The first mission by people on Earth through space to

another planetary body are unlikely ever to be lost to

history, to memory, or to storytelling.

Arthur Schlesinger, quoted, in

One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

The Time is Always Right to Do What is Right.

Four hundred and ten thousand people from 20,000 companies, surprisingly as ethnically diverse as possible in the 1960s, joined the challenge put forth by John F. Kennedy to send humans to the Moon. “It was an enormous undertaking,” writes Charles Fishman, author of One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon.

The Apollo missions required ten times the effort it took to build the Panama Canal, writes Fishman. Over the span of 11 missions to the Moon, the Apollo program, the biggest non-military effort, had more people working on it than fought in Vietnam. Kennedy commits the US to land on the Moon when, as Fishman writes, the nation couldn’t do it. “We didn’t have the tools, the equipment—we didn’t have the rockets or launchpads, the spacesuits or the computers or the zero-gravity food—to go to the Moon.” We didn’t even know what was needed to accomplish the task, he adds. Nonetheless, many Americans and people from all over the world came together.

They got it done!

Who on Earth knew how to fly to the Moon? Between May 1961 and July 1969, hundreds of thousands committed themselves to the mission, determined to take up Kennedy’s challenge. We could argue over the reasons Kennedy wanted the race to the Moon to begin, given the Cold War era and the reports coming out of the Soviet Union: the Soviets were already working to send a human into space, at least. Nonetheless, humanity’s ambition to walk on the Moon still stands as one of the greatest achievements of humankind. And, fifty-years ago, the lunar module, the Eagle, landed on the Moon, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with astronaut Michael Collins remaining in the Command module, Columbia.

Humanity did the impossible, and the world witnessed it on July 20, 1969. So many around the world joined with those hundreds of thousands to sit in front of black and white television sets to watch and listen as the Eagle lands and, soon after, Armstrong notifies Mission Control that he’s ready to step off the lunar module ladder on the surface of the Moon. And we see the grain image, it’s one of us, stepping done, one foot and then the other.

“‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind...’”

It’s fine like sane but firm enough to hold Armstrong’s weight. Only later, back in the lunar module, Armstrong and Aldrin notice the smell. “Like wet aches,” says Armstrong. Or “the smell in the air after a firecracker has gone off,” says Aldrin.

But for now, a human being is walking on the Moon’s surface.

John F. Kennedy isn’t alive to see this. Neither is King. If King had been alive, I think he would have acknowledged the achievement, even as he works tirelessly for government funds to lift the poor out of poverty. I’m sure he would have been one of the millions to witness history in the making while insisting that the US government transform its history of warfare and war profiteering into one that accomplishes something like July 20, 1969, when people came together, proud to be alive and human.

King admitted to being the “‘biggest Trekkie on the planet.’” This is what he tells Lt. Nyota Uhura, Chief Communications Commander aboard the USS Enterprise NCC 1701, serving under Capt. James T. Kirk. I remember during those years between 1966 to 1969 thinking about the universe. That’s what the original Star Trek television series met to me—it brought the universe to the Southside of Chicago, to my home, and Lt. Uhura, I imagined, was traveling though space. We’re with Lt. Uhura and we belong. And why not?

But she doesn’t know it. The actress playing the role of Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, doesn’t know she is doing something special, something to lift spirits, open eyes. Some of us relinquished complacency, even if too young to know it. We embraced the future.

Now, at this convention, standing among fans, but feeling weary, she’s considering her last days on the series. Nichols has already notified Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry: She leaving. Tired. Who’s watching anyway?

And now some fan wants to meet her. He says he’s her “‘biggest fan.’” And she turns, and it’s Dr. Martin L. King. “‘I am the biggest Trekkie on the planet.’” Everything, he tells her, comes to a halt in the King household when Star Trek comes on. “‘And I’m Lt. Uhura’s most ardent fan.’”

So imagine how “‘shaken’” I was when I heard of you’re plans to leave Star Trek. You have to know you can’t just “‘abdicate’” your position “‘on the groundbreaking series.’”

You are Lt. Uhura!

Lt. Uhura must remain aboard the USS Enterprise. Even King doesn’t know but others agree. Newspapers, writes Fishman, encouraged letters to the network to keep Star Trek on the air. And scientists, museum curators, psychiatrists, doctors and university professors responded, sending the network some 6,000 letters.

“‘You are changing the minds of people across the world, because for the first time, through you, we see ourselves and what can be,” King told Nichol. And when Nichol’s time aboard the starship ended (NBC canceled the series), she went on to recruit women astronauts for NASA. Sally Ride, the first woman astronaut, and Mae Jamison, the first black woman in space, both influenced by Nichol, were products of her advocacy. Whoopi Goldberg credits Nichol’s role as Lt. Uhura for her interest in space exploration and her subsequent pursuit of the role of Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Many of us were prepared for the future thanks to the original Star Trek series. When it was canceled in June 1969, we linked out aspirations to the mission of Apollo 11 that launched on July 16, 1969.

And now today, instead of witnessing one more monumental achievement of humanity, this nation, the United States of America, is forcing the world to watch as it detains children from South America, housing them as if so many cockroaches, leaving them to content with unsanitary conditions and sheer filth—while the world questions this nation’s sense of decency and common sense.

To the leadership in Washington DC, all is normal, however the forward movement of the US has come to a halt. Leadership is influencing its citizenry to be cruel, indifferent. Unlike the children such as myself some 50 years ago that summer, the children today are watching television and witnessing the ill-treatment and cruelty directed at other children by the adults in charge.

It’s a virtue now to be cruel and indifferent toward other human beings. Cruelty for profits.

It’s not about looking back for the sake of looking back but rather looking forward to the future in order to tackle the pressing issues facing this nation, in fact, the whole of humanity—for openers, global heating that threats the extinction of life, including that of humans.

We did something back in the 1960s without the equipment and technology. Without even knowing what we would need to put a human on the Moon. It wasn’t about left or right, liberal or conservative. No one cared about asking Gene Kranz or Katherine Johnson or John Glenn or Jim Lovell or Neil Armstrong what political affiliation did they support. For it was clear these were people who lived by principles—something we lack today. We know how to change course and do the right thing; but, instead, we’re contrary, deliberately.

Too bad we live among fellow Americans who relish the good ole days when the practice of genocide against Indigenous, enslavement against blacks, and extermination against Jews allowed them to imagine themselves inheritors of the Roman Empire.

Freedom never involves caging children!

What young person today wants to follow in the footsteps of an-all knowing, smug little Steven Miller, the architect of policies regarding immigrant children? Institutionalizing cruelty toward children instead of institutionalizing justice, compassion, love.

And so America is caging children in inhumane conditions and considering this event a crowning achievement!

We’ve come a long way down in the last 50 years.