Ed Dwight

“I got this letter asking me if I wanted to or if I would consider going to experimental test pilot school and becoming the first Negro astronaut and I thought it was crazy.”

“I wanted to be on the cover of Life magazine.”

“The basic thing you have to understand is everything that happens on that spaceship, from the time you crawl into that seat to the time it touches down, is controlled from the ground. There's no one thing that makes a good astronaut. I don't know any person with determination and will that can't go to space.”

“I did this whole series on the buffalo soldiers-on black soldiers-I did another series on black cowboys, and I presented myself to the gallery system, and all these people with these massive collections didn't know there were black cowboys or black soldiers. I ended up hitting a niche I didn't know was there.”

“From the time I was a little itty-bitty kid, I was going to the airport every day. I began to study all the airplanes, and I'd draw all the airplanes.”

“I was welding art from my house, making abstract figures out of metal.”

“I went to white schools and I didn't know anything about black history.”

“There's always a fine line that divides hostility from neutrality, and I don't want to pass that line.”

“What people don't know is art was my deal and engineering was my sidebar.”

“Regardless of what you feel about Obama and his politics - screw all that. The fact of the matter is, he was the first black guy to be the president of the United States. The history is still being made.”