Breaking the color barrier: behind the long fight to diversify space

The film Black in Space: Breaking the Color Barrier dives into the under-reported history of efforts to include people of color in the space race

Most children who rise through the American education system are familiar with the US space program - or at least the story of the program's achievements: John Glenn's orbit of the earth, John F Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, the Apollo program, Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind. "In the end, the big takeaway we get is that America was first in everything," the documentary film-maker Laurens Grant told the Guardian. There's an assumption, in American history textbooks, films and the many commemorative specials on last year's 50th anniversary of the moon landing, of Nasa's inevitability to get it right, and to be great.

Related: Mercury 13: the untold story of women testing for spaceflight in the 1960s