In selecting Charles F. Bolden to head the National Aeronautics and Space Admin-istration, President Obama has made the right choice.
Bolden, an African-Ameri-can and retired Marine general, made four shuttle missions and was a pilot on the flight that put the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit in 1990.
My concern about African-Americans’ participation in NASA goes back nearly a half-century.
While surfing the Internet, I came across a portion of a letter I sent to James Webb, director of NASA, on NevadaLabor.com News Bulletin that said, “On March 7, 1962 in Alabama, Montgomery black leader Uriah J. Fields (a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr.) called on NASA director to put an African American on the list of astronauts.”
Steven L. Moss, in his thesis for a master’s degree, which focused on “NASA and Racial Equality,” made this reference to the letter: “Fields told Webb that Black Americans took pride in the astronauts’ achievement but wanted to see a black man in the next astronaut selection.”
Moss then referenced the March 12, 1962, letter Webb sent me: “Webb and NASA maintained that the selection of the original seven Mercury astronauts and future spacemen was based on technical qualifications and program requirements.
The administrator insisted that the agency considered qualified applicants without regard to race, color, or creed.”
Webb, the second administrator of NASA, was selected in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, who promised that Americans would put a man on the moon in the 1960s.
In 1967 Maj. Robert H. Lawrence became the first African-American to be selected as a military astronaut. In December of that year, he died in a jet plane crash.
In August 1983, Guion S. Blueford Jr. was the first African-American to go into space, aboard the Challenger. Charles F. Bolden became an astronaut in 1981. On May 23 of this year, President Obama selected him to be NASA administrator.
With African-Americans as president, U.S. attorney general and NASA administrator, Americans have demonstrated that they are committed to creating “a more perfect union.” This fellow American salutes them.
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