While Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore’s situation is unusual, their return trip will be pretty routine, as they were already ...

The solution was to train a Black astronaut. The White House began searching for a Black pilot with all of the qualifications. It landed on Ed Dwight. “I had to be talked into it,” he said.

The first astronauts, the Mercury Seven, were all male and white. When the Aerospace Research Pilot School was established that November, the White House urged the Air Force to select a Black officer.