Space and Race

Like most people who watched NBC’s (abysmal) coverage of the Olympics this summer I saw the preview for Hidden Figures starring Taraji P Henson and Octavia Spencer. Just as I was about to exclaim “How interesting” my husband muttered “ugh, Oscar bait” which means I’ll have to bring it home from Redbox a few months after it leaves theaters.

Luckily for me, like most movies nowadays, there was a book used as source material. Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures tells the story of the African American women who were part of the precursor to NASA as well as integral team members to the Apollo missions; unfortunately it reads like an enthusiastic term paper at times.

Part of the reason Shetterly wanted to write Hidden Figures was because there were so many women involved in NACA but part of the problem with her retelling was there we so many women (what a great problem to have!) that it began to get overwhelming to keep track of who was doing what when. She highlights three women in particular: Katharine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson and their stories are incredible.

The women at Langley took their jobs on a temporary basis during WW2 focusing on aeronautics; once the Allies won many women assumed they’d lose their jobs but the Cold War ushered in an even more urgent need to keep the female computers. Many women stayed at the NACA as it became NASA and began working on getting a man on the moon. John Glenn was only comfortable making his groundbreaking orbit after Johnson had checked the numbers. Throughout all of these triumphs were the trying times of the Civil Right’s movement; WEB DuBois and Dr Martin Luther King Jr are referenced frequently as well as Brown vs the Board of Education. While many computers were able to live comfortable middle class lives there was still a lot of segregation (particularly in the NACA days) and a lack of pay equality to suffer through.