In 1961, Ed Dwight was a decorated Air Force pilot with a dream of traveling into space.
He was nominated as a candidate for NASA’s early astronaut corps in 1961, just as NASA’s Project Mercury crewed flights were beginning. Much of the Mercury technology was crafted by McDonnell Corp., in St. Louis, and astronauts were carried into space on six flights between 1961 and ’63.
While qualified, NASA did not select Dwight for the astronaut class of 1963. The agency did not choose a Black astronaut until 1978, and a Black Astronaut would not venture into space until Guion Bluford made history in 1983.
Dwight, if chosen, would have been in the 1963 astronaut class that included Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins.
On July 16, 1969, as Apollo 11 roared into space, Dwight could only look at the moon and wonder “what if?”
Apollo 11 astronauts Niel Armstrong and Collins were he first men to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969. Collins orbited the moon in the command module during the historic trip.
Dwight, an aeronautical engineer, Air Force captain and test pilot told BBC in England in 2019 that he received a letter from the Pentagon, authorized by President John F Kennedy, gauging his interest in becoming the first Black astronaut.
He thought it was a joke but later accepted the offer.
Dwight would later call it “a political move.”
“The president went to NASA and said, ‘Would you train this guy?’ NASA says, ‘No, because you’ll destroy our program, you’ll destroy our tax base, and we’ll never get another dime from the public if you put a Black in this program right now.”
“The reputation of the first seven astronauts was that these guys were superheroes,” he said, referring to the famous Mercury Seven selected in 1958 and featured in the movie “The Right Stuff.”
“If you would’ve placed a Black or a woman in the middle of this mix too soon these guys would be ordinary people again in the eyes of the world, especially the tax-paying public. So, the president had to invent another space program – a military space program.”
Whether Dwight would have reached space through Kennedy’s military space program remains unknown. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, one month after Dwight ended astronaut training.
“The day the president got killed, my life changed,” said Dwight. “22 November 1963 was literally the end of our project.”
A Kansas City, Kansas native, Dwight graduated from Kansas City Junior College with an engineering degree in 1953. He rose to the rank of captain in the Air Force before retiring. He joined IBM and started a construction company before earning a master’s degree in sculpture in the late 1970s.
Just as with his military career and pursuit of being an astronaut, Dwight excelled as an artist. His works, which included sculptures of Black historical figures of Frederick Douglass, Denmark Vesey and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were nationally acclaimed.
His works are on display at the Quincy Jones Sculpture Park in Chicago, the Texas African American History Memorial in Austin, Texas, and the Tower of Freedom International Memorial to the Underground Railroad in Windsor, Ontario, Canada
In 2005, Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., commissioned Dwight to create the Soldiers’ Memorial Plaza, which was completed by 2007.
The 18-foot tall sculpture captures the transformation of soldiers from the 62nd and 65th regiments into students, the first at Lincoln.
While chances of his traveling to space seemed to face astronomical odds, his dream came true more than 60 years after his NASA racial snub.
On May 19, 2024, traveling in a Blue Origin spacecraft, Dwight finally realized his dream of space travel. He and five other passengers skimmed into space on a roughly 10-minute flight, which included moments of weightlessness.
“It was a life-changing experience,” he said, moments after leaving the capsule.
“I thought I really didn’t need this in my life. But now, I need it in my life. I am ecstatic.
“Every time I started a project; I’ve got it finished. And here this thing came along, and it was a great big mysterious question mark sitting there. And so, the tendency for human beings in a situation like that is to blow it off and say you don’t need it.”
Dwight also said that every member of Congress should be required to travel to space and view the earth from that viewpoint. Age should not be a factor, Dwight proved it.
While he was not allowed to make history in the 1960s, Dwight accomplished something historic during his flight.
At 90, Dwight became the oldest person to ever travel to space. When he took his flight, he was two months older than actor 90-year-old William Shatner when he traveled on Blue Origin.