When I was watching Hidden Figures, I was struck by the fact that all of the Mercury astronauts were white (duh), which got me wondering about the history of racial integration of the US space program. I Googled it and the first African-American astronaut flew in 1983, first Asian-American in 1985, and first Latino in 1986.
Why did it take so long for non-white US astronauts to be accepted into the program and be picked for space flight? I'm sure racism was a factor (duh) but were there applicants much earlier on? Were there any non-white applicants for the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo programs era? Were there deliberate discriminatory policies at NASA, an informal racist policy that trashed non-white applications, or did they set requirements that only whites were likely to have met at that time in US history?
Subquestion, I know John Glenn did insist on Katherine Johnson double-checking the numbers for his flight (though not waiting on the launchpad) but is there any historical evidence that he was more friendly with the African-American NASA staff than the rest of the Mercury astronauts, as the movie depicts?
Thanks!
The main reason that NASA didn't have any minority astronauts early on was that the military's test pilots were almost all white men at the time. Astronaut groups 1 and 2 were all test pilots, while group 3 could be either test pilots or non-test pilots with advanced degrees. Group 4 was scientist-astronauts who had to have either a PhD or an MD. There simply weren't very many African-Americans who met those criteria back then.
Interestingly, Guion Bluford has gone down in history as the first African-American astronaut to fly but he as not the first African-American to be chosen as an astronaut. That honor goes to Major Robert Lawrence who was picked for the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory program back in 1967. MOL never flew, but the MOL astronauts under the age of 35 were given the chance to transfer to NASA's astronaut corps when the program was cancelled. Most of the pilots for the early shuttle missions were MOL veterans. Unfortunately for Lawrence he was killed in a flying accident in December 1967. If he hadn't he probably would have transferred to NASA as well and become NASA's first black astronaut back in 1969 (although he wouldn't have gotten to fly until the early 80s.)
My source for the MOL stuff is Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her. Air & Space Magazine also has an interesting article on MOL and Maj. Lawrence.