![]() ![]() As late as 1970, just 1 percent of all American engineers were black, and my father was one of them.īecause of my father’s job, I was part of the NASA family. In the 1960s, most college-educated African Americans took teaching jobs or worked for the post office. ![]() He thought my dad would have trouble finding work as an engineer. Become a physical education teacher, my grandfather told him. My father, who as a high school student had wanted to study electrical engineering, lived a different story. I knew so many African Americans working in science, math, and engineering that I thought that’s just what black folks did. Our church pews were crowded with mathematicians. He started there as an engineering intern in 1964 and retired as an internationally respected climate scientist in 2004. My dad worked at the Langley Research Center at NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Growing up in Hampton, Virginia, I assumed the face of science was brown like mine. ![]()
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