At that time, southern states instituted barriers designed to prevent black people from voting, such as poll taxes and literacy tests.
[5] In 1961, President John F. Kennedy passed an executive order that prohibited federal agencies, including NASA, from discriminating against employees on the basis of race.
[6][3] At the time, NASA was expanding into Alabama, Florida, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana — battleground areas in the fight for civil liberties.
[3] As part of that effort towards racial integration, NASA opened a cooperative education program, in which students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) — including Watson's Southern University — would alternate semesters in school with semesters spent working for the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC).
[3] Once deemed eligible, Watson and his six peers entered the cooperative program and began work in Huntsville, Alabama in January 1964, becoming NASA's first African American engineers in the South.
[2][8] He took advantage of training opportunities at MSFC in order to better understand the inner-workings of engines and, with that new expertise, he began working in a propulsion lab to test the Saturn IB rocket.
In July 2019, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing, he expressed pride in his work and gratitude for the opportunity he was given to create a legacy.