First Black astronaut Maj. Robert Lawrence Jr. – Chicago Tribune

Maj. Robert Lawrence Jr., the first Black astronaut in the U.S. space program, is introduced at a news conference in El Segundo, California, on June 30, 1967. Lawrence was part of a classified military space program in the 1960s called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, meant to spy on the Soviet Union. He died before flying in space when his fighter jet crashed on Dec. 8, 1967. (Associated Press)