Robert H. Lawrence, Jr.

Astronaut, pilot, and scientist

• Born: October 2, 1935
• Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
• Died: December 8, 1967
• Place of death: Edwards Air Force Base, California

Lawrence was the first African American astronaut. His tragic death in a plane crash during flight training prevented him from making an actual launch into space.

Early Life

Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr., was born in 1935 in Chicago to Robert, Sr., and Gwendolyn Annette Williams Lawrence. Robert, Sr., was a disabled veteran, and Gwendolyn was a civil servant. Lawrence had one sister. When he was young, his parents divorced; his mother eventually remarried Charles Duncan, her colleague in the Veterans Administration.

Lawrence was a precocious child. He showed an early interest in model airplanes, chess, and science. At Englewood High School he was both an athlete and an excellent student. He excelled in long-distance running and graduated in the top 10 percent of his class at age sixteen. In 1952, Lawrence enrolled in Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. He majored in chemistry and joined the Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). In 1956, he graduated from Bradley with a B.S. in chemistry and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. Lawrence spent the next year receiving flight training at Malden Air Force Base. In 1958, he married Barbara Cress. They would have one son.

Life’s Work

The Air Force assigned Lawrence to Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base near Munich, Germany. During this period of the Cold War, the United States maintained a large military presence in West Germany, and Lawrence served as a fighter pilot and instructor for German air force pilots. In 1961, he returned to the United States to continue his education. He enrolled in a joint doctoral program at Ohio State University and the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Lawrence received a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1965. His dissertation addressed the conversion of tritium beta rays to methane and ethane gas.

Lawrence was assigned as a research scientist to the Air Force weapons laboratory on the Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. He also logged more than twenty-five hundred flight hours as a pilot, mostly in newly designed jet aircraft. When he was thirty-two years old, he was selected for the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory Program. This program aimed to place spacecraft from the earlier Gemini space project in orbit, operated by two astronauts for a thirty-day period. The astronauts would conduct reconnaissance and other projects. The Air Force space missions were the precursor to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) space station programs. A rigorous selection process for this program began in 1965. Each candidate had to be a highly qualified military pilot who had graduated from the Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS). In addition, he had to have the recommendation of a commanding officer. Seventeen pilots were selected for the mission. Although they retained the title of pilots rather than astronauts, they in fact were being prepared for space travel, and many would go on to space launches.

Lawrence’s selection as a mission member was announced on June 30, 1967. Lawrence was the first African American selected for training as an astronaut. As part of his ARPS training, Lawrence conducted research on the gliding and steep-descent ability of unpowered aircraft from the high orbit proposed for the shuttle. On December 8, 1967, he was killed in an airplane crash at Edwards Air Force Base. Lawrence was flying in the back seat of an F-104 Starfighter jet on a training mission to practice landing approaches. The pilot misjudged the approach, and the plane slammed into the runway. The pilot ejected safely by parachute, but Lawrence was killed.

In June, 1969, the Air Force manned space programs were folded into NASA. If he had survived the jet crash, it is likely that Lawrence would have been transferred to NASA in 1969 and flown on one of the first space shuttle missions. In January, 1997, the Air Force reexamined Lawrence’s file and officially upgraded his title to “astronaut.” In December of the same year, his name was inscribed in the Astronaut’s Memorial Foundation space mirror at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, commemorating American astronauts who died in performance of their duties.

Significance

Since 1997, Lawrence has been officially classified as an astronaut, making him the first African American to serve in that role. He pursued his childhood aptitude for science and technology and became an outstanding researcher and pilot and the first African American selected for spaceflight. With the great success of the U.S. space program in later decades, efforts were made to remember astronauts like Lawrence who gave their lives in early efforts to conquer space.

Bibliography

Baker, Philip. The Story of Manned Space Stations: An Introduction. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Praxis 2007. Recounts the details of Lawrence’s death as part of the history of the American space program.

Hardesty, Von. Black Wings: Courageous Stories. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. A lavishly illustrated history of African American participation in military, civilian, and space aviation. The short section on Lawrence emphasizes his rigorous training.

Shayler, David. Gemini Steps to the Moon. Chichester, England: Springer-Praxis, 2002. History of the pioneering manned spaceflight program, highlighting Lawrence’s preparations to be an astronaut.