Kennedy Boy
President John F. Kennedy is widely known for his work towards integration and the success of the Civil Rights Movement during the early 1960s. He is also famous because of his commitment to laying the groundwork for defeating the Soviet Union during the Space Race to the moon. A short-statured young black man from Kansas City, Kansas served as a trailblazing intersection of these two efforts made by the short-lived Kennedy Administration.
Edward Dwight Jr. was born in 1933. It was very early on that Dwight became fascinated and inspired to pursue a career in flight. Despite growing up in a racially segregated environment, Dwight was thrilled to discover that a black Air Force pilot named Dayton Ragland had found his way onto the front of a local black newspaper. After graduating with a degree in engineering in 1953 at the age of 20, Dwight chose to enlist into the United States Air Force. He trained to become a test pilot throughout the remainder of the 1950s, and reached the rank of captain while serving in the U.S. Air Force.
During this same period, as the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, America transitioned from the well-seasoned President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the youthful President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy, who was elected in 1960 largely behind his great contrasts with the former president and legendary general, wanted to take a more deliberate stance against segregation. Coinciding with the rapidly escalating Cold War and the Space Race, the Kennedy White House determined that selecting a black astronaut would help it win the admiration of the black community.
One day, Dwight received a letter from President Kennedy, in which he was offered an opportunity to be an astronaut. After being discouraged by many of his peers and superiors not to take on this challenge, Dwight secretly mailed in his information and within days received an assignment to enter the Aerospace Research Pilot School. It was there that Dwight earned the nickname “Kennedy Boy”.
While at the pilot school, Dwight faced great obstacles. These included blatant racism and the ever present fear of death while training as a test pilot. Chuck Yeager was the first commandant of the U.S. Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School. He intentionally worked to psychologically break Dwight’s will and self-esteem through relentless racism and neglect. Dwight’s mental toughness and determination to succeed, fueled by his mother’s inspiration during his development, ultimately opened the door to public attention and media exposure on a global scale.
Dwight was mesmerized and thrilled by the space training that he received at the height of his acclaim. However, great disappointment awaited him. The new group of astronauts that NASA ultimately selected did not include Dwight. He had been snubbed. President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas not long afterwards in November of 1963. Dwight resigned from the Air Force in 1966 after being forced out of NASA’s astronaut program.
Conclusively, although it is easy for one to perceive Dwight’s pursuit of space travel as a failure that fell short of the mark, it can be said that Dwight was a true trailblazer for those black astronauts who would follow him in the decades that followed. America still had a long ways to go towards true racial equality in the military during the 1960s. But the efforts that were made during that era by African Americans, both in military and civilian life, echo loudly into the present.
