At least 500 astronauts have traveled to space — yet only 18 of those have been Black astronauts, according to NASA.
“The Space Race,” an upcoming documentary film directed by Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, travels back through history with a collection of archive film and interviews, uncovering the social and racial barriers it took for the first Black astronauts to reach space.
“Men and women in the space program are the best of us, the best and brightest. So, we just wanted to give them agency so they could perfectly tell their story,” Hurtado de Mendoza told “Good Morning America” while discussing the film during the 2023 Tribeca Festival.
The documentary reveals new hidden figures who took one step for man and a giant leap for the Black astronauts who helped propel mankind.
Ed Dwight, a former test pilot who was the first Black astronaut candidate, opened up about the burdens he faced in the project. Dwight was recommended by then-President John F. Kennedy as a candidate for the NASA astronaut trainee program in 1961, according to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
“Had all of the things been equal, I would have made it to the moon; I had the capability and I was not given that opportunity,” he shares during an emotional interview featured in the film.
The now-89-year-old became “a symbol of racial progress” amid the growing intensity of the civil rights movement.
His dream came to a halt following Kennedy’s assassination when he was not selected to be an astronaut due to what he says was “the politics of it all.”
Charlie Bolden, a former astronaut and NASA administrator, says in the documentary that some NASA officials who were opposed to Dwight’s candidacy terminated him from the program. Dwight shared in the film that he felt forced to resign at the time.
Dwight then recalls President Lyndon B. Johnson asking him to find another Black astronaut, despite being ousted from the NASA program.
“President Johnson wanted his own black astronaut because I was a Kennedy guy,” Dwight told “GMA” during the Tribeca Film Festival. He said Johnson asked about the new candidates’ qualifications, including education, height, and “skin complexion.”
Source: abcnews.go.com