'Black in Space' looks at final frontier of civil rights
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February 20, 2020
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — In 1959, Ronald Erwin McNair walked into a South Carolina library. The 9-year-old aspiring astronaut wanted to check out a calculus book, but a librarian threatened to call the police if he didn't leave. McNair was black.
Years later, McNair was selected to become only the second African American to travel to space, overcoming segregation, poverty, and stereotypes in an intellectual act of resistance that inspired a generation. Tragically, McNair died in the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy.
McNair's story and those of other black astronauts are shared in a new do...
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