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In the Cold War atmosphere of the late twentieth century, NASA and Houston came together to produce a remarkable story. This dissertation focuses on the American space agency between 1961 and 1969 in an effort to examine how NASA had a transformative effect on southeast Texas. A number of scholars have written about the space flights that occurred during the late twentieth century, but few works explore the economic, political, and social impact of America's space program on a regional level. The purpose of this study is to describe how NASA affected southeast Texas's population, academic institutions, race relations, residential communities, political attitudes, and economy during the late twentieth century. Accordingly, the establishment of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston represented the culmination of nearly sixty years of economic growth and progress in Texas, which began with the discovery of oil at Spindletop in 1901 and continued with the expansion of the oil and petrochemical industries during World War II. |
