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General Information
Our school is named after Ronald Ervin McNair, Ph.D. Dr. Ronald McNair was born on October 21, 1950 in Lake City, South Carolina. He was a physicist and NASA astronaut. His parents were raised Mr. & Mrs. Carl and Pearl McNair and he had two brothers, Carl S. and Eric A. McNair. In the summer of 1959, Ronald refused to leave the segregated Lake City Public Library without being allowed to check out his books. After the police and his mother were called, he was allowed to borrow books from the Library, which is now named after him. A child's book, Ron's Big Mission, offers a fictionalized account of this event. McNair graduated as valedictorian of Carver High School in 1967.
In 1971 he received a bachelor's degree in engineering physics, magna cum laude, from North Carolina A & T University in Greensboro, North Carolina. McNair was a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. In 1976, he received his Ph.D. in physics form Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received three honorary doctorates, various fellowships and commendations and achieved a black belt in karate. After graduation from MIT, he became a staff physicist at the Hughes Research Lab in Malibu, California.
Dr. McNair died during the launch of the on mission STS-51-L on January 28, 1986