The Old Negro Space Program

My wife has just made me aware of a lost chapter of American history that is at once uplifting and downcasting, both inspiring and … sort of not inspiring.

A new documentary by Ken Burns (not really) tells the story of the old Negro space program, in large part through interviews with the original Blackstronauts themselves:

A lot of people today, they don’t think about it. They say “Oh, they’re putting a man on the moon” or “Oh, they’re putting up another space shuttle.” But you see, they don’t realize that in the early days of the space program, NASA was whites-only … It was it a different time, you understand. See, in 1957 if you were black — and if you were an astronaut — you were out of work.

You can watch the nearly 11-minute film (which was excluded from the Sundance Film Festival on the pretense that it was not submitted to the Sundance Film Festival) at www.negrospaceprogram.com.

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