The rise of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. ran side by side with The Space Race. But even as African-Americans were fighting to sit at the same lunch counters and enjoy the same meals as their white counterparts, they were serving crucial roles in helping the country launch its space program. A NASA program in Huntsville, Alabama, placed black engineers in the center of the tumult while they were training to work in the aeronautical field. Steven Moss and Richard Paul, authors of “We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program,” document some of these men who became NASA’s first black engineers and what they experienced during that time. (Flickr/Hubble Heritage)