Bluford became a NASA astronaut in August 1979. His technical assignments have included working with the Remote Manipulator System, or RMS, Spacelab-3 experiments, space shuttle systems, verifying flight software in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory and the Flight Systems Laboratory, and serving as the Astronaut Office point of contact for generic Spacelab and Shuttle External Tank issues. A veteran of four space flights, Bluford was a mission specialist on STS-8 in 1983, STS-61A in 1985, STS-39 in 1991, and STS-53 in 1992.

Bluford's first mission was STS-8, which launched from Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 30, 1983. This was the third flight for Space Shuttle Challenger and the first mission with a night launch and night landing.

During the mission, the STS-8 crew deployed the Indian National Satellite (INSAT-1B); operated the Canadian-built RMS with the Payload Flight Test Article; operated the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System with live cell samples; conducted medical measurements to understand biophysiological effects on space flight; and activated various earth resources and space science experiments along with four "Get Away Special" canisters. STS-8 completed 98 orbits of the Earth in 145 hours before landing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on Sept. 5, 1983.

On STS-61A, the German D-1 Spacelab mission, the crew of the Orbiter Challenger launched from KSC on Oct. 30, 1985. This mission was the first to carry eight crew members, the largest crew to fly in space, and included three European payload specialists. This was the first dedicated Spacelab mission under the direction of the German Aerospace Research Establishment and the first U.S. mission in which payload control was transferred to a foreign country – German Space Operations Center, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

During the mission, the Global Low Orbiting Message Relay Satellite was deployed from a "Get Away Special" container. The crew also performed 76 experiments in Spacelab in such fields as fluid physics, materials processing, life sciences and navigation.

The experimental test facilities used included melting, solidification and crystal growing furnaces, facilities for the observation of fluid physics phenomena, chambers to provide specific environmental conditions for biological samples, and a vestibular sled.

After completing 111 orbits of the Earth in 169 hours, Challenger landed at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on Nov. 6, 1985.

Next, Bluford served on the Discovery crew of STS-39, which launched from KSC on April 28, 1991. The crew gathered aurora, Earth limb, celestial, and Shuttle environment data with the AFP-675 payload. This payload consisted of the Cryogenic Infrared Radiance Instrumentation for Shuttle experiment, Far Ultraviolet Camera experiment, the Uniformly Redundant Array, the Quadruple Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer, and the Horizon Ultraviolet Program experiment.

The STS-39 crew also deployed and retrieved the Spas-II with the RMS. The Spas-II carried the Infrared Background Signature Survey experiment, which collected shuttle exhaust plume, Earth limb, Earthscan, aurora, chemical/gas release and celestial data.

The crew also operated the Space Test Payload-1 and deployed a classified payload from the Multi-Purpose Experiment Canister.

Discovery landed at the KSC on May 6, 1991 after 134 Earth orbits over 199 hours in space. With the completion of this flight, Bluford had logged over 513 hours in space.

Bluford was assigned as a mission specialist on the crew of STS-53, a Department of Defense Mission which launched on Dec. 2, 1992 from KSC pad 39A. Among its secondary payloads were experiments on the effects of microgravity on cells from bone tissue, muscles and blood and the release of 2-, 4- and 6-inch metal spheres into space to test ground-based capabilities of detecting potentially dangerous debris in low-Earth orbit. The Orbiter Discovery returned to Earth on Dec. 9, 1992, landing safely at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Bluford is currently Vice President and General Manager, Engineering Division, of NYMA, Brook Park, Ohio. Colonel Bluford was featured by the Black Market's Black History Calendar, for August 1996.

At the Boeing A&M group, Clayton serves on the executive decision-making team of Mike Sears, president of A&M and senior vice president of The Boeing Company. As the first African-American and the first woman to be a senior manufacturing executive at A&M, Clayton leads the implementation of Lean productivity initiatives and strategies at five manufacturing sites that comprise about 50,000 employees. She acts as a facilitator and champion for cultural change, providing the guidance, encouragement and resources that allow people to fundamentally change the way Boeing does business. Clayton joined the company in 1995 as director of the Machining Center in St. Louis. In that capacity, she distinguished herself by implementing a comprehensive restructuring program to improve efficiency and cut costs. She continued to pursue productivity improvements as head of all fabrications operations in St. Louis before being named vice president of Lean Manufacturing. Clayton describes her job as "simply to get the momentum started in the right direction toward real change. Once I get everyone else moving, I don't focus solely on business results. They will happen. What's more important is focusing on what behaviors are emerging and how the culture is embracing these changes." Married and the mother of two sons, Clayton, 41, is actively involved in educational and church activities.

She is a member of the Board of Regents of Linn State Technical College at Linn, Mo., and the Board of Trustees of the Academy of Science of St. Louis. She has received a Special Leader Award as a member of the YWCA Academy of Leaders and is the director of youth ministry at the First Missionary Baptist Church of Ballwin, Mo. "The reason that I'm involved in these activities is to give something back to the community," Clayton says. "I believe that we all have a moral and ethical responsibility to be compassionate and understanding, and to share our gifts, our talents and our time in doing things to help others. This is one way in which we can make a positive difference in people's lives." Clayton also takes time to be a mentor to young people who aspire to be engineers or are in the early stages of their engineering or scientific careers. She believes mentoring is an important way to help future leaders in their development. She urges young people to "seek out mentors with strong leadership qualities that you can emulate. Recognize that you have to be willing to broaden your horizons, try new things and venture into areas that you're not familiar with." A native of Orange, N.J., Clayton received her bachelor of science degree in industrial administration, with a concentration in industrial engineering and finance, from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1981. Clayton also held positions in manufacturing, procurement, project management and plant operations at Lockheed Martin, General Electric, RCA and General Motors.

 Benjamin Davis, who received his pilot's wings in 1942 at Tuskegee, Ala., commanded the 99th Fighter Squadron, the 332nd Fighter  Group and the 477th Composite Group during World War II. In 1945, he became  the first African American officer to command an air base. In 1954, following command of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing in Korea, he became the first African American general in the U.S. Air Force. His assignments  included commander of U.S Forces and chief of staff for the United Nations  Command in Korea. In 1967, he assumed command of the 13th Air Force. Davis retired from active duty in 1970 with the rank of Lieutenant General. He then held several important government positions including Assistant Secretary in  the Department of Transportation. His 1991 autobiography, Benjamin O. Davis  Jr., American, made the best-seller lists.

 Charles Bolden Jr. was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps after graduation from the Naval Academy at  Annapolis, Md. He won his gold wings as a naval aviator in 1970 and flew 100 combat missions in Vietnam. Bolden later attended the U.S. Navy Test Pilot  School at Patuxent River, Md., and logged more than 6,000 hours as a test  pilot in more than 30 different aircraft types. In 1980, he was selected by NASA for training as a space shuttle pilot and flew four missions in space - as a payload specialist aboard Columbia in 1986, as pilot of Discovery in 1990, as commander of Atlantis in 1991 and Discovery in 1994. He left the space program and returned to the Marine Corps after logging more than 680 hours in space. Today, Gen. Bolden is the senior African American pilot in the Marine Corps and is deputy commander of U.S. forces in Japan.

 On July 18, 1944, Lt. C.D. "Lucky" Lester was flying a P-51 Mustang with the 332nd Fighter Group, an all-African American unit. The group was flying a bomber escort mission at 25,000 feet over northern Italy when they engaged a formation of German Messerschmitt Bf 109s. Lucky saw a 109 straight ahead and closed to about 200 feet while firing. The 109 exploded and, as Lucky was dodging pieces of aircraft, he saw another to his right. He turned onto its tail and again closed to 200 feet and fired. This aircraft started to smoke and dived toward the ground. Lucky followed it to about 8,000 feet until he saw the enemy pilot bail out. Lucky, down to 1,000 feet, then spotted a third 109 coming down after him. When the enemy plane overran his P-51, Lucky pulled behind it and opened fire. The Messerschmitt rolled upside down and dived straight into the ground. Lucky earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions in the engagement, which took only six minutes.

Dr. Mae Jemison, born in Decatur, Ala., and reared in Chicago, entered Stanford University at age 16 on a scholarship and graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. She earned her doctorate in medicine at Cornell University. After completing her internship at Los Angeles County Medical Center, she served 2 ½ years in the Peace Corps as a medical officer in West Africa. She returned to the U.S. and was working as a general practitioner in Los Angeles when NASA selected her for the astronaut program. On Sept. 12, 1992, she blasted into orbit aboard the space shuttle Endeavour and became the first African American woman to go into space. She served as an astronaut for six years. Today, Dr. Jemison is a professor in environmental studies at Dartmouth College and the director of the Jemison Institute, which helps developing countries use advanced technology.

Charles Hall of Brazil, Ind., recorded the first aerial combat victory for the 99th Fighter Squadron and became the first African American fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft on July 21, 1943. It happened while Hall, who was flying a P-40, was escorting B-25 bombers over Italy during his eighth mission. After the bombers had dropped their bombs on the enemy-held Castlevetrano airfield, Hall spotted two German Focke-Wulf 190s approaching. He quickly maneuvered into the space between the bombers and the fighters, and turned inside the FW190s. Hall fired a long burst at one of them as it turned left. After several hits, the German fighter fell off and crashed to the ground. Hall earned the respect of his squadron mates with his boldness and flying skill. Before he ended his combat tour, Hall had shot down three enemy aircraft.

When Clarence Beavers arrived in Georgia, a young black recruit from New York, the soldier who drove him to the Army camp was shocked at the sight of him.

"Every time we came past one of them streetlights, he would glare over and look at me," Beavers recalled. "I said, 'I'm colored. Now, will you please drive this damn Jeep before you kill us both?'"

It was just a taste of what Beavers, who grew up in Harlem, would face as he strove to become one of the nation's first black paratroopers.

Beavers, now 79, earned his wings at Fort Benning in February 1944 and served as a member of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, a historic unit whose tale, after decades of obscurity, is finally being told.

"I feel it's about time," says retired paratrooper Kenneth Smith, 69, a member of a national group that celebrates the men of the "Triple Nickles." "There were blacks that served in military units other than support units," Smith says. "That's the important thing, for the history to get out, for people to know that blacks were there."

But the Triple Nickles never were sent into battle.

In the early war years, according to a study by Morris MacGregor of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, some foreign governments and even American commanders feared setting off a race-relations powder keg by mingling troops. Some places overseas had "national exclusion" laws.

Although some white units also never saw battle, members of the Triple Nickles believed they were kept home because they were black.

Instead, as the war was drawing to a close, they went west to fight fires in a secret military operation. They leapt from planes not over Europe or Japan, but as smokejumpers fighting blazes in the American West.

Beavers had been drafted in 1941 and immediately was thrown into the turbulent racism of the segregated South.

"When these kids tell me about what's going on today, I stop and think about what used to go on," said Beavers, who now lives in Huntington, L.I.

The black recruits entered the mess hall through the side door, while whites entered through the front. White enemy prisoners of war could enter the PX, but black soldiers were kept out.

And on the training field, the white soldiers doubted their bravery.

"They were betting that we wouldn't jump — and we showed them that we weren't afraid to jump," he said. "There was so much prejudice you could cut it with a knife. The more they showed it to us, the more we were going to prove that we were equal or better than what they were."

Once Beavers earned his wings, he, like his fellows, hoped to see combat. Instead, they were sent west to battle Operation Firefly.

Unbeknown to most Americans, Japanese forces had launched a stealthy attack on the American Northwest. They released hundreds of balloons carrying incendiary bombs over the Pacific, and at least one family was killed when they found a bomb that reached shore. The black paratroopers were trained to fight the forest fires and disarm the explosives.

Just getting there was a tense operation.

Heading west by train toward their base in Pendleton, Ore., "there were some places where we had to pull the shades," said Beavers, recalling how the Army didn't want civilians to see the black soldiers.

Pendleton had just two Chinese-run restaurants and two bars that would serve blacks.

On base, the paratroopers were given flight jackets and pants, "and a football helmet, and over the football helmet they had a fencing mask. That's what we jumped in," Beavers said. "We were sent to jump down where neither man nor mule could jump."

They fought fires with picks and shovels, dug firebreaks and hoped the food drops would be successful.

When they were done, "We climbed down to where there was a trail, and mules took us down to where the vehicles were," Beavers remembered. "That's how we got out."

The men took their jobs seriously, Beavers says, and "these were no easy jumps. The purpose of the jump was landing in a tree, because if you didn't land on a tree and you landed on the ground, God knows what you were going to hit," he said. "We had one man killed. There was never a jump made that we didn't have someone hurt."

Beavers said that belonging to such an elite outfit gave the men an enduring sense of pride. But it didn't cancel out the racism of the day. "You can't make up for insults and being disrespected," he said. "You can't make up for that, no matter what outfit you belong to."