Former Black KCK pilot, at 90, fulfills 60-year-old dream and blasts into space
A dream deferred has become a reality for 90-year-old Edward Dwight, 60 years after he was passed over by NASA to fly into space.
On Sunday the former pilot and the first Black astronaut candidate, Dwight, blasted off from West Texas with five other passengers to make history as the oldest person to ever fly into space.
Dwight’s life is one that has been filled with struggles, accomplishments, and bitter disappointments. The Kansas City, Kansas native was selected by the Kennedy administration for the Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS) run by Chuck Yeager, to become the first Black man in space, in 1961. But after the assassination of Kennedy, his dreams of going to space were derailed.
It was recently announced that Dwight will get his long-awaited chance to go into space on the Blue Origin rocket.
Rumors of the flight were being talked about when The Star interviewed Dwight about the special screening for the “Space Race” documentary released by National Geographic in February. He couldn’t say much about the possibility of the space flight at that time.
“They don’t want word getting out until they announce it themselves,” Dwight told The Star over the phone from his home in Denver in January. “I am training for it right now and they have a promotional campaign that they want to take me around the country with but I can’t say too much.”
Though no date has been announced, Dwight, a former Air Force pilot and sculptor, never stopped shooting for the stars.
Dwight became obsessed with the sky as a child, during late-night walks with his mother near the old Fairfax Municipal Airport, learning about the planets and constellations.
He left his home in Kansas City, Kansas, in the early 1960s to become one of the nation’s first Black astronauts. But racism and politics soon crashed that ambition.
“It was hell and it really turned me upside down,” he told The Star during that earlier interview. “They tried to make me fail out and make it seem like I was ignorant and didn’t have the intelligence to be an astronaut.”
Dwight, who had been and aeronautical engineer, eventually changed course and went on to become an acclaimed painter and sculptor.
The nation would not have its first Black astronaut until 1983.
But Dwight had already claimed a first when he was a teen and in high school in Kansas.
His mother, who had given him his early introduction to the stars, petitioned the Vatican to allow her to send Dwight and his sister to Bishop Ward Catholic High School, which was then segregated. He became the first Black man to graduate from there in 1951.
After high school, Dwight earned an associate’s degree in engineering in 1953 from Kansas City Kansas Junior College (now Kansas City Kansas Community College).
Dwight’s story and the stories of other Black pilots, scientists and engineers in the space program are told in the National Geographic documentary.
This story was originally published April 26, 2024 at 1:00 PM.
