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PANEL 1:
Palm trees line the horizon. On the right side, a massive rocket is ready at a launch pad.

Text reads: July 15, 1969. Cape Canaveral, Florida.

PANEL 2:
Statue of Liberty at 305 feet is compared to Apollo eleven rocket at 360 feet tall.

Text reads: Apollo 11 was the crowning moment of America’s space program. It was the most expensive endeavor NASA had ever undertaken, and at 360 feet tall, the Saturn Five multi-stage rocket stood higher than the Statue of Liberty.

PANEL 3:
President Kennedy speaks to an audience gathered outside.

Text reads: Liftoff was less than twenty-four hours away. The country was ready to meet President John F. Kennedy’s challenge, issued at the beginning of the decade. This nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.

PANEL 4:
Under the clear blue sky, masses gather to witness the launch of the Apollo eleven rocket to the moon. They are ready with their cameras to capture the moment.

Text reads: An estimated one million people from all over the world gathered at Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch. It was hot and humid, but the crowd didn’t mind. This was history in the making.

PANEL 5:
A group of people, including children, embark from a parked bus.

Text reads: But not everyone was there for the launch.

PANEL 6:
A group of Black Americans including children hold placards that read, “Moonshots breed malnutrition, America your mind is in orbit. Humanity re-enter, People in ghetto demand space, We are starving.”

Text reads: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) poor people’s campaign arrived early in the day. The participants had not come to protest the Apollo eleven space flight, but the government resources put into the Space program at the expense of the nation’s poor. 

PANEL 7:
A white man and three Black men walk towards each other.

Text reads: Tensions were high as the protestors anticipated a government response. But in the afternoon, in a field by the Kennedy Space Center’s west entrance, two men representing distinctly different interests made their way toward each other.

PANEL 8:
Two men are interviewed on microphone.

Text reads: NASA’s chief administrator, Thomas O. Paine was there to meet with the SCLC’s president.

PANEL 9:
A man standing in front of a group of Black Americans speaks to an interviewer.

Text reads: Reverend Ralph Abernathy.

PANEL 10:
Reverend Abernathy seated with Dr. Martin Luther King address the press.

Text reads: Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was a civil rights leader from Alabama. He was a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr., and together they founded the SCLC in 1957.

PANEL 11:
A large group of people gather, raising their right fists in the air. They are surrounded by reporters. 

Text reads: Following King’s assassination in 1968, Abernathy took leadership of the SCLC and its newly formed poor people’s campaign to direct government funding to jobs, guaranteed income and housing.

PANEL 12:
A Black man holds high his right fist as two young boys watch him. In the background, a rocket at launch pad is visible.

Text reads: 
Apollo eleven was only the latest example of rockets overshadowing the struggles of Black Americans for equality.

PANEL 13:
New York Herald Tribune headline: U.S. Views Satellite as Russian Victory.  Next to the newspaper, a Black woman is followed by a group of white people, including a woman who seems to be saying something to the lone Black woman.

Text reads: A dozen years earlier, the fight of the Little Rock Nine to desegregate central high school in Arkansas was pushed off front pages by the Soviet launch of Sputnik.

PANEL 14:
A spherical shaped Satellite with long antennas orbits around the earth.

Text reads: As American media scrambled to cover the satellite's journey around the planet, Russian newspapers reveled in the apparent lack of U.S. interest in its Black citizens.

PANEL 15: 
With a rocket in mid-air, a young Black man speaks to a reporter, saying, “I had no idea that history was being made up in space while I was being beaten in Rock Hill.”

Text reads: In 1961, Violence against Freedom Riders in Rock Hill, South Carolina was eclipsed by project Mercury’s first manned spaceflight. Future U.S. congressman John Lewis was present.

PANEL 16:
A family with four children are in the living room watching two astronauts on a black and white television.

Text reads: The 54 mile Selma to Montgomery voting rights march in March 1965 was preempted in the press by the Gemini three triple orbit of earth.

PANEL 17
Dr. Martin Luther King is seated with a colleague at a table with microphones in front of them. Dr. King says, “In a few years, we can be assured that we will set a man on the moon and with an adequate telescope he will be able to see the slums on earth with their intensified congestion, decay and turbulence.”

Text reads: In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. appeared before a Senate Subcommittee on poverty in an attempt to bring focus back to the struggles here on Earth.