Blast from the Past: USIA Director Edward Morrow urges a black astronaut on the Apollo moon mission...

Jill Lepore, "Fifty Years Ago We Landed on the Moon. Why Should We Care Now?" The New York Times, June 23, 2019 

Excerpt:

The seemingly unintended consequences of developing technologies that would take men to the moon were not top of mind in the Kennedy administration, mainly because a lot of those consequences were intended: Rockets can carry weapons, too, and everything learned on the moon mission had military applications, even if NASA was a civilian agency. If not worried about the legacy of conquest and the future of war, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were concerned, very concerned, with the civil rights movement. Edward R. Murrow, who had left CBS to take a post [as head of a "public diplomacy" [JB emphasis] agency, the United States Information Agency,

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known overseas as the United States Information Service)] with the Kennedy administration, urged the president to include a black astronaut on the moon mission: “I see no reason why our efforts in outer space should reflect with such fidelity the discrimination that exists on this minor planet.” Edward Dwight was subsequently recruited and became the first black Air Force pilot to be trained at the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. But, as is recounted in “Chasing the Moon,” he was all but forced out by his commander, Chuck Yeager, who instructed the other trainees not to speak to him. ...