'The Space Race' explores the history of the 1st Black astronauts

At least 500 astronauts have traveled to space -- yet only 18 of those have been Black astronauts, according to NASA.

"The Space Race," an upcoming documentary film directed by Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, travels back through history with a collection of archive film and interviews, uncovering the social and racial barriers it took for the first Black astronauts to reach space.

"Men and women in the space program are the best of us, the best and brightest. So, we just wanted to give them agency so they could perfectly tell their story," Hurtado de Mendoza told "Good Morning America" while discussing the film during the 2023 Tribeca Festival.

The documentary reveals new hidden figures who took one step for man and a giant leap for the Black astronauts who helped propel mankind.

Ed Dwight, a former test pilot who was the first Black astronaut candidate, opened up about the burdens he faced in the project. Dwight was recommended by then-President John F. Kennedy as a candidate for the NASA astronaut trainee program in 1961, according to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

"Had all of the things been equal, I would have made it to the moon; I had the capability and I was not given that opportunity," he shares during an emotional interview featured in the film.

The now-89-year-old became "a symbol of racial progress" amid the growing intensity of the civil rights movement.

His dream came to a halt following Kennedy's assassination, when he was not selected to be an astronaut due to what he says was "the politics of it all."

Charlie Bolden, a former astronaut and NASA administrator, says in the documentary that some NASA officials who were opposed to Dwight's candidacy terminated him from the program. Dwight shared in the film that he felt forced to resign at the time.

Dwight then recalls President Lyndon B. Johnson asking him to find another Black astronaut, despite being ousted from the NASA program.

"President Johnson wanted his own black astronaut because I was a Kennedy guy," Dwight told "GMA" during the Tribeca Film Festival. He said Johnson asked about the new candidates' qualifications, including education, height, and "skin complexion."

In 1978, nearly 20 years after Dwight's candidacy, three Black male candidates were considered among a class of 35, the largest group of astronauts at that time, to travel to space. Col. Guion S. Bluford eventually made history as the first Black astronaut in space as a mission specialist in 1983.

"The greatest thing we can achieve is to go to space," Cortés said, speaking with "GMA." "Yet [Black astronaut candidates] were painfully aware of what life on earth should be like but have not been able to achieve yet."

Cortés added that the film's goal was to focus on the double consciousness -- living in two different worlds as African Americans, or "the idea that Black astronauts were working diligently to propel and progress the country into space and onto the moon, [while] facing ... systemic racism as a Black person."

While speaking with "GMA," Leland Melvin, a former NFL football player and NASA astronaut who retired in 2014, recalled working with two prominent hidden figures: Katherine Johnson, the late trailblazing mathematician who helped the U.S. send the first American astronaut into space to successfully orbit the Earth, and now, Dwight.

"I had the good fortune of knowing two of the most prominent hidden figures in the universe," Melvin said.

Dwight and several other Black pilots, engineers and astronauts have largely been omitted from many history books, and Cortés and Hurtado de Mendoza said they are on a mission to celebrate and educate viewers about them, to bring their stories to light.

"They want to disrupt the flow of our destiny," Dwight said, referring to those historical omissions. "[But] this too shall pass. I hope I live long enough to see it pass -- to take our proper place in history."

"The Space Race," from National Geographic Documentary Films, debuted at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. A release date for the documentary has not yet been announced.

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