Cold Warrior Magic, Africana Science, and NASA Space Race Religion, Part One

“Cold Warrior Magic, Africana Science, and NASA Space Race Religion, Part One” uses anthropological studies of Cold War space exploration to reveal how post–World War II funding launched hegemonies of racial capitalism into the 1950s, putting white men on the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s. In these Covidien times since 1619, billionaires replace government treasuries to finance voyages into the heavens, while Black anthropologists enter discourse on space with Afrofuturist revisions of past pains. Orbiting Silent-Generation anthropologist Laura Nader, this chapter connects new worldviews from contrarian anthropology to moral ethical logic (MEL), developed at the Margaret Walker Center in Mississippi. While the author hoped to launch research into his Melungeon Maroon ancestors from 1619 Angola on par with Walker’s mid-1960s, ground-breaking work Jubilee, a pre-COVID lecture on NASA’s Stennis Space Center at Two Mississippi Museums propelled MEL in a realm of urgent intertextual critical analysis.