In July of 1969, the Moon-bound Apollo 11 mission launches. A worldwide audience follows the mission with excitement. For Black Americans, however, the event highlights mixed-up national priorities. While billions of dollars are being spent to put two white men on the Moon, Black Americans on Earth are still denied access to gas station bathrooms. As for economic opportunity, the ranks of NASA employees illustrate the problem. Despite recent recruitment efforts, Black employees are still underrepresented, and none of the men in the astronaut program are Black.

Still, there is a very visible reason to hope that Black men and women have a future in the space program. On the television show Star Trek, a Black woman, Nichelle Nichols, has been playing Lieutenant Uhura, communication officer of the starship Enterprise. Nichols planned to quit after one season, but Martin Luther King persuaded her to stay on. A fan of the show, he urged her to remember what it meant for Black Americans to see one of their own on the Enterprise bridge.

Katherine, enjoying a weekend with sorority sisters at a Black-owned resort in the Poconos, watches the Moon landing on television. As a child, she had followed her father in working a service job at a hotel. Now she is enjoying a resort stay as a guest, as the event she helped bring about unfolds. The Moon landing is proof: anything is possible.