Steven Moss

Steven Moss

Steven Lewis Moss the first historian to deduce a link between civil rights and the space program, died October 23, 2025 at St. Joseph's Care Center in McGregor, Texas. The cause of death was complications from ALS.

As a graduate student looking for a thesis topic on the space program at Texas Tech University in 1994, Mr. Moss tripped over a number of articles from the early 1960s describing how the Kennedy administration was trying to use NASA to racially integrate workplace in the Agency's home communities in the South. When Mr. Moss went to his thesis advisor to propose the paper, the advisor warned him, "If this was a story, someone would have written already." Twenty years later, Mr. Moss did just that, co-authoring the book We Could We Could Not Fail: the First African-Americans in the Space Program with Richard Paul, the Smithsonian's Verville Fellow in Space History. Though the movie Hidden Figures cemented the NASA-Civil Right connection in the public imagination, it was Mr. Moss's diligent research, 20 years earlier, that first brought it to the attention of the space history establishment. Today, the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum has an area of its Destination Moon exhibit devoted to Mr. Moss's research.

Steven Moss, the son of LCDR Lewis Morten Moss and June Elizabeth (Lewis) Moss, was born in Hawaii in 1962. After his father's retirement from the Navy, the family settled in Lubbock, Texas. It was a short commute from there to Texas Tech. After his father's death, the proximity of Texas Tech to home enabled Mr. Moss to care for his mother, a mission he devoted much of the rest of his life to doing.

Mr. Moss's first job after college was teaching economics at Lubbock High School. At LHS, "He always tried to champion the underdog – champion those who are marginalized," one old friend has said. An example is Jason Peña, a self-described "barrio kid" from Lubbock's Arnett-Benson neighborhood. He said that being in Mr. Moss's homeroom & Econ. classes, "were the first instances in good ole Lubbock where I had a teacher who was white but actually cared to get to know me and talk about the future." Other tributes to Mr. Moss have poured in from former students since his illness was first known.

In 1998, Mr. Moss left Lubbock to teach history at Texas State Technical College in Waco. He remained at TSTC – until his retirement in 2025.

After the publication of We Could Not Fail, Mr. Moss spoke extensively on the NASA-civil rights connection. He was the keynote speaker (along with Mr. Paul) at the NASA headquarters Black History Month kickoff event in 2016. He also spoke at the Kennedy space and the Johnson Space Center. He was the principal voice in the 2008 public radio documentary Race And The Space Race.

Steven was predeceased by his parents. He is survived by his sister, Susan Moss of Austin, Texas. Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, December 13, 2025 at 4:00 p.m. at Connally/Compton Funeral Directors 4400 West Waco Dr., Waco, Texas 76710.