Rapid Development 



159 



Mr. Smith (left) with the late Wernfier von Braun at a 1966 

 banquet honoring space pioneers. 



blacks at Dahlgren. We had very good results with the professionals. Actually, I 

 think the statement can be made that the black professionals really didn't get 

 any special privileges. They had been working themselves into their positions 

 through their own struggle and their own preparation. We were always able to 

 knock the wind out of anybody's argument about discrimination among the 

 blacks by saying it certainly isn't true among the professionals because the 

 average grade, only a few years after I came, of black professionals was higher 

 than the average grade of white professionals. We were almost up to the 

 numbers game, too, where there were 8 or 9 percent that were among the 

 professionals. That was getting close to the 10 percent of the black population 

 of the nation. 



The bigger problem was among the nonprofessionals where the whites and 

 the blacks both seemed to be willing to accept a relationship that really worked 

 against the blacks. There we had to take a positive action and use reverse 

 discrimination, but we didn't do it by lowering any standards. What we did, and I 

 think it's still true, was to make sure that the disadvantaged blacks would get 

 priority on any training or any excused time for training. We actually got 

 complaints from the whites that we were discriminating against the whites. But 

 we had to do that. A number of blacks hadn't even learned how to read and 

 write. We had to start some of them from that — to teach them how to read and 



