Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

OperatION paperCLIp IN hUNtSVILLe, aLaBaMa
103
for what happened in this case. Foster was born in 1931 and moved to the
huntsville area in 1950 from Birmingham, alabama, to attend alabama a&M.
he worked for aBMa since 1957 and transitioned to NaSa in 1960, along with
most of the German rocket engineers. as the former mayor of nearby triana,
an all-black community west of redstone arsenal, Foster was instrumental
in getting running water and a sewage system to the community, as well as
building houses and creating job opportunities for community members.
Similar to Smith, Foster was appalled that huntsville already had a
university that was “a hundred and seventy-fve years of age (yet) they come
in and start a Uah.” 37 however, he also describes the difculties in convincing
the existing institution to implement an apparently much-needed engineering
degree. he says,
that’s one of the things I tried to get a&M at that particular
time to take advantage of . . . I couldn’t get (th)em interested.
they (were) hard to convince back in the sixties, to get them
to understand what’s at hand, and what would be available.
I guess they d(id)n’t wanna rock the boat. a lot of it . . . had
been caused by what segregation had done . . . 38
What Foster is referring to are the efects of systemic racism that often
led to what he calls “acting like Uncle tom.” the efects of racism had put
african americans at an immense disadvantage long before they could even
think about attending college, let alone try to compete for the new jobs coming
to town with the Germans. hereford describes the school he attended: “We
had no library. We had . . . no lunch room . . . no chemistry lab or biology lab,
and I wanted to be a physician. and so I went to school (in huntsville) for twelve
years and we had none of those things.” 39
Foster describes the efects of this lack of educational opportunities on
income opportunities available to the black community. referring to the
technical skills needed to be part of the booming space industry he states,
. . . we didn’t have a population with the prerequisites that
would be needed to do this type of work . . . at that time
(we) only . . . had barbershop(s), funeral home(s), beauty
salon (s), (and) café(s). Depending on what city, there might
have been some small type . . . hotel.
37. according to its Web site, alabama a&M University opened in May 1875, which means that it
had existed for 86 years when von Braun lobbied for Uah.
38. Clyde Foster interview, triana, aL, July 19, 2007.
39. hereford interview, July 19, 2007.