Through its role in ensuring economic equality, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) formed a central feature of implementing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Management at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center sought to ensure compliance with the legislation by creating job training programs at the center by creating the Youth Opportunity Campaign (YOC) and the Neighborhood Youth Corps (NYC). Under the direction of Willie Mingo Clark, these summer programs were designed to provide hands-on training at Marshall for high school students as well as recent graduates – training that would hopefully lead to permanent positions at the center.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who also chaired the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on May 22 – 23, 1967 to review the center’s EEO program. During his visit, Humphrey met with Marshall leadership and witnessed a full duration static firing of an uprated Saturn I booster. As he prepared to depart for Washington, D.C., Humphrey spoke to the sixty YOC and NYC participants at the Arsenal airport. Humphrey told them “there was a time when you would not have been given the opportunity to be what you want to be.” Humphrey contended that time had passed, “some people don’t know it, but it’s over.”
This photo shows Vice President Hubert Humphrey meeting with Marshall’s Willie Mingo Clark and participants in the YOC and NYC programs.