Richard Paul

Richard Paul, a public radio documentary producer, wrote the program Race and the Space Race (produced with Soundprint Media Center). He is currently finishing a book on the first African-Americans in the space program, titled And We Could Not Fail, with Steve Moss of Texas State Technical College at Waco.

When Alan Shepard strode out to the Mercury-Redstone rocket in May 1961 (above, right), NASA was scarcely integrated. By 1965, at the time of the Selma-to-Montgomery, Alabama civil rights march (above, left), the Huntsville rocket center employed several black engineers.

How NASA Joined the Civil Rights Revolution

Integration came to the nation’s space agency in the mid-1960s.

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