May 24, 2024 - Science

First Black astronaut candidate in U.S. finally goes to space at 90

Russell Contreras

Edward J. Dwight, Jr., the first Black astronaut, finally makes it into space. — Air Force Capt. Ed Dwight was selected for an astronaut trainee program under President John F. Kennedy but never made it to space until this week at 90 years old on a Blue Origin spacecraft. Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images/Blue Origin

Ed Dwight, a Black Air Force captain selected in the '60s for the U.S.'s astronaut trainee program, but who never made it to space because of racism, finally reached space this week at the age of 90.

The big picture: Dwight was aboard a Blue Origin flight that successfully launched and returned to Earth on Sunday, ending a long-awaited journey that began during the Civil Rights Movement.

"I'm overwhelmed...I thought I really didn't need this in my life," Dwight said after landing back on Earth. "But now I need it in my life. This is fabulous."

Driving the news: Dwight took part in Blue Origin's seventh human spaceflight and its 25th flight for the New Shepard program.

He said the transitions into space during the flight were more smooth and "dynamic" than he expected.

Background: The road to get Black astronauts into space in the U.S. began under President Kennedy. His brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, pressured an Air Force program to make sure its astronaut project had a person of color.

Dwight was selected in 1961 for a trainee program and became an overnight hero in the Black press. However, the NASA program did not select him for the astronaut program.
NASA later chose U.S. Air Force officer Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. as the first African American astronaut. But Lawrence died after his F-104 Starfighter crashed in 1967 at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

State of play: Kennedy's nomination of Dwight was a hyper-political one at the time.

Dwight faced discrimination and "arrows" from his peers and superiors, he told Axios Denver's Alayna Alvarez in 2023.
After Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Dwight was inexplicably stonewalled. It wouldn't be until 20 years later that the country saw its first Black astronaut.
No Black person has ever made it to the Moon.

Fun fact: Dwight later became a prolific artist, designing more than 130 memorials all over the world that "tell the story of Black history," he says, including a statue of Martin Luther King Jr., in Denver's City Park.

Further reading: Nat Geo documentary "The Space Race" spotlights Ed Dwight and the first Black astronauts

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First Black astronaut candidate in U.S. finally goes to space at 90

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