63 years later, the first black man trained as an astronaut goes into space
More than 60 years after Edward Dwight was chosen as the first black astronaut, only to have his place in space history taken and delayed by the specters of racism and politics, he launched into space on Sunday morning.
After landing, at the end of a flight that lasted 9 minutes and 53 seconds, Mr. Dwight stood on the steps outside the crew capsule door, raised his arms in the air and said, “It’s going to be a long time.”
A few minutes later, standing outside the capsule, he said the flight had been “life-changing.” He admitted that he had said earlier in the day that he didn’t need the flight in his life. “But I lied,” he said.
Mr. Dwight, 90, was one of six people aboard the Blue Origin spaceflight of the New Shepard rocket that launched Sunday morning from a private launch site near Van Horn, Texas. The flight made him the oldest person ever to go to space; he surpassed the actor William Shatner.
After Mr. Dwight, who is now a sculptor, was selected for the Blue Origin flight, he told The New York Times that the fact that he was finally able to go into space was not justice but something that had to happen at some point.
“My whole life is about getting things done,” Mr. Dwight said. “This is the highlight.”
The idea of sending Mr. Dwight into space gained traction in 1961, amid a White House campaign to diversify the nation’s space program. Mr. Dwight, a charismatic and handsome pilot, was selected for the astronaut training program. He had the support of President John F. Kennedy and the backing of the black press, but numerous obstacles kept him from reaching space.
Chuck Yeager, who headed the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California, considered Dwight an average pilot who had been selected to be part of the program for political reasons. Dwight has said that racism may have been the reason that General Yeager discriminated against him and wanted him removed. General Yeager allowed Dwight to graduate from the program, but he was not selected to become an astronaut.
After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, support for Dwight’s role in the space program seemed to wane. He left the Air Force in 1966.
Mr. Dwight grew up to be a successful restaurateur, a real estate developer, and a celebrated artist, whose specialty is sculpting prominent black historical figures.
It wouldn’t be until 1983 that the United States would send a black astronaut into space, Lt. Col. Guion S. Bluford Jr.
After all these years, Mr. Dwight finally reached space on Sunday while traveling aboard the New Shepard rocket.
It was the seventh human flight for Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. The other passengers were Mason Angel, the founder of Industrious Ventures, a venture capital firm; Sylvain Chiron, the founder of Brasserie du Mont-Blanc, a craft brewery in France; Kenneth L. Hess, a software engineer and entrepreneur; Gopi Thotakura, a pilot; and Carol Schaller, a retired accountant who was diagnosed with blindness in 2017 and began traveling extensively to places including the South Pole and Mount Everest Base Camp.
The rocket took off at 9:35 a.m. central time and landed back on Earth within 10 minutes. The capsule carrying the human passengers landed separately shortly afterwards, at 9:45 am. Only two of the three parachutes were ejected, but this did not cause any serious problems for the landing.
The capsule door opened around 10am. Mr. Dwight stood outside and said he was “ecstatic.”
Mr. Dwight said, “Everyone has to do this.”
