Center for Civil and Human Rights will Host Free Screening of The Space Race

Charles Bolden takes a call from Vice President Quayle. Bolden was the first Black NASA administrator. Photo courtesy of NASA.

On February 23, The Center for Civil and Human Rights will host a film screening for “The Space Race”. 

“When we look to put together a program,  we look for ways that we can relate this program back to what is in our exhibitions,” said Cameron Argotsinger, Senior Manager of Public Engagement at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. “With the space race, that was an easy connection for us.”

The Center for Civil and Human Rights opened in 2014 in Atlanta.They are home to a vast collection of prominent moments in civil and human rights in history, including an exhibit from Martin Luther King Jr’s Morehouse College collection. 

“The Space Race”, produced by Lisa Cortes, is a film that explores the experiences of the first Black astronauts. 

As NASA was trying to get an American to the moon, African Americans were trying to gain civil rights in the country.

“You know what you could and couldn’t do and you just didn’t press the system,” said Charles Bolden in the film. 

Bolden is a retired Marine Corps Major General and the first Black NASA administrator. Bolden was born into a segregated South Carolina in 1946, he said that he was taught early on about how to navigate the Jim Crow south. 

“You were taught you don’t have the right to do that, you don’t have the right to drink from that fountain because it says ‘White’,” he said. “and it was the same thing with NASA.”

“The Space Race” combines present-day interviews with archival footage to tell the story of integration in NASA.

The movie will also include the story of Ronald McNair, the second Black astronaut and one of seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger mission. 

McNair’s brother, Carl McNair, has continued  Ronald’s legacy founding the Ronald E. McNair Foundation, that helps marginalized people  pursue careers in STEM.

Carl will speak following thes screening at the Center for Civil and Human Rights, along with a book signing. 

Kelsey Colston, Howard University graduate and systems engineer for NASA said she finds people like Ronald McNair inspiring. 

“NASA and the aerospace community as a whole are probably the most diverse they’ve ever been, but there is still a very clear white male majority,” she said. “I can’t even imagine how hard it must have been for them.”

Today, just over 11% of NASA’s permanent workforce is Black, according to the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission. 

The film will premiere on National Geographic on February 12.

To get free tickets for the screening at the Center for Civil and Human Rights, visit their site.