Julius Montgomery and the Integration of Countdown College — Melbourne, Florida

Julius Montgomery was an electronics technician from Alabama who broke two color lines in Brevard County within three years and later won a seat on the Melbourne City Council. In 1956 he became, in NASA's words, the first African American hired at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to work as a technical professional. In 1958 he signed up for the first classes of Brevard Engineering College, the night school for missile workers known as Countdown College that grew into Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

That registration nearly ended the college before it began. Brevard County school officials, whose segregated Eau Gallie Junior High School was renting classrooms to the college, threatened to evict it if a Black student attended. Montgomery withdrew so classes could go on, then enrolled in 1961 once the college had its own campus. Florida Tech now describes his decision as the personal sacrifice that ensured the university's survival.

NASA's history office records that Montgomery graduated from Tuskegee Institute in 1951, served four and a half years in the Air Force, earned a first-class radio license and worked as a radio station engineer in Mobile, Alabama. He applied for an electronics technician job at Cape Canaveral, passed the entrance exam and moved to Florida in 1956 at a starting salary of $96 a week. Florida Tech's account places him in the RCA Development Lab, where he was the first Black man at the Cape in a role other than janitor.

His team, nicknamed range rats, traveled the missile range after test launches to find out what had failed and repair the electronics, and spent time at sea maintaining satellite equipment. The work brought him to the Melbourne area, where he settled. The National Air and Space Museum quotes his memory of his first day at the lab, when he walked down a line of new coworkers: Nobody would shake my hand.

Brevard Engineering College started without a building. In Florida Tech's history of its launch, Patterson writes that the Brevard County Schools agreed to rent three classrooms at Eau Gallie Junior High School, now Westshore Junior Senior High School, and that the first mass meeting of students and faculty was held there at 7 p.m. A companion Florida Tech account names county superintendent of schools Woodrow Darden as the official who approved the arrangement in the summer of 1958.

Montgomery had met founder Jerome Keuper in the RCA lab, and Keuper urged him to enroll. On the sign-up sheet he listed his Tuskegee degree. In September 1958, when school district officials learned that an African American would be attending classes at the segregated Eau Gallie school, they gave Keuper an ultimatum: Montgomery must withdraw, or the college and its missilemen would be evicted. Patterson's 2019 article says a pair of African American missilemen were attending at the time.

Montgomery went to Keuper and volunteered to withdraw. According to Florida Tech, Keuper credited him with saving the fledgling college and promised that Montgomery and other African American students would be welcome once it found a home of its own. NASA's account adds that the college could only open in the Eau Gallie classrooms because Montgomery stepped aside.

The home Keuper promised came from an unlikely source. The 2019 Florida Tech article explains that Melbourne Village founder Virginia Wood and her allies had launched a small University of Melbourne on 35 acres west of Babcock Street donated by developer V. Conner Brownlie. Brownlie's deed restricted the land to white students; in 1955 the university's regents gave him one week to remove the restriction, and he did. Brevard Engineering College used the University of Melbourne building to meet prospective students in July 1958.

A plan for a 20-acre campus next to Patrick Air Force Base in Satellite Beach stalled for lack of community support by the fall of 1960. Wood, Hubert Normile and Homer Denius of Radiation, Inc. then proposed that the college settle in Melbourne. On January 11, 1961, Melbourne's Daily Times ran the banner headline BEC Gets University Campus, announcing a one dollar a year, 99-year lease on the 40-acre University of Melbourne property. Ground was broken for classrooms in April 1961, and that year, as academic operations shifted to the Country Club Road campus, Montgomery enrolled. NASA identifies him as the first African American student to integrate the college.

Montgomery also pressed into Melbourne's elected offices. The National Air and Space Museum reports that he stood for election beginning in 1956 and finally won in 1969, becoming the first African American ever to win a seat on the Melbourne City Council. The New York Amsterdam News describes the campaign as a 13-year effort and notes it would be 35 years before another African American served on the council. The Florida Tech Brevard African American history timeline lists his 1969 council election among the key dates for the community. The same Florida Tech timeline, however, also states that Ted Nichols became Melbourne's first African American on the city council in 1965, so the sources disagree on who came first; the museum and newspaper accounts describe Montgomery's 1969 win as the first time an African American won a council seat.

He also served as president of Melbourne's NAACP chapter. Montgomery stayed with RCA at the Cape for more than thirty years, retiring in 1988, and afterward ran a general contracting business, according to NASA.

Florida Tech honors him with the Julius Montgomery Pioneer Award for community service. Sources differ on its start: the School of Arts and Communication timeline dates the first ceremony to 2006, with Montgomery himself as first recipient, while NASA gives 2007. On January 13, 2020, Florida Tech president T. Dwayne McCay conferred on him an honorary doctorate of humane letters at Gleason Auditorium on the Melbourne campus, recognizing his commitment to education and civil rights. Montgomery died nine days later, on January 22, 2020, at age 90.

Beyond Brevard, Montgomery's story is a chapter in a 2015 book by Richard Paul and Steven Moss on the first African Americans in the space program. On February 20, 2010, he joined a National Air and Space Museum panel with Morgan Watson, NASA's first Black engineer, and astronauts Leland Melvin and Mae Jemison, where he told the story of his first day at the Cape. The Eau Gallie junior high where the 1958 confrontation took place is today's Westshore Junior Senior High School in Melbourne.