2nd - Benchmark

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Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. He was an astronaut who flew on two space missions. The first was Gemini 8. The second was Apollo 11, which landed on the moon in 1969. Armstrong was also an engineer, a pilot and a college professor.

What Was Neil Armstrong's Life Like Growing Up?

Neil Armstrong was born in Ohio on Aug. 5, 1930. He had a brother and a sister. His family moved several times when he was young. They settled in Wapakoneta, Ohio, when he was 13. Armstrong first flew in an airplane when he was 6. That flight made him love airplanes. He was an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. Armstrong attended Blume High School in Wapakoneta.

Armstrong went to college at Purdue University. While he was in college, he left to serve in the U.S. Navy. He was a Navy pilot during the Korean War. Afterwards, he returned and finished his bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering. He later earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California.

What Did Neil Armstrong Do Before He Became an Astronaut?

After he graduated from college in 1955, Neil Armstrong went to work for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. NACA was a government agency that researched airplanes. Congress formed NASA in 1958, and NACA became part of this new agency.

Armstrong flew several planes for the agency. He also helped design planes. One of the planes he flew was the X-15 rocket plane. This plane set records for speed and altitude. Some of those records still stand, more than 40 years later.

What Did Neil Armstrong Do as an Astronaut?

Neil Armstrong was selected as an astronaut in 1962. He was part of the second group of astronauts ever chosen. After finishing his initial training, he was picked to be mission commander of Gemini 8 in 1966. The two-person crew was Armstrong and David Scott. They were the first astronauts to dock two vehicles in space. The Gemini docked with an Agena spacecraft. The Agena, which had no crew, was launched so the Gemini could practice docking with it. After docking, the Gemini had a thruster problem. The capsule started spinning, and the mission ended early. Armstrong and Scott were able to pilot the Gemini safely back to Earth.

One of the few photos that show Armstrong during the Apollo 11 moonwalk.

What Happened On the Apollo 11 Mission?

Armstrong's second flight was as commander of Apollo 11 in 1969. The other crew members were Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon in the lunar lander named Eagle. They were the first people to land on the moon. Collins stayed in orbit around the moon in the Apollo capsule. After landing, Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. Armstrong took the first step on the moon. He said, "That's one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind."

Armstrong and Aldrin spent more than two-and-a-half hours working outside their spacecraft on the moon. They studied the surface and collected rock samples. The two astronauts were on the moon for 21-and-a-half hours, including time inside the lander. After they blasted off, they docked with the Apollo capsule still in orbit around the moon. All three astronauts then flew back to Earth in the Apollo capsule.

The first footprints on the moon could be there for a million years. The moon has no wind to blow them away.

What Did Neil Armstrong Do After Apollo 11?

Neil Armstrong retired from NASA the year after Apollo 11. Armstrong was a professor at the University of Cincinnati from 1971 to 1979. He taught classes and did research. Armstrong later went into the business world. He stayed active in various groups that studied space and aeronautics.

An American Hero and Explorer

Neil Armstrong died on Aug. 25, 2012. He was 82.

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Mary Eliza Church was born on September 23, 1863 in Memphis, Tennessee. Her parents, Robert Church and Louisa Ayers, were formerly enslaved. By the time Mary was born, they were both highly successful small-business owners. Robert was a real estate investor, and Louisa owned a popular hair salon.

Mary’s parents insisted that she and her younger brother receive the best possible education. They felt the schools in Memphis were not good enough. Instead, they sent Mary to the Antioch College Model School in Ohio when she was eight years old.

As one of the few Black students at the school, Mary frequently faced racism, particularly from older students. She channeled her anger and humiliation into a worldview that would shape her entire life. She reflected on how awful it felt to be judged by the color of her skin. So she committed to living a life of tolerance toward all races.

After graduating high school, Mary enrolled at Oberlin College. She was one of only two Black women in her class. Although she continued to face racism, she also found Oberlin to be a welcoming place. She felt that she was frequently treated the same as her white counterparts. Oberlin offered many classes specifically for women, but Mary often enrolled in the more academically rigorous classes intended for men. She studied a variety of topics, with a focus on writing.

After earning an undergraduate and a graduate degree, Mary taught French, writing, reading, and geology for two years at Wilberforce University. Wilberforce is a private, historically Black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. She then taught Latin at the prestigious M Street Colored High School in Washington, D.C. While there, she married fellow teacher Robert Terrell.

After getting married, Mary left the teaching profession to pursue work in the social reform world. Mary was an effective leader. She brought activists together and fostered collective advocacy around issues she cared deeply about.

In 1892, Mary founded the Colored Women’s League for Washington, D.C. The League provided night classes for women, childcare for working mothers, and kindergarten classes for Black children. Mary’s interest in helping Black mothers and children stemmed from her own personal experiences. Three of her four children died in infancy, and she firmly believed their deaths were caused by the poor medical treatment available to Black citizens. Mary worked to create organizations like the Colored Women’s League to help Black mothers have better access to care and support.

In 1895, the Board of Education for Washington, D.C. appointed Mary as their first Black member. In that role, which she held for eleven years, she visited schools and raised funds. She also encouraged schools to celebrate Frederick Douglass Day, a precursor to today’s Black History Month.

In 1896, she was named the first president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). This was a new, national organization that formed through the combination of local women’s clubs, including the Colored Women’s League. NACW created unity across the Black reform movement and promoted respect for all Black women.

Suffrage was a primary focus of NACW. Indeed, it was a common theme across all of Mary’s volunteer work. She strongly believed that real change would only be achieved once women could vote. She joined the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and built a friendship with its leader, Susan B. Anthony. Mary was one of the few Black members of the organization. She spoke out frequently to inform suffrage leaders that not all suffragists were white. She reminded them that Black women needed to be included in the effort for suffrage. In 1900, Mary spoke at the NAWSA convention. There, she publicly denounced the racism within the suffrage movement. She showed those in attendance the importance of solidarity among women activists of all races.

Mary had a reputation as a powerful speaker. She traveled nationally and internationally, spreading her message of human rights. In 1904, she spoke at the International Congress of Women in Berlin, Germany. She was the only Black woman in attendance. She gave her speech in French, German, and English. The audience was so impressed by her mastery of three languages that they gave her a huge ovation when she was done.

Mary saw herself as a woman activist and a Black activist. In her activism, she addressed the challenges Black women faced as members of two critically important interest groups. Mary knew that she faced hurdles because of her race and her gender, and worked hard to disprove people’s expectations. As a leader in the civil rights movement, Mary was one of sixty prominent leaders to endorse the NAACP at its founding in 1909. She even helped found the association’s Washington, D.C. branch. In 1940, she published her memoir, A Colored Woman in a White World.

Mary remained politically active into her eighties. In 1946, she applied to reinstate her membership in the American Association of University Women, which she had let lapse many years earlier. Mary genuinely wished to be a part of this prestigious organization of college-educated women. But she also wanted to test the organization’s tolerance of Black members. When her application was denied, she sued the organization. She fought for two years until her membership was reinstated in 1948. The battle caused the organization to change its policies to include people of color as members. Mary later said that not paving the way for other college-educated women of color would have been cowardly.

In 1949, Mary was invited by a friend to lead the newly formed Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the District of Columbia Anti-Discrimination Laws (CCEAD). The Anti-Discrimination Laws were a series of laws passed in the 1870s meant to end discrimination against Black citizens in Washington, D.C. The laws, however, had never been properly enforced.

Under Mary’s leadership, CCEAD successfully fought to end segregation in restaurants, movie theaters, and other public places. Mary personally organized picket lines, sometimes with up to 100 participants, to protest racist businesses. These protests could go on for weeks or months at a time. On her ninetieth birthday, Mary took a group of activist friends to the movies, expecting resistance. To her surprise, they were able to enjoy the movie in peace. Knowing that businesses were actually starting to accept Black customers was the perfect birthday gift for Mary.

A few weeks later, the Black community in Washington, D.C., threw Mary a ninetieth birthday luncheon. Over 700 people attended, including representatives from President Eisenhower’s staff. During the party, guests announced the creation of the Mary Church Terrell Fund. This new charity raised money to end Jim Crow discrimination in Washington, D.C.

Mary died in July 1954. It was less than two months after Brown v. Board of Education outlawed racial segregation in schools, paving the way for far-reaching integration. At the time, she was still fighting against segregation in the nation’s capital, with a specific focus on schools and places of work.