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

104 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe
So, while the Germans seemed to have brought a lot of jobs to the town,
being able to take advantage of that was not a matter of equal opportunity. Foster
summarizes his experience as an african american man in 1950s huntsville
as follows:
to have been born . . . in one of the most difcult times to
be born and to compete, here in alabama, confronted with
all of the segregation, George Wallace, and on the other
hand you’ve got Dr. Wernher von Braun with the team from
Germany from the University of Berlin! and how do you
wanna compete? 40
CONCLUDING reMarKS
In my larger project, the impact of the German families on huntsville’s
african american and other communities will be addressed in more detail.
In this brief exploration, however, I hope to have provided some possible
explanations for why hanson howard was not surprised to be the only african
american in the room for a forum about the “creation of rocket city.” perhaps
more importantly, I hope to have illustrated the signifcance of who is telling
stories of the past, which includes the individual’s relationship to dominant and
normative groups in the past and the present.
It should be clear now that the assertion that huntsville is “unanimous”
on anything related to its German members’ past is an overstatement. While
sentiments towards the Germans in huntsville were apparently always more
positive than people not familiar with the town might expect, especially for the
time shortly after World War II, they were and are certainly not unanimous.
the notion of unanimity is not unique, but it creates a distorted picture,
perpetuating injustices of the past. troublesome and uncomfortable as it might
be for those involved, it seems plausible that common experiences and histories
of racial privilege have allowed the incoming Germans and white huntsville
residents to form a bond of complicity. as most of the Germans remained
mainly silent about racial segregation in the South, most white huntsville
residents did not, and do not, raise questions about the Germans’ past in Nazi
Germany. Many members of both groups see themselves as victims of systems
they view as beyond their control and seem to fnd explanations declaring the
inevitability of their compliance satisfactory. In this way, the individuals are
cleared from responsibility. 41
40. Foster interview, July 19, 2007.
41. this is clearly a very complicated issue with many more aspects than I can discuss here. For
the longer project, I will analyze individual’s comments on this subject in detail, placing
them in their appropriate historical and national context.