It was Guion Buford Jr., a much-decorated
Vietnam vet jet pilot who rode the
Space Shuttle out of
earth's atmosphere on 30 August 1983.
However,
according to Vivian Sammons'
Blacks in Science and
Medicine (
Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis 1990), he only
made it because the the first black selected for astronaut
training,
Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr., was killed on a
training flight on December 8, 1967.
But I still think it's a great honor.