We Could Not Fail

"This is a wonderfully surprising book that explores the impact and the struggles of African Americans involved in NASA and the early days of the space program, a story that is little known but is well told by Richard Paul and Steven Moss. This is not just the history of a few pioneering individuals; rather this work provides insight into the struggle to obtain civil rights by contextualizing how the space program was integrated and how it helped to shape the movement for racial justice in the 1960s. This work broadens our understanding of this period of turmoil and change." -- Lonnie Bunch, Founding Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture "Wonderfully written and expertly researched, We Could Not Fail is a skillfully paced, real-life narrative of the surprising but profound impact African American engineers and technicians, NASA, and space exploration had on race and segregation in the Jim Crow south. Richard Paul and Steven Moss have produced an engaging book that provides a much-needed window into how public policy, mass protest, personal talent, character, and perseverance--alongside bold national ambition and vision--connected to change a nation. This is a 'must read' book, particularly at a time when we are once again openly struggling with the role of government in ensuring opportunity and civil rights for all our citizens." -- Mae Jemison, M.D., former NASA astronaut and principal, 100 Year Starship

Profiling ten pioneer African American space workers, including technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate, this book tells an inspiring, largely unknown story of how the space program served as a launching pad for a more integrate

The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the long and bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized the space program as an agent for social change, using federal equal employment opportunity laws to open workplaces at NASA and NASA contractors to African Americans while creating thousands of research and technology jobs in the Deep South to ameliorate poverty. We Could Not Fail tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of how shooting for the stars helped to overcome segregation on earth.

Richard Paul and Steven Moss profile ten pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights. They recount how these technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate surmounted barriers to move, in some cases literally, from the cotton fields to the launching pad. The authors vividly describe what it was like to be the sole African American in a NASA work group and how these brave and determined men also helped to transform Southern society by integrating colleges, patenting new inventions, holding elective office, and reviving and governing defunct towns. Adding new names to the roster of civil rights heroes and a new chapter to the story of space exploration, We Could Not Fail demonstrates how African Americans broke the color barrier by competing successfully at the highest level of American intellectual and technological achievement.