NASA astronaut Bernard Harris becomes the first Black man to walk in space. His mission contributes to a burgeoning collaboration between the United States and Russia in space exploration.

The Space Race

Bernard Harris stepped out of the space shuttle Discovery in orbit on February 9, 1995. He first embarked on the unlikely journey toward his historic spacewalk as a child, inspired by stargazing in his home state of Texas. Harris described his determination to become an astronaut as a “big leap of faith” at a time when the Apollo 11 moon landing shared headlines with the struggle for civil rights. “The main challenge was the color of my skin.”

Harris earned his medical degree and completed a residency at the Mayo Clinic before joining NASA as a flight surgeon. As an M.D. at NASA, Harris researched how human bone reacts to space flight, and he designed medical devices to help astronauts’ bodies adapt. In 1990, NASA selected him as part of its 13th astronaut class. In his career as an astronaut, Harris spent 18 days in space—and about five hours on his historic spacewalk. He recalled the awe of floating in space, seeing “this blue and white planet…against this backdrop of stars that I initially saw from Earth, and now see in space… Everything had its place. I have a greater sense of belonging, of the connectedness of all of us.” Throughout his NASA career, he traveled more than 7.2 million miles in space.

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but the story…. from state to state was much different

In March 1956, 101 of 128 Southern congressmen signed “The Southern Manifesto,” denouncing the decision. Many Southern communities followed their lead, resisting integration with protest and violence.

When the school board of Mansfield, Texas, a farming town of 1500 people, admitted 12 Black students to all-white Mansfield High School, white residents took to the streets in protest. On August 30, 1956, the first day of school, mobs of white pro-segregationists patrolled the streets with guns and other weapons to prevent Black children from registering.

The mob hung an African American effigy at the top of the school’s flag pole and set it on fire. Attached to each pant leg was a sign. One read, “This Negro tried to enter a white school. This would be a terrible way to die,” and the other read, “Stay away, niggers.” A second effigy was hung on the front of the school building. Soon afterward, the Mansfield School Board voted to “exhaust all legal remedies to delay segregation.” In December 1956, the United States Supreme Court ordered the Mansfield school district to integrate immediately, but Mansfield public schools did not officially desegregate until 1965.

Violent opposition and resistance to desegregation was common throughout the country. In August 1967, more than 13 years after the Brown decision, a report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights observed that “violence against Negroes continues to be a deterrent to school desegregation.”

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• A History of Racial Injustice