
The Cold War - The Long 1960s | 5
American History Tellers
The Unthinkable Goal of Sending a Man to the Moon
President Kennedy delivered his moon speech at Rice University in Texas, a state that would benefit tremendously from the space program. Johnson couldn't know it then but the hard task of sending a man to the moon would ultimately fall to him not President Kennedy. The Apollo program was expensive ambitious and difficult and the United States might well have abandoned it had Kennedy not been assassinated in 1963 But Johnson got the job done. In 1965 only a little over three percent of NASA's entire workforce was black And this was an agency whose major R&D sites were scattered across very states where black Americans lived.
00:00
Transcript
Play full episode
Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts
Save insights instantly, chat with episodes, and build lasting knowledge - all powered by AI.