for them,\u201d says Hurtado de Mendoza. \u201cFor them, it was really important to include Ed in the story. They all had a story of when they first met Ed Dwight or the first time they heard about Ed Dwight.\u201d<\/p>\n Dwight, with a little bemusement at how fate has worked out, acknowledges he\u2019s proud to be considered a pioneer for Black astronauts.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s good for them in that they didn\u2019t have to go through this crap that I went through. It was a goddamn distraction. It\u2019s like wanting to have eyes in the back of your head for all the stuff that was coming at you. I had to absorb that graciously,\u201d Dwight says. \u201cIf I talked about it \u2014 \u2018Oh, crybaby! You couldn\u2019t do this and you couldn\u2019t do that.\u2019 That\u2019s what would have happened if I stepped up to the mic and complained.\u201d<\/p>\n But complaining wasn\u2019t Dwight\u2019s nature then, and it isn\u2019t now, either. He\u2019s not even mad at Yeager.<\/p>\n \u201cThis guy was being honest to what he was trained to do. The structure of his life, his culture, his personality, all were implanted in Chuck when he was a kid. He didn\u2019t know anything about social liberalism. It was foreign to this man,\u201d Dwight says. He adds: \u201cThat doesn\u2019t make what they were doing right.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, Dwight is filled with gratitude. His one recommendation is that every congressman and senator be flown on a sub-orbital flight so they can see the Earth from above. Everyone, he thinks, would realize the absurdity of racism from that height.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d advise everybody to go through what I went through, and then they\u2019d have a different view of this country and how sacred it is,\u201d Dwight says. \u201cWe\u2019re on this little ball flying around the galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ed Dwight grew up in segregated 1930s Kansas on a farm on the edge of town. An airfield was within walking distance, and, as a boy, he\u2019d often go to marvel at the planes and gawk at the pilots. Most were flying back from hunting trips and their cabins were messy with blood and empty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1273,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions\/1273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Image:](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2024-02\/240209-ed-dwight-3-ew-1220p-712a25.jpg\")
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