The True Cost of the Moonshot

They must have been a sight: around 150 Americans, mostly black mothers and their children, walking with two mule-drawn wagons through light mist and rolling thunder. Led by Ralph Abernathy, the caravan arrived at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in advance of the Apollo 11 launch. Unlike many thousands more, however, they hadn’t come in celebration and awe. They came to protest.

Abernathy had succeeded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after King’s assassination in 1968. As King’s right-hand man through the movement, Abernathy was an ever-present but far less acclaimed figure. He came from humbler beginnings than King, one of 12 children born to a farming family in rural Alabama, and was a pastor in his own right, but hadn’t ascended to the same heights of renown. Yet Abernathy stepped up to helm the august organization. And the protest at Cape Canaveral, then Cape Kennedy, was an extension of the Poor People’s Campaign, begun under King’s leadership.

The contrast was dramatic: mules and rockets, rambling wagons and a vast sky to be conquered. The SCLC argued that one-fifth of the U.S. population lived in poverty, without adequate food, shelter and health care, and therefore it was indecent for the nation to spend billions on the dream of spaceflight. Abernathy said, “I am here to demonstrate with poor people in a symbolic way against the tragic and inexcusable gulf that exists between America’s technological abilities and our social injustices.”

So much had changed in the last years of the 1960s. And in some ways this was one of many dramatic fault lines. The Civil Rights Movement had led to landmark legislation. Public opinion had shifted to support civil rights, and King had a Nobel Prize. And yet the tide was rolling out again rapidly. At the time of his death, King faced a fierce backlash — including from many of his former allies — for his criticism of the war in Vietnam and of the ravages of economic inequality.

On the other hand, younger, more radical activists had grown tired of the civil rights mainstream’s ongoing commitment to nonviolent resistance as white supremacists continued to maim and kill, and much of the general white populace persistently rejected integration in practice even while praising it in theory. The younger activists wanted to shift energies toward building black self-determination under the banner of “Black Power.” In the midst of all this conflict, the man Nina Simone referred to as the King of Love was murdered, and conflagration spread across America.

And yet, the work of the SCLC and other civil rights organizations continued. In 1969, the SCLC’s apolitical efforts in Greene County, Alabama, yielded a majority black county commission and school board. In Memphis, Tennessee, the SCLC protested discrimination faced by black hospital workers, and they raised their voices at the Apollo 11 launch.

Their number was small compared with the millions who eagerly anticipated the event. For the United States, this settled what had seemed to be an elusive victory in the space race. The Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, in 1957, was the first Earth-made object in orbit. But with Apollo 11, the United States would become the first nation to land a person on the moon. U.S. astronauts drove their flag into the moon’s surface. It was a Cold War victory, and a sign to the world of the nation’s power.

The moment was also a posthumous honor, and homage, to former President John F. Kennedy, who had believed deeply in the symbolism of a moon landing and had declared it a national priority in 1961. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson changed the name of Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy by executive order, after Kennedy’s assassination (a name it retained until 1973). And there they met history.

The evening before the launch, Thomas Paine, who was the administrator of NASA, met with the SCLC protesters. Although Abernathy had been warned they would be turned away, the caravan was invited in. About 40 of them, mostly children, toured the grounds. And although Paine and Abernathy had a terse meeting, the next day, 10 of the protesters were seated in the VIP section of the launch, among senators, generals and Johnson. They looked up to watch America’s rocket penetrate the sky.

Abernathy described being captivated by the moment along with the rest of the nation. He’d told Paine the previous evening that he would be praying for the astronauts. And Paine, in turn, had expressed his care for the plight of poor Americans. These expressions of mutual respect in the midst of a historic moment, however, did not smooth over the conflict. They exposed the essential tension at the root of the nation. America’s ambition persistently stopped short of the equality creed, and yet it seemed to always demand a self-effacing patriotism from even the most vulnerable, including the poor folks who marched with Abernathy on Cape Kennedy.

And this is among the myriad reasons we cannot tell history as a matter of simple forward progress. In the calendar of landmark events, 1969 is an important year. It is the year of Woodstock and Stonewall. The women’s movement was amping up, and the anti-war movement was in full throttle. In retrospect, it is easy to see the heroism of the moment. But we often neglect the excruciating wrangling in the thick of it.

The day after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set their feet on the moon, King’s brother, A.D., was found dead. He had drowned in his pool despite being a skilled swimmer. By many accounts, depression and alcohol had clouded his life since his brother’s death, and the pressures of the movement weighed heavily on his heart. In those heady and, by many measures, victorious times, hearts broke, and so did people.

But for some of the others, history marched forward. Andrew Young, one of the protesters, went on to become the mayor of Atlanta. Another, Hosea Williams, would create “Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless,” an international aid and social services organization. And after former President Richard Nixon signed the District of Columbia Delegate Act, Walter Fauntroy was elected as Washington’s first delegate to Congress.

Years later, though, Abernathy’s legacy would be sullied by virtue of a salacious memoir about his escapades with King, and it was hard not to see that as a break of sorts, too. History is messy, and human vulnerability collides with the most starry moments. Abernathy’s headstone reads, “I tried.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.