Julius Montgomery

Julius Montgomery's ID picture from Cape Canaveral Air Force station. In 1956, he was the first Black man hired at Cape Canaveral as anything other than a janitor. Julius Marvin Montgomery was an American technical professional and politician. He was the first Black man ever hired at the RCA Development Lab at Cape Canaveral, and the first Black student to enroll at Brevard Engineering College (now Florida Institute of Technology or Florida Tech). He was also the first black city council member of Melbourne, Florida.

Early life and education Growing up in Alabama, Julius Montgomery said, "I had not talked to a white person in my life until I was in the service. No conversation. That's the way it was." Montgomery enrolled at Tuskegee Institute, where he studied to be a linotype operator. He understood exactly which jobs Southern society would allow Blacks to hold at the time. Janitor and "concrete work" were the main ones, he said, "but you couldn't be the boss." Though he was interested in science, he had learned from a cousin's experience just how hard it would be to become a doctor. "My cousin had to go to Morehouse in Georgia, because they wouldn't let him go to the school in Alabama," he said. His cousin applied for medical school and they told him, ”You can't go here, boy." Montgomery continued, "They would send you out of the state back in those days. And they paid for it! First, you have to apply to the school to be turned down by the state. And then they would give you an option of going to another school." With employment options so narrow, he made a conscious choice to study a trade rather than to focus on academics.

Montgomery served in the United States Air Force after college. The government had desegregated the Air Force before it drafted him, and Montgomery remembered, "walking into this barracks full of all these guys -- white guys -- and I said ‘Good God!’ I sat on my bunk and said ‘How in the world will I be able to identify them? They all look alike to me!’” In the Air Force he received a first-class radio telephone operator's license.

Pioneering Legacy #1 - Integrating Cape Canaveral When Julius Montgomery came to Cape Canaveral in 1956, the Ku Klux Klan controlled east central Florida. The Orange County Sheriff was a Klansmen, as were city commissioners, Alderman, and county commissioners. One historian has said, "Local businessmen joined the Klan almost like joining the Rotary club." In the Klan’s wake, of course, came lynching. In the Southern states where the space program was based, Florida had the highest lynching rate per capita, so the racial animus was palpable on that first day. Montgomery was The First, but he shouldered a burden other racial pioneers did not. Unlike Jackie Robinson, Guy Bluford and Mae Jemison, as Montgomery made his way to the build­ing that housed the RCA Development Lab, there were no columnists from the black press cheering and urging progress, no one from the NAACP to offer legal or moral support. Julius Montgomery was utterly alone. Julius Montgomery (front row, center) as a member of the 1968 RCA Cape Canaveral softball team. When he first came to RCA in 1956, he said, "Nobody would shake my hand." As he remembered it, "I was a strange person coming into an all-white building. All white." As he entered his new workplace, "Nobody would shake my hand," he recalled. One by one each of his coworkers turned away. "I got to the last fellow," he said, "and I said ‘Hello, I’m Julius Montgomery.’ He said, ‘Look boy, that’s no way to talk to a white man!’" In a story indicative of who Julius Montgomery was – one he told many times during his life, "I said, ‘Ah, forgive me, oh great, white bastard. What should I call you?’ And I laughed, and he laughed and he shook my hand."

Montgomery began his career as a member of the "Range Rats," technicians who repaired malfunctioning ballistic missiles. Their work mostly involved developing circuits, as there was no "over-the-counter equipment to do the jobs" at the time, Montgomery said. The team also travelled out to the ships that, he said, "searched the skies for anything the Russians were doing" to perform maintenance on the satellite equipment. Presentation of the 2012 Julius Montgomery Pioneer Award at Florida Tech.

Pioneering Legacy #2 - Integrating Florida Tech Montgomery was a pioneer not just at Cape Canaveral. Every year, at its Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemo­ration, Florida Tech presents the Julius Montgomery Pioneer Award. The award exists because at a pivotal time in the history of the country and the school, Montgomery allowed Florida Tech to remain segregated, at harm to himself but to the benefit of the institution. His sacrifice and generosity were so significant that without it, the school would have been closed down -- “Tossed out on the street,” in the words of Florida Tech founder Jerome P. Keuper. Florida Tech started as Brevard Engineering College (BEC) when Keuper, then a senior engineer in the U.S. Air Force Missile Test Project, told his bosses at RCA that he wanted to open a school to keep workers up to date on the state of the art in engineering.

BEC originated in three rented class­rooms at Eau Gallie Junior High School. Not too long after opening, the school found itself in the midst of a controversy started inadvertently by Julius Montgomery. Keuper had put up on an RCA bulletin board a notice asking people to enroll at his new school. It also asked them to list where they had done their undergrad­uate work. “I signed it,” Montgomery said. “I put down Tuskegee.”

Within days, the Brevard County super­intendent of schools was on the phone to Keuper, telling him the school system was canceling BEC’s contract to rent the classrooms. The superintendent said he was worried about traffic jams “and other things.” According to Montgomery, he was one of those “other things.” As he told it, the superintendent said, “I’m sorry, but this fellow here, is from Tuskegee, so he must be Black. He cannot come to this classroom.” The ultimatum was clear: Expel this Black man, or close the school. The next day, Montgomery said, while he was at his workbench, there was a message over the intercom: “Julius Montgomery, come to the office, please.” There, he was introduced to Keuper. Days before Montgomery’s death, the school also awarded him an honorary doctorate in humane letters.

Pioneering Legacy #3 - Florida Politics

Julius Montgomery's is one of many stories of the space program's African American pioneers that does not comport with the civil rights achievements you find in the standard high school textbook. Not everyone achieved their ends by marching, picketing, and saying "no." Instead, Julius Montgomery applied the principles of self-help and -- often -- accommodation to reach the same ends. It worked for him, but he said the Black community did not always understand. "I got a lot of problems from the Black community," he said. In 1969, at a time when fewer than 50 African Americans held elected office in the former Confederate states, Julius Montgomery attained yet another milestone, when he became the first African American ever to win a seat on the Melbourne City Council. He continued to run and win until he retired in 1977.

Conclusion Julius Montgomery (in sunglasses) speaks on a panel at the National Air and Space Museum with Morgan Watson and astronauts Leland Melvin and Dr. Mae Jemison. Ten years earlier, Montgomery was invited to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for the museum's annual African-American Family Day. He appeared on a panel alongside Morgan Watson, NASA's first Black engineer; and astronauts Leland Melvin (just back from the International Space Station), and Dr. Mae Jemison, NASA's first Black female astronaut. Montgomery retold his "Oh Great White Bastard" story on the panel (modifying the punchline for the children in the audience). Later on, he sidled over to Leland Melvin and looked up (the astronaut, a former wide receiver for the Detroit Lions, towered over Montgomery) with wide-eyed awe. “I’ll tell you,” Montgomery said, “You astronauts; you’re the bravest people I ever met.” Leland Melvin return the look and his grin broke into a wide, beaming smile. “No, sir” he said. “I heard your story out there. You are the bravest person I ever met.” And Julius Montgomery laughed and Leland Melvin laughed and they shook hands.

Death Montgomery died on January 22, 2020, at a nursing home in Melbourne, Florida. He was 90 years old. The cause of death was heart failure, according to his daughter Gaye Montgomery. Gaye established a scholarship at Florida Tech in her father's memory in 2022.