The move transformed Hampton and Langley into a bastion of aeronautical supremacy, while also eroding racial divides over subsequent decades. The black female mathematicians who walked into Langley in 1943 would find themselves at the intersection of these great transformations, their sharp minds and ambitions contributing to what the United States would consider one of its greatest victories.” If anything, they came with more experience than the white women applicants, with many years of teaching experience on top of math or science degrees. Nothing in the applications indicated anything less than fitness for the job. But the applicants’ alma maters tipped their hand: West Virginia State University, Howard, Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal, Hampton Institute just across town - all Negro schools. “No photo advised as to the applicant’s color - that requirement, instituted under the administration of Woodrow Wilson, was struck down as the Roosevelt administration tried to dismantle discrimination in hiring practices. As the pool of qualified male candidates fizzled, NACA departed from sexist norms, and Langley hired its first female computers in 1935.Īfter Franklin Roosevelt relaxed discriminatory employment practices for war projects, NACA trail-blazed once more in 1943 by considering applications from black women, as Shetterly catalogues in her book: As the aviation industry expanded over the next two decades and into World War II, so too did the need for aeronautics research - and human computers. NACA and the Langley Research Center were founded during World War I, as planes began to flex their muscles in warfare. The result is a time machine that marches, moment by moment, through the American aeronautics revolution and desegregation. Had I known these women existed, maybe I would have dreamed to be a rocket scientist? Shetterly also sorted through heaps of archival material on NACA and NASA. One clipping went as far as reporting what Mary Jackson wore at her wedding, she said. She checked local newspapers, especially ones for the black community, where she found her canvass for describing daily life in Hampton. Shetterly spent the next three years combing through historical documents. “But I didn’t know much about their particular stories - how they had come to work at NASA, or why there were black women working there.” Many of them worked with my dad, and I’d seen them growing up,” Shetterly told NewsHour. Eventually, the conversation drifted onto the black and white women who worked as mathematicians - so-called human computers - during the center’s early years. After church one day, she and her father began chatting about his days as a scientist at Hampton’s Langley Research Center - the first field facility for NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).

Writer Margot Lee Shetterly decided to pursue Hidden Figures in 2010, while visiting her parents for Christmas. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and hundreds of black female mathematicians who made crucial contributions to America’s space program.īut the narrative also charts how Hampton, Virginia emerged as a driving force for aeronautics innovation and racial integration - even as the state fought against the rise of civil rights.

This bestselling biography-turned- Hollywood biopic reveals the untold story of Katherine G. Hidden Figures offers a counter-narrative of hope and a prescient blueprint for unity against what feels like a vicious cycle of inequality. Meanwhile, Jim Crow-era restrictions on social, economic and political mobility have evolved new facades, namely gentrification and gerrymandering. The rise of the alt-right, a white nationalist movement, echoes sentiments of public segregation once thought long gone. Viral stories of black killings, once occasional events, morphed into déjà vu in 2016 - potentially triggering PTSD-like trauma.

If you’re a person of color in America right now, it may feel like you’re riding a carousel of darkness.

Hidden figures movie 2016