What goes with June?
Moon.
Ask anyone in Tin Pan Alley. Or ask the creators of Paterson’s 2024 Juneteenth celebration, Saturday June 22 — dedicated to astronaut Ed Dwight.
On May 19, Dwight became, at age 90, the oldest man in outer space, beating the record set by William Shatner, his 48-day junior. So Paterson’s event is not just a Juneteenth, but — if you will — a Moonteenth.
“You’re always honored when people go to that extent,” said Dwight, speaking from his home in Colorado.
Dwight will not be at Saturday’s event. But he’ll be there in spirit. And he’ll be there in sculpture.
Dwight — did we mention? — is also a nationally-known artist, whose pieces are permanent installations in cities like Chicago; Atlanta; Charleston, South Carolina; Austin, Texas; Denver; and Washington D.C.
His sculpture group “On Wings of Freedom” stands at Huntoon and Van Rensalier Underground Railroad Historic Site in Paterson, across from Passaic County Community College. Dwight came here in 2014 to personally dedicate it. And that’s where Saturday’s Juneteenth Celebration will be staged, starting at 9 a.m. (rain date June 29). Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., Mayor Andre Sayegh, Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly, and Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter will be present. Poet Talena Lachelle Queen will do a reading. Musician Ron Foster will lead the chorus of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
But it’s Dwight, unseen but very much felt, who will set the tone for Paterson’s Juneteenth — the fourth year the traditional “African American Independence Day” has been celebrated as a national holiday.
“He’s a real example of what Juneteenth stands for and represents,” said historian Jimmy Richardson, organizer and producer of the event. “He’s a wonderful example of determination. And even in his determination, he always had a backup plan.”
Dwight was, in 1961, NASA’s first Black astronaut trainee. He was a national celebrity, lauded by the mainstream press, and featured on the covers of Ebony and Jet. Just last year, 2023, he was the central subject of a National Geographic Documentary, “The Space Race.”
He might have gone to the moon. Should have gone to the moon. But there were — let us say — complications.
“When they tried to kill me, that’s when I resigned,” Dwight said.
Right stuff, right start
Dwight, born in racially-segregated Kansas City, Kansas, was lucky enough to have a mom, Georgia Baker Dwight, who was a bit of a brainiac.
“The only planetarium I had was the most brilliant mother a person can have,” Dwight recalled. “Every night she would give me lectures on orbital mechanics, lunar cycles, planetary cycles. I don’t know where this woman got all this information. But when I was in astronaut training, I’m sitting attending this class and saying, ‘Oh my God, these are the same things my mom taught me when I was 3 or 4 years old.’ “
He developed an early interest in engineering and aviation, enlisted in the Air Force, eventually earned the rank of captain, and trained as a test pilot — while also graduating cum laude from Arizona State University with a degree in aeronautical engineering.
The resume attracted John F. Kennedy.
A Black astronaut! At a time when everyone was space-crazy, it was a juicy bone to throw to the African American voters he needed if he was going to win in 1960. Dwight became his personal project. “Bobby Kennedy wants a colored in space. Get one into your course.” That’s what Chuck Yeager — Mr. Right Stuff himself — recalled being told by the ultra-right wing general Curtis LeMay.
Whether because of racism, or resentment at Kennedy’s interference — probably both — Yeager and other members of his Aerospace Research Pilot School made sure life was hell for Dwight during his training at Edwards Air Force Base. What they didn’t know is that he had a lifeline. The Kennedys were looking out for him.
“All through my training, I was being monitored,” he said. “Nobody knew this. They didn’t know I had an operative in the West Wing of the White House that I could talk to every day. Did something bad happen today, something nasty that we need to fix? That gave me confidence. I wasn’t just out there all by myself.”
Change for the worse
That Dwight’s career was so tied to JFK’s ultimately proved a liability. When Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, all bets were off.
“He was my sponsor,” Dwight said “He had assigned Bobby to this project. Bobby Kennedy had handled everything.”
Now there was no one to intercede, if things got ugly. And in the ’60s, the era of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X assassinations, things could get very ugly.
“I walked up to the flight line one day, getting ready to jump in and get strapped in for a test flight,” he recalled. His crew chief, a 19-year-old Black teen, took him aside and said, “Captain Dwight, I’m scared.”
“I said, what are you talking about? He said, ‘Two guys came to the flight line yesterday all dressed in black, and they took me out to this room. And they asked me, what would it take — more stripes on your arm, or do you just want money — to fix Captain Dwight’s airplane so it doesn’t come back?’ I said, ‘That’s not a good joke.’ And he started crying. He said, ‘If they could kill you, they could kill me.’ “
Dwight refused to fly that day. And he was put on report. Such things — and there were others — drove him to resign from the Air Force in 1966.
“I was told by the top generals and senators, ‘Captain Dwight, we’re behind you, and good luck to you, but you’re 20 years too soon.’ ” That estimate was on-the-nose. It wasn’t until 1983 that Dr. Guy Bluford, flying in the Challenger, became the first African American in space.
Dwight might well have been bitter. He might have remained so. But he doesn’t do bitter.
“I’m not physically or intellectually structured for it,” he said. “It’s not my deal. Everything has a reason for being. Every happening in universal time has the time and the space and the place.”
Dwight’s first act was over. But his show was just getting underway.
Brand new start
He’d been interested in art, growing up. He began to make things out of scrap metal (professionally, he’d become a construction entrepreneur, so the materials were at hand). He began to sculpt.
And as he’d done as pilot, he quickly went from rookie to ace.
African American history and culture has been his key preoccupation. He’s done upward of 18,000 gallery pieces, and 129 public sculptures, to be found in places like Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., the Alex Haley/Kunta Kinte Memorial in Annapolis, Maryland, and the African American History Monument at the South Carolina State House.
The piece he did for Paterson, underwritten by Passaic County, depicts Josiah Huntoon and William Van Rensalier — white and Black abolitionists — holding aloft the lantern to guide Underground Railroad fugitives to freedom. A important chapter in Paterson’s history.
But there’s something else going on in the sculpture, Richardson notes. Starting with the fact that it’s called “On Wings of Freedom.” “If you look at the monument, it looks like a spacecraft of some sort,” he said. “It looks like it has to do with freedom, and a modern-day escape.”
That’s what ties Dwight to the narrative of Juneteenth. His accomplishments, his hardships, his overcoming of hardships — that’s the story of African Americans. Whose great freedom day, June 19, 1865, was just one more step on a road that goes on and on. “He’s inspirational because of his endurance and his willingness to not be dismayed by the circumstances that surrounded his life,” Richardson said “The fact that he never stopped.”
Back to the launchpad
The arc of Dwight’s life has been long. But it’s bent toward justice. Even as Dwight reinvented himself as an artist, he was — guiltily, one imagines — re-embraced by NASA. “NASA ended up integrating me,” he said. “They named asteroids after me. I did a lot of art for NASA. They’ve been very very kind to me. Whether it was out of guilt, or whatever it was.”
He ended up being a mentor to the next generation of Black astronauts. And this past May, he got to fulfill an old dream. After a mere 60-year delay, he got to go to space.
“Dreams can come true,” Richardson said. “But you have to be prepared. And he was.”
This was a suborbital flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-25. And though years of flight training had told him what to expect, he was still overwhelmed. “It was the whole idea of actually experiencing it,” he said. “I’m an old fart, but I got excited.”
There were the G-forces, for one thing. That awesome tug of gravity. He knew what that was from flying planes, and from being in NASA’s centrifuge. “The only reason I didn’t pass out is because I’m short,” he remembered. “I’m only 5-foot-4. So the blood didn’t have any place to go.”
But that sinking-into-the-seat moment, as a spacecraft launches, is something he’ll never forget. “I was curious about getting [G’s] from the bottom up,” he said. “Being boosted. And the noise! When that big booster kicks in, you know you’re going someplace.”
God’s-eye view
The other big revelation, for him, was the moment that the craft entered “dark space.” He’d been up as high as 80,000 feet in his test-pilot days. But here, at roughly 350,000 feet — about 65 miles — he got to see the exact place where the earth’s atmosphere ends and space begins.
“There’s this separation, which I didn’t realize was that clear and defined,” he said. “You’re sitting inside this capsule, and there’s this big 10-foot window, all glass, no obstruction to vision. You could see everything. And when we got into space, it’s like this black curtain came down. That was fascinating to me. I enjoyed the hell out of it.”
The fact that he could see it is another one of the extraordinary plot twists in Dwight’s life. Legally, he’s blind.
“God operates in weird ways,” he said. “The issue is, I can see when I’m laying down. When I’m erect, I’m legally blind. But I’m laying down in the capsule, so I could see stuff. It’s the strangest goddamn thing.”
But his biggest takeaway is the one that so many others have had, looking down at the earth from space. So small. So fragile. And so without boundaries.
Political and racial divisions, partisanship and intolerance, all the things that necessitate a Juneteenth in the first place — all of it seems sad and silly, from up there.
“The larger issue is the innocence, the grand glory, of this little ball we call Earth,” he said. “How interconnected it is. The wonder of it. And the anger about, why the hell can’t people get along with each other? And protect this little ball down there that we call Earth. I have a theory that it should be mandatory for every person who wins public office, before taking office, to make a minimum of three orbits around the Earth. Just to see the interconnectivity.”
Go…
Juneteenth: African American Independence Day, Honoring Astronaut Sculptor Ed Dwight. 9 a.m. Saturday June 22 (rain date June 29) Huntoon and Van Rensalier Underground Railroad Historic Site, Martin Luther King Blvd. Paterson. patersonugrr.org.
Check out was real simple, can't wait for the tote bag