The Daily - The Almost Moon Man

Episode Date: July 21, 2019

There are two stories from the 1960s that America likes to tell about itself — the civil rights movement and the space race. We look at the brief moment when the two collided. Guest: Emily Ludolph, who covered this story for The New York Times, spoke with Ed Dwight, a former Air Force pilot who had trained to be the first black astronaut. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.Background reading: President John F. Kennedy was Ed Dwight’s champion. Within weeks of the president’s assassination, Mr. Dwight’s career as a prospective astronaut ended.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. There are two stories from the 1960s that America likes to tell about itself. The Civil Rights Movement and the race to reach outer space. Today, the brief moment when those stories collided. It's Sunday, July 21st.

Emily Ludolph, how did you come upon this story? So last fall, I'm down in the morgue, which is this massive room, three stories underground, stacked with filing cabinets full of the photo archives of the New York Times. And it's not just me down there. It is a scanning team that is digitizing all these photos. The obituaries team is pulling files on whoever they're writing about that day. And I was over in the science section going through these manila envelopes, and I pull one out, and it's stuffed full of images. And the people who have folders down in the morgue are incredibly well-known people. They are Eleanor

Roosevelt and Diego Rivera and Donna Karan, and the name on this folder is Ed Dwight. And I've never heard of that name before. So I open it up and it's full of these beautiful black and white glossy photographs of this handsome African-American man. He's in a flight suit. He's being photographed next to these big 1960s jet fighter planes. And I'm thinking to myself, who is this guy? And why does he have this huge file? So I go back upstairs and I start going through the digitized archives of the Times. And one of the first headlines that comes up about him is Negro astronaut aiming for moon. The president of the United States.

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, and Michael Collins, the three men who will make the next and most historic round trip to the moon. T-minus 10, 9, 8. We have a goal for main engine start. We have main engine start. 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. Apollo 11, Apollo 11, this is Houston, over. Okay, Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now. Roger, we copy you. Pretty good total jump. That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind. And I'm wondering, what is this guy's story? And how does it fit into the story of the journey to the moon that we all know? And how did you go about answering that question? Well, I started by just punching Ed Dwight's name into Google. And a website comes up. And that website had an email address. And I was like, oh, my God, this guy is alive because all of these articles are from 1963. So I emailed that email address having no idea what

would come back. And he wrote back to me the same day. So I gave him a call. Ed White. Hi, Ed, it's Emily. Yeah, uh-huh. And I thought, oh my God, he doesn't want to talk to me at all. I'm so excited to talk to you. I've been reading a lot of old newspaper articles about you. Oh boy, you gotta watch this. The conversation starts off sort of very reticent.

Well, the story and everything else in my life's being is rather complex. But he eventually opened up, and we ended up spending over an hour on that first phone call with him telling me his entire life story. I, you know, I'm originally from Kansas City, Kansas. So Ed tells me this story of growing up. I started school at two. And he is clearly incredibly ambitious, incredibly precocious.

My mom got me a library card at the age of four. And I lived in the library. He's an altar boy at the local Catholic church. And mom started me working at nine. He's delivering food for his parents' restaurant. He has two paper routes. And close to where his family lives is a local airport. I was this little black kid that was just hanging around. And so when I was about maybe five or six, they started paying me money to clean out their airplanes. In addition to his other jobs, Ed will go off to this airport and clean the pilots' planes.

And they give me a nickel or a dime. And when I got to be about 10 or 11, I said, I want to fly. I mean, I don't want the money. I want to know where you guys go when you leave and where the hell have you been when you come back. He loves being at the airport. He loves the airplanes. He loves dreaming about where they're going when they fly off on these trips. And so, but this is a white man's world.

You know, Kansas was segregated at the time. And I never for a minute thought that I would have a really flying airplane. I mean, that just was crazy. And then... But this was my private fantasy. One day, he's on his paper rope, and he looks down at his newspaper. On the front page of one of my newspapers was an African-American pilot.

And he sees a photograph of an African-American Air Force pilot who's been shot down in Korea. And he was on the front page standing on the wing of a jet. And he was a prisoner of war. And sort of paradoxically, given the subject matter, Ed goes, this is great news.

And I says, oh, my God, they're letting black folks fly jets. They're letting black guys fly jets. And so this is a revelation to him. That's right. So I immediately applied for pilot training. fly jets. And so this is a revelation to him. That's right. So I immediately applied for pilot training. So he sets about filling a course load for himself

toward pilot training. And he goes to the local library and he gets all of these flight manuals out. They say manuals are used in training pilots. And he's poring over them. He's basically memorizing them. I would take them home and pick all the exams at the end of the chapters. And he's poring over them. He's basically memorizing them. He joins the Air Force, and it turns out when it comes time to take his flight certification test, it is the same tests that have been in the back of these library books the whole time.

test, it is the same test that have been in the back of these library books the whole time. So, sure enough, I missed two questions on the two-hour exam. He aces them. And they immediately call the college, call my mom. This guy's a genius. And he very quickly from there starts to rise through the ranks. He goes from second lieutenant to first lieutenant. All of his reviews and ratings are outstanding. He's getting comments from his superiors that say things like,

Ed shows leadership tendencies. He's doing advanced certifications in engineering and mechanics and mathematics. He gets an engineering degree and he ends up at Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco. So meanwhile, another spectacular year in the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union is heating up. The Soviets on October 12th, Columbus Day, launched an innovation in space travel, the three-man space bus. In April of 1961, the Russians get the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin. The 27-year-old Soviet Air Force officer whose name will live in history. And when he comes back, he goes on this world tour. Major Gagarin looked as pleased to arrive in Britain as Britain was to greet him.

He was pleased to arrive in Britain as Britain was to greet him. Visiting Asia and Africa and everywhere he goes, he's greeted by these screaming, enthusiastic crowds, ticker tape parades. He is enormously popular. And back in the U.S., Edward R. Murrow. The television anchor. Yes, who is at this point head of the U.S. Information Agency, which is in charge of sort of the hearts and minds story of America abroad, looks at this man being adored by all of these crowds, and he writes to the head of NASA, and we have that letter. He says, why don't we put the first non-white man in space? If 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 the whole non-white world, which is most of it.

Lyndon Johnson, who kind of gathers together all of the heads of the different military agencies. And they say, can you help us find this man? And the search is on. And how do they go about finding this man? What qualifications are they looking for? Well, that's an interesting question because all the way back at the end of the 1950s, when they are first trying to figure out, okay, who should be an astronaut? They're asking themselves, should it be a scuba diver? Should it be a race car driver? Should we have Arctic explorers? Should we host a nationwide competition so anyone can apply?

nationwide competition so anyone can apply. But President Eisenhower, who is a career military man, vetoes this idea. He says they have to be military men. They have to be test pilots. A part of the reason for that is security clearances. It's test pilots are used to flying things that no one has ever flown before in hostile environments, and they are the best at staying level-headed and cool when problems arise that no one has ever seen before. So in making that requirement that they be test pilots, I mean, the military had only desegregated a decade before. Women had never flown combat missions. So it is effectively ensuring that those first classes of astronauts had only desegregated a decade before. Women had never flown combat missions.

So it is effectively ensuring that those first classes of astronauts are going to be male and white. He put together a set of credentials that would eliminate every Black pilot in the universe. So this request from President Kennedy is essentially impossible to fulfill because the pool of pilots is so small, the qualifications are so stringent. Had to be under 30, had to have an engineering degree, had to have at least 1,500 hours of jet time. And NASA writes back, all these different agencies write back and they say, we don't have people in the pipeline for this. This is not a problem for the military or NASA. It is a problem for the entire United States. Except for the Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert, who writes back and says,

actually, we do have someone, his name's Ed Dwight, and he is ready to start training. I was a star in my unit there. I was placed on a fast track for promotion. I had been promoted to captain early, and then I was immediately put in for major. Ed has a decision to make, basically, because in the Air Force, he has this incredibly promising career. I was guaranteed that I was going to be a general had I stayed in the unit that I was in. And there were big plans for me. And his superiors at Travis Air Force Base say, you know, the space program is brand new. You have this incredibly bright future ahead of you in the Air Force.

What is this? And this really could be a career killer for you. But in the end, he decides to go for it. We'll be right back. 50 years ago, we took our first steps on the moon as humans and altered the course of history. It was a technological feat of epic proportions. Back then, Hewlett-Packard Company powered the atomic clocks that kept the worldwide Apollo network synchronized, ensuring Apollo 11's position was precisely pinpointed from Houston.

This year, Hewlett-Packard Enterprises' space-borne computer pioneered supercomputing in space for the next cosmic milestone, future travel to Mars. Learn more at hpe.com. So once Ed decides to take President Kennedy up on this invitation to be the first African-American astronaut, what happens? He's transferred to the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, which is like the top place for training jet pilots in the United States. And the Air Force has put together this kind of graduate school for test pilots that is trying to anticipate what these future astronauts are going to need to know.

And that school is helmed by Chuck Yeager. October 14th, 1947, Edwards Air Force Base, California. Captain Charles E. Yeager flew the Experimental X-1 faster than the speed of sound in level flight. Who, I mean, apart from Charles Lindbergh, is the most famous person in American flying at this point. Another historic highlight in the aerospace age. So when he starts this program...

I made 2,500 speeches. on top of all of the training that he's doing to prepare him to become an astronaut. I mean, I was on the road from Thursday till Monday. All the time I was in training. Yes, I was all over the country. Ed's experience is unique because he's programmed into this nationwide speaking tour. Starting out at six o'clock in the morning with a Kiwanis Club breakfast all the way through preschool, high school, and ended that particular day in Washington, D.C., going on stage. And he's

talking to universities. He's talking to elementary school students. His face is on the cover of magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times. So he becomes this massive celebrity, but also it's a really difficult experience for him. How so? First of all, there's purely logistics. He's off doing all of these tours all weekend, but he's still got to come back and do his flight exams on Monday, just like all of his peers who have been studying all weekend for them do. On top of that, Ed is also dealing with the reality of racism in America in the 1960s. And so when he's traveling, hotel rooms aren't booked for him,

cars leave without him, waiters and restaurants won't serve him. Meanwhile, back at the base, he has this incredibly tense relationship with Chuck Yeager, who is this celebrated figure in American flying and who Ed says was calling him into his office almost on a weekly basis, encouraging him to drop out of the program because he couldn't handle it, which Chuck Yeager denies. So what happens next? Okay, I guess you all know why you're here today and why we're here. We'd like to introduce the new group of 14 astronauts that we've been in the process of selecting for about the last four months. Yeager ultimately graduates him. And in October of 1963, NASA announces the next class of astronauts. It includes Buzz Aldrin and four astronauts in total who go on to walk on the moon.

Was there a Negro boy in the last 30 or so that you brought here for consideration? No, there was not. And Ed's name is not among them. Does that mean that this is over for Ed? No. Ed still has hope that he'll be selected for a future astronaut class, so he continues his training. And everything was working for me. Washington was able to solve all these problems that kept popping up until November the 22nd, 1963. Here is a bulletin from CBS News.

In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded. Anyone who is alive in America on that day remembers where they were. From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy exactly where he was. This nation is wounded. It will have a century, I think, to absorb the historic impact of this terrible event. He was in Seattle. They were doing a flight simulator training at a Boeing plant. Someone came in. Ed remembers what step of the staircase he was standing on when he announced that the president had been shot

and they were canceling the training for the day. So Ed is going through the same sort of emotional loss that everyone in the country is going through. And at the same time, over the course of this entire experience, Ed has really felt like there's been a hand on his shoulder as he's doing all of these public appearances and speaking tours. That is President Kennedy's hand. The thing about this public speaking tour that's been going on this entire time is it very much does fall outside of the chain of military command. He is talking with senators. He's talking with the White House. But that is because that's what he's being asked to do. And after the assassination,

he fears that all of that protection has fallen away from him. And he might not be wrong about that. What do you mean? Well, within a month and a half, Ed has been transferred to a base in Ohio where he is flying transport planes and doing experiments that are less and less and less related to the space program. The next astronaut selection comes up. Ed is again not picked, and he eventually resigns his commission and leaves the Air Force. So what becomes of Ed White? Well, he starts this whole new life that includes developing a career at IBM, opening an executive flight company, starting a restaurant called The Ribcage, and eventually he goes back to school and gets his MFA and he becomes an artist.

He sculpts large-scale public monuments. There are more than 100. They're all over the country. And his specialty is iconic African-American figures. But leaving the program in that moment, right before it achieved some of its grandest ambitions, including putting men on the moon, I have to imagine that that was difficult for a few years of Ed's life. And he has gone on and done so many things since then. He's now 85. And when I asked Ed where he was at that time,

he says he doesn't remember. Hmm. Doesn't remember at all. Yeah, it's kind of surprising. So I spoke to Ed many times and kept asking him that question over the course of multiple interviews. And each time he says he doesn't remember.

Hmm. And I keep thinking about this story that Ed told me about being a little boy and seeing a picture of an African-American pilot on the front page of his newspaper and how that sort of spurred him on to his entire career. And I wondered just what would it have meant if Ed Dwight had gone on to join the space program and walk on the moon? I brought that question to Charles Bolden, who was the first Black administrator of NASA. And what he said to me was, to see an Ed Dwight walking across the platform

getting into an Apollo capsule, would have been mind-boggling in those days. It would have had an incredible impact. Emily, thank you. Thanks so much. After Ed Dwight's quest to reach space had ended, Major Robert H. Lawrence Jr. was selected as the nation's first Black astronaut in the summer of 1967. But later that year, he was killed in a jet crash during a training operation.

But later that year, he was killed in a jet crash during a training operation. In 1983, Dr. Guyon Bluford became the first African American in space, the same year that Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. Nearly a decade later, in 1992, Mae C. Jemison became the first African-American woman to travel to space. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow. Humans to Mars missions will require state-of-the-art computing to reduce communication latencies that could put astronauts in danger.

But can the fastest supercomputer survive the trip? Hewlett-Packard Enterprise thinks so. Its space-borne computer, proven to withstand high levels of radiation and other harsh conditions of space, just returned to Earth after successfully operating for nearly two years in the International Space Station, opening up the first-ever supercomputing capability for space explorers. Learn more about the mission at hpe.com.