why did katherine get the assignment in hidden figures

'Hidden Figures': When Did John Glenn Ask for 'the Girl' to Check the Numbers?

"Get the girl to check the numbers."

With those seven words, spoken by astronaut John Glenn before he became the first American to orbit Earth in 1962, Katherine Johnson's role in history changed .

A "human computer" assigned to NASA's Flight Research Division at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Johnson was the African-American, then-44-year-old "girl" who was the subject of the astronaut's directive . As such, she set about double checking the trajectory calculated by her electronic counterpart: room-size IBM 7090 computers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"If she says the numbers are good, I am ready to go," said Glenn, according to Margot Lee Shetterly, citing Johnson, in her book "Hidden Figures" (William Morrow, 2016) which served as the basis for the 20th Century Fox movie by the same title opening wide in U.S. theaters on Friday (Jan. 6).

That brief exchange, and the work Johnson did as a result of it, is a pivotal scene in the feature film, which stars Taraji P. Henson as the mathematician and Glen Powell as the astronaut. Like most "based on true events" films though, "Hidden Figures" takes certain liberties with the history.

"Those calculations for John Glenn took three days," said director Ted Melfi. "We can't do that in the movie, so even though [Johnson] is a math genius, she is not that much a genius."

"So yes, it took her 25 seconds in the film," said Melfi.

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Shetterly writes that it actually took Johnson a day and a half to complete the calculations. But whether it was 36 or 72 hours, there is a potentially bigger question: When did Glenn ask for "the girl" to check the computers' numbers?

That piece of paper

In "Hidden Figures," the movie , Johnson (Henson) rushes to complete the math while Glenn waits on the launch pad. She then runs to hand off her report to Mission Control (in real life, Johnson was in Virginia for the launch, while the flight controllers were at Cape Canaveral in Florida).

Shetterly writes in her book that Glenn, who died on Dec. 8 at the age of 95, conducted a final check of his Mercury-Atlas 6 mission flight plan during the three days that led up to his launch on Feb. 20, 1962. It is within that context that she describes Johnson making the calculations, but that may or may not be when it occurred.

"Out of all of the things that I was trying to track down, this was the one," Shetterly told collectSPACE in an interview. "I spoke to some of the guys in Houston, with Katherine, and [searched through] documents. I cannot even tell you how many boxes of the Project Mercury reports, all of the computer printouts, I went through trying to find that exact thing."

Johnson told Shetterly it happened "weeks before" Glenn's launch, but her account, recalled more than 50 years after the event, "sort of moved around a little" over the course of her interviews.

"As best as I can tell and looking at all the details, her oral history testimony and NASA documents, it was some point very close to the launch in 1962, but I could never get the final date," stated Shetterly. "I have gotten close to it, but I haven't found that piece of paper that said it happened on this date, at this time, these many days before the launch."

Of days and dates

The question of when might be further complicated by the history of Glenn's flight.

The first American to orbit Earth lifted off on Feb. 20, 1962, but that came after two months of false starts. Glenn first got ready to launch by entering quarantine at the Cape in December 1961.

"NASA hinted that the flight might occur before Christmas," Glenn wrote in his 1999 memoir. "Bob [Gilruth, head of the Space Task Group] knew it wouldn't hurt the agency if the president could give a Christmas present to the country in the form of an orbital flight."

That gift however, was not to be. Technical problems with Glenn's Mercury capsule, Friendship 7 , slipped the flight to the next month. NASA announced a date of Jan. 16, 1962, but that was postponed due to issues with the propellant tanks for the mission's Atlas rocket.

On Jan. 27, after at least one delay for poor weather and another for technical concerns, Glenn proceeded through a pre-flight physical, put on his silver spacesuit, ascended the launch tower and boarded his spacecraft for launch.

John Glenn reviews his orbital trajectory on a map the day after a launch scrub of his Mercury-Atlas 6 mission on Jan. 27, 1962.

"I lay there on my back in the contour couch for nearly six hours, wishing that the gantry would pull back, signaling a break in the clouds and imminent liftoff," Glenn wrote. "But they didn't break, and the launch window closed."

A new attempt on Feb. 1 was called off after it was found that a fuel leak had soaked an insulation blanket inside the Atlas. Two weeks later, the weather scrubbed tries on Feb. 14 and 16.

Finally, the weather improved, and Friendship 7 lifted off at 9:47 a.m. EST on Feb. 20, 1962.

So, with all those stops and starts, why would Glenn only become concerned with the computer-generated numbers for his orbital trajectory on what turned out to be his last, successful attempt? After all, had the weather cooperated, he might have lifted off as early as a month before without the benefit of Johnson's double-check.

Time to figure

Had that happened — had Glenn flown his three orbits on Jan. 27, and were all other conditions equal — he probably would have been okay. Johnson's math matched the IBM, establishing the computer (the electronic one) was reliable.

As to the timing, at least two possibilities exists. Johnson could have performed the math earlier then she recalled, such that her verification came prior to the January launch attempts (or maybe even for the December pre-Christmas target), or, perhaps, the delays gave Glenn the extra time he needed to think through all the possibilities. [ Incredible Life of NASA's Katherine Johnson - By the Numbers ]

One detail that might bolster the latter scenario concerns how Glenn got the camera he used on board Friendship 7. According to his memoir, Glenn purchased the automatic camera at a Cocoa Beach drugstore in January, after his launch campaign had begun.

The delay from December gave Glenn the time to further consider the necessity of flying a camera after NASA had initially rejected the idea. Maybe the extra days and weeks also gave Glenn the time to recall the "girl" whose figures preceded the computers.

See more photos from "Hidden Figures" and of the real Katherine Johnson and John Glenn at collectSPACE.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE.com , an online publication and community devoted to space history with a particular focus on how and where space exploration intersects with pop culture. Pearlman is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of "Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He previously developed online content for the National Space Society and Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, helped establish the space tourism company Space Adventures and currently serves on the History Committee of the American Astronautical Society, the advisory committee for The Mars Generation and leadership board of For All Moonkind. In 2009, he was inducted into the U.S. Space Camp Hall of Fame in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2021, he was honored by the American Astronautical Society with the Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History.

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Hidden Figures: History vs. Hollywood

REEL FACE:	REAL FACE:
September 11, 1970 Washington, District of Columbia, USA	August 26, 1918 White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, USA
May 25, 1970 Montgomery, Alabama, USA	September 20, 1910 Kansas City, Missouri, USA November 10, 2008, Hampton, Virginia, USA
December 1, 1985 Kansas City, Kansas, USA	April 9, 1921 Hampton, Virginia, USA February 11, 2005, Hampton, Virginia, USA
February 16, 1974 Oakland, California, USA	USA
October 21, 1988 Austin, Texas, USA	July 18, 1921 Cambridge, Ohio, USA December 8, 2016, Columbus, Ohio, USA

Is Kevin Costner's character based on a real person?

Not exactly. In researching the Hidden Figures true story, we learned that Kevin Costner's character, Al Harrison, is based on three different directors at NASA Langley during Katherine Johnson's time at the research facility. The movie's director, Theodore Melfi, was unable to secure the rights to the guy he wanted, so he decided to make Costner's Al Harrison a composite character. -Today Show Kevin Costner's character, Al Harrison, is a composite of three different directors at the NASA Langley Research Center.

What are some of Katherine Johnson's accomplishments at NASA?

Over the course of her three decades at NASA, Katherine Johnson's biography includes an impressive list of accomplishments. She calculated trajectories for Alan Shepard's groundbreaking 1961 spaceflight (America's first human in space), she verified the calculations for John Glenn's first American orbit of Earth, she computed the trajectory of Apollo 11's flight to the moon, and she worked on the plan that saved Apollo 13's crew and brought them safely back to Earth. For her accomplishments, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 24, 2015. - NASA Katherine Johnson Documentary

Did Katherine's father really move the family 120 miles each school year so that she and her siblings could continue their education?

Yes. Born in 1918, Katherine G. Johnson's impressive intellect was evident from the time she was a child. She was fascinated with numbers and became a high school freshman by age 10. In her hometown of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, school for African-Americans normally stopped at the eighth grade for those who could afford to attend. Katherine's father, Joshua, was determined to see his children reach their potential, so he drove the family 120 miles to Institute, West Virginia, where blacks could pursue an education past the eighth grade, through high school, and into college. He rented a house for the family to stay during the school year and journeyed back and forth to White Sulphur Springs for his job at a hotel. He did this for eight years, so that each of his four children could go to high school and college. Katherine proved to be so smart that she skipped several grades, graduating high school at age 14 and from West Virginia State College at 18. -NASA During the school year, Katherine's parents, Joshua and Joylette Coleman (left), moved the family 120 miles so that their four children could receive a high school and college education. Actors Jaiden Kaine and Karan Kendrick portray the couple in the Hidden Figures movie (right).

Did black women have to abide by segregation laws when they first started working at Langley in the 1940s?

Yes. "At the time the black women came to work at Langley [in 1943], this was a time of segregation," says Hidden Figures author Margot Lee Shetterly. "Even though they were just starting these brand new, very interesting jobs as professional mathematicians, they nonetheless had to abide by the state law, which was that there were segregated work rooms for them, there were segregated bathrooms, and there were segregated cafeterias. On their table in the cafeteria was a sign that said 'colored computers,' which sort of sounds like an iMac or something, right, today? But this referred to the black women who were doing this mathematical work." They were essentially human computers. -Al Jazeera

Did Katherine Johnson feel the segregation of the outside world while working at NASA?

No. "I didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research," says the real Katherine G. Johnson. "You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job...and play bridge at lunch. I didn't feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it." Even though much of the racism coming from Katherine's coworkers in the movie seems to be largely made up (in real life she claimed to be treated as a peer), the movie's depiction of state laws regarding the use of separate bathrooms, buses, etc. was very real. African-American computers had also been put in the segregated west section of the Langley campus and were dubbed the "West Computers." - WHROTV Interview In Margot Lee Shetterly's book, Hidden Figures , she writes about a cardboard sign on one of the tables in the back of NASA Langley's cafeteria during the early 1940s that read, "COLORED COMPUTERS." This particularly struck a nerve with the women because it seemed especially ridiculous and demeaning in a place where research and intellectual ability was focused on much more than skin color. It was Miriam Mann, a member of the West Computers, who finally decided to remove the sign, and when an unknown hand would make a new sign a few days later, Miriam would shove that sign into her purse too. Eventually, the signs stopped reappearing at some point during the war. Unlike Taraji P. Henson's character in the movie, the real Katherine G. Johnson says that she didn't feel any segregation while working at NASA.

Did they really think Katherine G. Johnson was the janitor there to empty the garbage can?

Margot Lee Shetterly's book was released after the movie wrapped but her book proposal and notes were utilized by the filmmakers. No. This does not appear in Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures book , on which the movie is based, and seems to be an element of fiction created by the filmmakers. It should be noted that the movie was actually based on just a 55-page proposal for the book, which might in part explain some of the movie's deviations. The book was released on September 9, 2016, long after production on the movie had wrapped. However, the filmmakers did have access to the author and her notes. -Space.com

Was Katherine Johnson hired directly into NASA's space program?

No. The Hidden Figures true story confirms that she was hired in 1953 at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia to work as part of a female team nicknamed "Computers Who Wear Skirts." She then began to assist the all-male flight research team, who eventually welcomed her on board. Like in the movie, she worked with airplanes in the Guidance and Navigation Department. In those days, NASA still went by the initials NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which in 1958 became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) thanks to the Space Act of 1958. -WHROTV

Is Jim Parsons' character, NASA engineer Paul Stafford, based on a real person?

No. In fact-checking the Hidden Figures movie, we learned that white collar statistician Paul Stafford, portrayed by Jim Parsons, is a fictional character. He was created to represent certain racist and sexist attitudes that existed during the 1950s. In the film, he thwarts every effort Katherine (Taraji P. Henson) makes to get ahead, including reducing her job qualifications to secretarial duty, omitting her byline on official reports, and telling her it's not appropriate for women to attend space program briefings. By the end of the movie, Stafford's fictional storyline includes the character having a change of heart, which is emphasized when he brings Katherine a cup of coffee. Like Kevin Costner's character, Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) and Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst) are also fictional.

Is Kirsten Dunst's character, Vivian Mitchell, based on a real person?

No. Hard-nosed supervisor Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst) is a fictional character created to represent some of the unconscious bias and prejudice of the era. She is at best a composite of some of the supervisors who worked at NASA Langley.

Were the women really known as "computers"?

Yes. Before the days of electronic computers that we're familiar with today, the women hired at NASA to calculate trajectories, the results of wind tunnel tests, etc. had the job title of "computer." In simple terms, these were mathematicians who performed computations. Even when electronic computers were first used at NASA, human computers like Katherine Johnson still often performed the calculations by hand to verify the results of their electronic counterparts. -NASA Buy the Hidden Figures T-Shirt featuring the inspirational NASA women.

When did women begin working as NASA "computers"?

NACA (the precursor to NASA) hired five women in 1935 to be part of their first computer pool at the Langley Research Center. NACA began recruiting African-American women shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which thrust the U.S. into the war and increased the demand for workers in the defense industry. President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which prohibited "discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin." -PopularMechanics.com

Was Dorothy Vaughan NACA's first black supervisor?

Yes. As we explored the Hidden Figures true story, we discovered that Dorothy Vaughan became NACA's first black supervisor in 1948, five years before Katherine Johnson started working there. Vaughan was also an advocate and voice for the women in the "West Computers" pool. The movie shows her leading the women down the hall to their next assignment, an obvious nod to the team of astronauts walking down the hall in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff . -PopularMechanics.com Like in the movie, the real Dorothy Vaughan (left) was a leader for the West Computers at Langley. Octavia Spencer (right) portrays Vaughan in the movie.

Was Katherine really told that women aren't usually included in the space program briefings?

Yes. "I asked permission to go," says Katherine, "and they said, 'Well, the girls don't usually go,' and I said, 'Well, is there a law?' They said, 'No.' Then my boss said, 'Let her go.' And I began attending the briefings." In the Hidden Figures movie ( watch the trailer ), Jim Parsons' character, Paul Stafford, tells Katherine (Taraji P. Henson) that women don't go to the briefings. "There's no protocol for women attending," Stafford states. After she continues to question this unspoken rule, their boss, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), decides to let her attend the briefing.

Did Katherine have to run across the NASA Langley campus to use the bathroom?

Not exactly. In Margot Lee Shetterly's book, this is something that is experienced more by Mary Jackson (portrayed by Janelle Monáe) than Katherine Johnson. Mary went to work on a project on NASA Langley's East Side alongside several white computers. She was not familiar with those buildings and when she asked a group of white women where the bathroom was, they giggled at her and offered no help. The closest bathroom was for whites. Humiliated and angry, Mary set off on a time-consuming search for a colored bathroom. Unlike in the movie, there were colored bathrooms on the East Side but not in every building. The sprint across the campus in the movie might be somewhat of an exaggeration, but finding a bathroom was indeed a point of frustration. As for Katherine Johnson herself, Shetterly writes that when Katherine started working there, she didn't even realize that the bathrooms at Langley were segregated. This is because the bathrooms for white employees were unmarked and there weren't many colored bathrooms to be seen. It took a couple years before she was confronted with her mistake, but she simply ignored the comment and continued to use the white restrooms. No one brought it up again and she refused to enter the colored bathrooms.

Was Mary Jackson really NASA's first African-American female engineer?

Yes. Mary Jackson, portrayed by Janelle Monáe in the movie, was hired to work at Langley in 1951. Like in the movie, she accepted an assignment assisting senior aeronautical research engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki (renamed Karl Zielinski in the movie ), who encouraged her to pursue a degree in engineering, which required her to take after-work graduate courses. She petitioned the city of Hampton to be able to attend graduate classes alongside her white peers. She won, got her degree, and was promoted to engineer in 1958. -PopularMechanics.com NASA's first African-American female engineer, Mary Jackson, and her onscreen counterpart, actress Janelle Monáe.

How did Katherine Johnson's first husband die?

Katherine Johnson's first husband, James Francis Goble, died in December 1956 from an inoperable tumor located at the base of his skull. His health had been slowly declining for a year and he had spent much of that time in the hospital. He had to quit his job as a painter at the Newport News shipyard (he had previously been a chemistry teacher but gave up the job in 1953 when the family moved so that Katherine could take the position at NASA). Before his death, Katherine had promised her husband that she would keep their three adolescent daughters on a path to college. She now had to play the role of both mother and sole breadwinner. Katherine established new rules around the house and assigned chores to the children, including having their mother's clothes ironed and ready in the morning and having dinner ready when she got home. -Hidden Figures book

Did the women mathematicians at NASA get to meet astronauts like John Glenn?

Yes. "We did get to meet the astronauts," says the real Katherine Johnson. "They weren't as excited as we were, and we just looked at them in awe." -WHROTV Watch the Hidden Figures Movie now on Amazon Video instant streaming.

Did Katherine Johnson really compute John Glenn's trajectory?

Yes. "When John Glenn was to be the first astronaut to go up into the atmosphere and come back, and they wanted him to come back in a special place, and that was what I did, I computed his trajectory," says Katherine Johnson. "From then on, any time they were going to compute trajectories, they were given mostly, all of them to my branch, and I did most of the work on those by hand." - WHROTV Katherine Johnson Interview

Did John Glenn really ask that Katherine double-check the electronic computer's calculations for his first Earth orbit?

Yes. Fact-checking the Hidden Figures movie confirmed that John Glenn personally requested that Katherine recheck the electronic computer's calculations for his February 1962 flight aboard the Mercury-Atlas 6 capsule Friendship 7—the NASA mission that concluded with him becoming the first American to orbit the Earth. The scene in the movie unfolded in almost exactly the same way it does in real life, with Glenn's request for Katherine taken nearly verbatim from the transcripts. He even refers to her as "the girl." "Get the girl to check the numbers... If she says the numbers are good... I'm ready to go." -NASA Astronaut John Glenn (left), pilot of the Mercury-Atlas 6 spaceflight, call sign "Friendship 7," is pictured on February 20, 1962. Actor Glen Powell (right) portrays John Glenn in the movie.

When did Katherine Johnson retire from NASA?

In researching Katherine Johnson's biography, we learned that she was hired in 1953 and retired from NASA in 1986, for a career that spanned approximately 33 years. Prior to NASA, she had worked as a school teacher and a stay-at-home mom. -NASA

What is probably the biggest difference between the Hidden Figures movie and the true story?

"You might get the indication in the movie that these were the only people doing those jobs, when in reality we know they worked in teams, and those teams had other teams," author Margot Shetterly explained. "There were sections, branches, divisions, and they all went up to a director. There were so many people required to make this happen. ... But I understand you can't make a movie with 300 characters. It is simply not possible." -Space.com

What did the real Katherine Johnson think of the movie?

"Katherine Johnson saw the movie and she really liked it," said author Margot Shetterly ( Space.com ). Katherine told the Daily Press, "It sounded good...It sounded very, very accurate."

Broaden your knowledge of the Hidden Figures true story by viewing the Katherine G. Johnson interview and documentary below. Then watch an interview with Tracy Drain, a current NASA scientist who discusses her journey to NASA and the real-life women who inspired the movie.

Katherine Johnson Interview: NASA's Human Computer

Katherine Johnson NASA Documentary

Hidden Figures of Today: NASA Scientist Tracy Drain

Hidden Figures Movie Trailer

Official Hidden Figures Movie Website

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The True Story of 'Hidden Figures' and the Women Who Crunched the Numbers for NASA

From Popular Mechanics

There's a moment halfway into Hidden Figures when head NASA engineer Paul Stafford refuses the request of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) to attend an editorial meeting about John Glenn's upcoming mission to become the first American to orbit the Earth. Stafford's response is dismissive-"There's no protocol for women attending." Johnson replies, "There's no protocol for a man circling Earth either, sir."

The quote underlines this based-on-a-true-story movie. For NASA to get John Glenn into space and home safely, institutions that supported prejudices and biases needed to start tumbling down. All hands (and brains) had to be on deck.

Adapted from Margot Lee Shetterly's book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race , the film focuses on three real-life African-American female pioneers: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who were part of NASA's team of human "computers." This was a group made up of mostly women who calculated by hand the complex equations that allowed space heroes like Neil Armstrong, Alan Shepard, and Glenn to travel safely to space. Through sheer tenacity, force of will, and intellect, they ensured their stamp on American history-even if their story has remained obscured from public view until now.

Editor's note: Since we published this story on Dec. 21, Hidden Figures was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

"A Large Capacity for Tedium"

Women working as so-called "human computers" dates back decades before space exploration. In the late 19th century, the Harvard College Observatory employed a group of women who collected, studied, and cataloged thousands of images of stars on glass plates. As chronicled in Dava Sobel's book The Glass Universe , these women were every bit as capable as men despite toiling under less-than-favorable conditions. Williamina Fleming , for instance, classified over 10,000 stars using a scheme she created and was the first to recognize the existence of white dwarfs . While working six-day weeks at a job demanding "a large capacity for tedium," they were still expected to uphold societal norms of being a good wife and mother.

In 1935, the NACA ( National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics , a precursor to NASA) hired five women to be their first computer pool at the Langley campus. "The women were meticulous and accurate... and they didn't have to pay them very much," NASA's historian Bill Barry says, explaining the NACA's decision. In June 1941, with war raging in Europe, President Franklin Roosevelt looked to ensure the growth of the federal workforce. First he issued Executive Order 8802 , which banned "discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin" (though it does not include gender). Six months later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the throes of war, NACA and Langley began recruiting African-American women with college degrees to work as human computers.

While they did the same work as their white counterparts, African-American computers were paid less and relegated to the segregated west section of the Langley campus, where they had to use separate dining and bathroom facilities. They became known as the "West Computers." Despite having the same education, they had to retake college courses they had already passed and were often never considered for promotions or other jobs within NACA. Hidden Figures depicts this in a scene in which "computer" Mary Jackson is asked if she's want to be an engineer if she were a white man. Jackson responds, "I wouldn't have too. I would already be one."

Katherine Johnson, the movie's protagonist, was something of a child prodigy. Hailing from the small West Virginian town of White Sulphur Springs, she graduated from high school at 14 and the historically black West Virginia State University at 18. In 1938, as a graduate student, she became one of three students-and the only woman- to desegregate West Virginia's state college . In 1953, Johnson was hired by NACA and, five years later, NACA became NASA thanks to the Space Act of 1958 .

The movie muddies the timeline a bit, but Johnson's first big NASA assignment was computing the trajectories for Alan Shepard's historic flight in 1961 . Johnson and her team's job was to trace out in extreme detail Freedom 7's exact path from liftoff to splashdown. Since it was designed to be a ballistic flight-in that, it was like a bullet from a gun with a capsule going up and coming down in a big parabola-it was relatively simple in least in the context of what was to come. Nonetheless, it was a huge success and NASA immediately set their sights on America's first orbital mission.

"Get the girl to check the numbers... If she says the numbers are good, I'm ready to go."

The film primarily focuses on John Glenn's 1962 trip around the globe and does add dramatic flourishes that are, well, Hollywood. However, most of the events in the movie are historically accurate. Johnson's main job in the lead-up and during the mission was to double-check and reverse engineer the newly-installed IBM 7090s trajectory calculations. As it shows, there were very tense moments during the flight that forced the mission to end earlier than expected. And John Glenn did request that Johnson specifically check and confirm trajectories and entry points that the IBM spat out (albeit, perhaps, not at the exact moment that the movie depicts). As Shetterly wrote in her book and explained in a September NPR interview , Glenn did not completely trust the computer. So, he asked the head engineers to "get the girl to check the numbers... If she says the numbers are good... I'm ready to go."

While Johnson is the main character, Hidden Figures also follows the trajectories of Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson as they work on the Friendship Seven blast-off. Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) was one of NACA's early computer hires during World War II. She became a leader and advocate for the "West Computers." In 1948, she became NACA's first black supervisor and, later, an expert FORTRAN programmer.

Despite these successes and her capability, she was constantly passed over for promotions herself. As Spencer tells Popular Mechanics , Vaughan struggled with the same things all female computers did while at NASA. "The conflict of working outside of the home to provide the best life for your children and, yet, not physically being there. But she knew she was changing the world."

While Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) is also considered a "hidden figure," she certainly stood out during her time at NASA. After graduating with dual degrees in math and physical science, she was hired to work at Langley in 1951. After several years as a computer, Jackson took an assignment in assisting senior aeronautical research engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki and he encouraged her to become an engineer herself. To do that, however, she needed to take after-work graduate courses held at segregated Hampton High School. Jackson petitioned the City of Hampton to be able to learn next to her white peers. She won, completed the courses, and was promoted to engineer in 1958, making her NASA's first African-American female engineer-and, perhaps, the only one for much of her career.

"She knew she was changing the world."

While these three women's stories remain front and center, John Glenn's recent death makes this film particularly timely. Featured prominently, Glenn is depicted as a goal-oriented, joke-making, tension-cutting, folksy, equal opportunist. According to Barry, that's pretty much exactly how he was.

"Everybody thinks of John Glenn as this iconic war hero... and astronaut, but what's missed a lot is his humanity," says Berry, "Glenn was in a, classic sense, a gentleman. He was always concerned about the people around him and it didn't matter what package they were in. He was a real people person."

Barry also notes that there's an "easter egg" in the film that most people who aren't deep into NASA history will not catch. There's a short scene where Glenn is talking to reporters, and beside him there's a woman- Cece Bibby -painting the Friendship Seven logo onto the spacecraft. The true story is that NASA officials originally did not allow Bibby access to the launch pad, but Glenn intervened and insisted that his artist be allowed to do her job.

Another Day's Work

There's no way a two-hour movie could tell the full story of these women; Shetterly's book paints a much fuller picture. But Hidden Figures highlights NASA's (relatively) progressive attitude for the time, driven in large part by necessity. This happens literally in the film, when the head of the Space Task Group, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) destroys the "colored ladies room" bathroom sign. As Shetterly says to Popular Mechanics , the movie also focuses on Johnson, Jackson, and Vaughn's "transcendent sense of humanity" that allowed them to endure.

Johnson would go on to work on the Apollo program, too, including performing trajectory calculations that assisted the 1969 moon landing. She would retire from NASA in 1986. In 2015, President Obama gave Katherine Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom . Last May, a NASA computational research facility in her hometown of Hampton, Virginia was named in Johnson's honor. And yet, despite the accolades and getting the Hollywood treatment, she told the audience in May that she was just doing her job and "it was just another day's work."

Sometimes changing the world is just that.

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‘hidden figures’: 10 of the film’s stars and their real-life inspirations.

The untold story of the three African-American, female mathematicians who helped win the Space Race even as they dealt with sexism and racism from their colleagues.

By Kara Haar

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The True Story of 'Hidden Figures': How Accurate are the Characters?

Based on a true story, Hidden Figures follows the events of the U.S. and Russian race to put the first man in orbit.

Behind the scenes of one of the greatest operations in U.S. history, a group of African-American women (played by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae ) teamed up to solve mathematical equations for NASA. Set during a time of racial and gender inequality, the film tells the untold story of the three females' achievements, which restored the nation's confidence during the 1960s .

Hidden Figures is up for three Oscars — best picture, best supporting actress for Spencer and best adapted screenplay for Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi — in addition to earning other accolades including best ensemble at the SAG Awards.

The film focuses several real-life people in addition to including some fictional characters to help drive the storytelling. Below, read more about the cast, who they played and how the actors prepared for their role.

Dorothy Vaughan, portrayed by Octavia Spencer

why did katherine get the assignment in hidden figures

A mathematician, Dorothy Vaughan was the first African-American woman to be promoted as a head of personnel at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, later known as NASA. She was the head of the West Area Computers, leading a group of African-American mathematicians through crucial space projects.

Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, who plays Vaughan, told THR she knew math and science prior to the role but not to the level of a rocket scientist. “I understood her work to an extent, but she's a rocket scientist and there are very few people in the world who get that type of physics and can work interchangeably in the math disciplines,” Spencer said. “It's a small group of people, and my hat is off to them. I am not a member of that club!”

Spencer said the cast wanted to present these women “in a truthful way” and “in the best light possible.” Since Vaughan died in 2008, the first audience she wanted to impress was the family, and she was proud to learn she did.

“What I learned from playing Dorothy Vaughan is that I have a voice and that I have to use it for people who don't have a voice or whose voice is somehow subdued by whatever's happening in society,” she told THR.

Mary Jackson, portrayed by Janelle Monáe

Mary Jackson was a mathematician and NASA's first black female engineer in 1958. She influenced the hiring and promoting of women in science, engineering and mathematics careers at NASA. Jackson died in 2005 at age 83.

Grammy-nominated singer Janelle Monáe , who portrayed Jackson in the film, said she was proud to be a part of a story so many people didn't know about. "These [women] are our true American heroes," she told CNN. "It's because of them that we can have that as America. We can feel proud that we achieved something so extraordinary."

John Glenn, portrayed by Glen Powell

John Glenn, an astronaut and engineer, was the first American to orbit the Earth and fifth person into space. He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. He died of a stroke on Dec. 8, 2016, at age 95.

Glenn was unable to see the film due to his health but his family members were supportive. According to upi.com, the director of the film, Ted Melfi said, "So, his family kept saying: 'He can't right now, he can't right now. He really wants to and he supports the film.’”

Glen Powell, mostly known for his role on Scream Queens , plays the role of Glenn. "He was a true American hero," he told Parade after Glenn died. "He saw a future for America that a lot of people didn't see. John Glenn had an essence that defined America."

Levi Jackson, portrayed by Aldis Hodge

The husband of Mary Jackson, Levi Jackson is played by Aldis Hodge. Levi Jackson was a civil rights activist who struggled with his wife's efforts in pursuing a career as an engineer and balancing her home life.

Hodge prepared for his role by reading Margot Lee Shetterly's book, also titled Hidden Figures , from which the movie was adatped . He's said he tried his best to give his character an accurate portrayal.

"I tried to play up the honesty of his legacy just off the fact that he was a very kind-natured soul, as a family man," he said in an AOL web series interview. "He supported his wife — supported her in a very avant-garde way given the time frame. This is the ' 60s , so I loved what he represented and what they represented. So I was just trying to give some truth to that and made sure I did him some justice."

Col. Jim (James) Johnson, portrayed by Mahershala Ali

Mahershala Ali has had a big year, with roles in two Golden Globe-nominated films (the other is Moonlight , for which he won a SAG Award ). In Hidden Figures, he plays Col. Jim (James) Johnson, a captain and lieutenant in the United States Army. During the time the movie was based on, Jim Johnson is Katherine Johnson's love interest and later on becomes her husband. Married in 1959, the two still live together in Virginia.

Karl Zielinski, portrayed by Olek Krupa

Karl Zielinski , a NASA mission specialist, was Mary Jackson's mentor in the movie. (In real life, Jackson’s mentor’s name was Kazimierz “Kaz” Czarnecki , according to NASA) The character and real-life counterpart both display underemployed talent and undertake a long-term mentorship.

Al Harrison, portrayed by Kevin Costner

Al Harrison is a composite character created for the film.

During the shoot, Costner got kidney stones. "I was extremely ill," Costner told THR . "I was on morphine and Vicodin . But I kept filming."

Vivian Mitchell, portrayed by Kirsten Dunst

Vivian Mitchell, played by Kirsten Dunst, is a fictional character representing the views and attitudes of some white women in the ' 60s . The character is a strict supervisor who challenges Dorothy Vaughn throughout the movie. Dunst admitted she was unaware of the story in an interview posted on Rotten Tomatoes. “I didn’t even know computers were people before they were computers,” she said. “I was blown away by the story, and that’s why I wanted to be a part of the film.”

Paul Stafford, portrayed by Jim Parsons

Paul Stafford is a fictional character representing a number of white engineers at NASA for whom Katherine Johnson worked. A statistician and theorist, Stafford has no interest in giving up his white male privileges.

Jim Parsons, best known for the TV series The Big Bang Theory , plays the role. “My favorite part of it is, it is really layered,” Parsons said, according to Rotten Tomatoes . “Space exploration was a very important human event. You have a civil rights issue playing out with the way African-Americans are being treated. You have a gender equality issue playing out with the way women are being treated. It’s this triangle of three major things, three major things that are still with us today as a society.”

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150 Years of Women
One Book 2020-2021

ONE BOOK 2019-2020

Student Engagement

Reading Guide

Chapter 1: a door opens.

What are some reasons for wanting more mathematicians at Langley in the early 1940s?
In what ways was Melvin Butler, the personnel officer at Langley, progressive in his hiring practices? In what ways was he restricted by convention? Do you think he did the best he could under the circumstances?
Who is A. Philip Randolph and how does he help building the work force at Langley?

Chapter 2: Mobilization

Describe Dorothy Vaughan: what is she like? What do you learn of her background?
What kinds of employment opportunities were available to African American women at this time?
Why is the opportunity for a job at Langley so unique to Dorothy?
In her application, Dorothy she could be ready to accept employment at Langley within 48 hours. Why do you think she makes that claim?

Chapter 3: Past Is Prologue

How did Dorothy handle the balance between her family life and work aspirations?
What does this job mean for Dorothy in terms of social mobility?
From what we know so far, in what ways do Dorothy and Katherine’s experiences mirror each other? In what ways are they different?

Chapter 4: The Double V

What is life in Newport News like for Dorothy?
How does the civil rights movement take shape during this time period?
To what does the chapter title, the double V, refer?

Chapter 5: Manifest Destiny

Are the women who become “girl computers” held to a higher standard? Or do they hold themselves to one? Why or why not?
Why does Miriam Mann keep removing the cafeteria sign? What does her act of defiance represent?
In what ways is working at NACA progressive? In what ways does NACA stick to southern conventions?
How were Malcolm MacLean and Henry Reid helpful to and supportive of their new colleagues?

Chapter 6: War Birds

To whom does the phrase “tank Yanks” refer?
Why did locals think of Langley employees as “more than a little peculiar”?
What is the Reynolds number? How was Dorothy able to learn about it? How does the Reynolds number help work at Langley?
How do you think Langley employees reconcile the difference between the work they do that is innovative and advances humankind with the work they do that destroys it?

Chapter 7: The Duration

What makes Newsome Park an attractive place for Dorothy to live? How does it differ from Newport News?
How did the end of the war and V-J Day change working conditions in the U.S.? What did it mean for women, in particular?
Why does Virginia senator Harry Byrd oppose the FEPC?

Chapter 8: Those Who Move Forward

Describe Katherine Goble: Where is she from? What is she like? In what ways are she and Dorothy Vaughan similar?
Who is William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor? How did he influence Katherine?
What are the circumstances leading to Katherine’s enrollment at West Virginia University? What was her time at West Virginia like?

Chapter 9: Breaking Barriers

How does specializing in a particular subfield of aeronautics help the girl computers?
What accomplishment makes Doris Cohen noteworthy? How does it transform possibilities for other women?
Is it surprising to learn that on the east side of Langley’s campus white laboratory staff didn’t know an all-black computing group existed? Why or why not?
Who is Blanche Sponsler? Under what circumstances does Blanche leave Langley? How does Blanche’s story highlight the pressure these women are under?

Chapter 10: Home by the Sea

Describe Mary Jackson: What do we learn about her background? How is she similar to Dorothy Vaughan and Katherine Goble?
How does Mary embody and enact her family’s motto of “sharing and caring”?
In what ways did the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg affect life at Langley?
How do the racial problems in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s change the perception of the U.S. abroad? How is this used as propaganda by the Soviet Union?

Chapter 11: The Area Rule

What event prompted Mary to accept an offer to work with Kaz Czarnecki?
What kind of disagreement did Mary and John Becker have? Do you think it is a moment that Mary will use as motivation in the future?
What is the Area Rule? How did it impact everyday aviation?

Chapter 12: Serendipity

How did Katherine Goble get her job at Langley?
Why did Katherine get attached to the Flight Research Division? Why is this change of department significant for her?
What happened when Katherine sits down to wait to meet her new boss? What impact does this moment have on her?
How does integration happen at Langley?

Chapter 13: Turbulence

How does Dorothy Vaughan help Katherine and a white computer?
What kind of research does the Maneuver Loads Branch do?
Katherine’s first assignment was to investigate the crash of a small Piper propeller plane. What is learned as a result of her contribution?
There are two places in Langley in which Katherine refuses to conform with southern convention. What are these places, and why is her refusal to conform significant? How does her reaction differ from Miriam Mann’s?
What tragedy reshapes Katherine’s family? How does it change it?

Chapter 14: Angle of Attack

In what ways did advances in aeronautical research change the methods by which Langley worked?
How did the machines affect female mathematicians?
How was the fight for social equality affecting education? How would those practices affect Langley recruitment?
In what ways is Mary’s transition to engineer significant?

Chapter 15: Young, Gifted, and Black

How does the black press link the desegregation of southern schools and the launch of Sputnik? What do you think is the reason behind doing so?
Who is Christine Mann? How are events of the civil rights movement impacting her?
How did the Soviets having engineering schools dominated by women play in American press, especially in papers like the Washington Post?

Chapter 16: What a Difference a Day Makes

How does Sputnik create interest in U.S. participation in the space race?
How does NACA become NASA? Why is the change deemed necessary?
What kind of technological advancements occur as this space race begins to heat up?
What does the change to NASA do for the employees of West Computing?

Chapter 17: Outer Space

Why does the President’s Advisory Committee on Science say a space program is in the interest of every American? What are the reasons it gives?
How does the nature of Katherine’s work change as her department shifts from aeronautical to space?
Why does Katherine want to go to the editorial meetings? Why is her desire to do so significant?

Chapter 18: With All Deliberate Speed

What was the selection criteria for picking astronauts for missions? Who were the four selected?
How did Katherine’s work fit in the context of the space race? What sorts of work did she do?
What is the name of Katherine’s report for NASA? Why is it so significant for both her and the department?

Chapter 19: Model Behavior

What did Mary Jackson and her son, Levi, build together?
In what ways does the soap box derby represent the breaking down of racial boundaries?
How does Mary make female participation in engineering and the sciences visible to school-age young women? Why is her work as a role model important?
After winning the derby, what does Levi tell the Norfolk Journal and Guide? Why is his comment significant?

Chapter 20: Degrees of Freedom

How does Hampton Institute get involved in the civil rights movement?
In what ways does the rise of computing and advancements in computing technology affect the girl computers?
What were the series of Mercury missions? How did they lead to Freedom 7?
What challenge did President Kennedy give to the space program? How do they receive this challenge?

Chapter 21: Out of the Past, the Future

Who is the astronaut chosen by NASA for manned space flight?
How is the Soviet Union still pulling ahead in the space race?
How does Katherine Johnson’s role change as we get closer to Glenn’s flight? What kinds of work is she now doing?
Who were the other West Computers that played a part in Glenn’s flight? How did they play a part in it?
What was Glenn’s experience in Friendship 7? Do you consider the mission successful?

Chapter 22: America is for Everybody

In what ways was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom significant?
How did Christine Darden get to NASA?
What is the risk standard for the Space Task Group? How do the astronauts feel about the risks they’re taking?

Chapter 23: To Boldly Go

Where did Katherine watch the moon landing from? Why is the location and people she was with significant? Were you surprised to learn that’s where she was?
Why did some people think the space program was a waste of money? Do you agree with their argument?
How is the actress Nichelle Nichols talked into staying in her role on Star Trek? Why is that role significant to African Ameri-cans at this time? What kind of progress does it represent?
What kind of accomplishment was it for Katherine and the workers of Langley for the Eagle to land safely during the Apollo mission on the surface of the moon?

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HIDDEN FIGURES

SUBJECTS — U.S. 1940 – 1991, Diversity/African-American, and Virginia; Mathematics; Science-Technology; Biography: Katherine Johnson;

SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING — Courage; Human Rights;

MORAL-ETHICAL EMPHASIS — Respect.

AGE : 13+; MPAA Rating PG for thematic elements and some language;

Drama; 2016, 127 minutes; Color.

Benefits of the Movie Possible Problems Parenting Points Selected Awards & Cast Helpful Background

Using the Movie in the Classroom Discussion Questions Social-Emotional Learning Moral-Ethical Emphasis

Assignments and Projects CCSS Anchor Standards Links to the Internet Bibliography

MOVIE WORKSHEETS & STUDENT HANDOUTS

TWM offers the following worksheets to keep students’ minds on the movie and direct them to the lessons that can be learned from the film.

Film Study Worksheet for a Work of Historical Fiction and

Worksheet for Cinematic and Theatrical Elements and Their Effects .

Teachers can modify the movie worksheets to fit the needs of each class. See also TWM’s Historical Fiction in Film Cross-Curricular Homework Project .

DESCRIPTION

From the 1930s to the advent of the digital computer in the early 1960s, several hundred female “human computers” were hired by the federal government. Their task was to calculate numbers and to solve the equations necessary for new generations of airplanes, the first American rockets, and the first U.S. manned space flights. They worked with pen, paper, and analog calculating machines. The need for these workers was so great that even in those days of rampant racial discrimination, black women were hired as well as whites. The human computers reported to the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, operated by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) and its successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

“Hidden Figures” is the story of three black women who made important contributions to the U.S. Space program both before and after the “human computers” were replaced by digital computers. The three real-life heroines of the movie are:

Dorothy Vaughan, who supervises the “colored computers.” She sees that digital computers are the wave of the future and learns the prototype programming language FORTRAN, orients herself to a room-sized IBM computer, and encourages the women in her section to do the same.
Katherine Goble Johnson, a gifted mathematician, performs essential calculations and makes important theoretical contributions for determining the trajectories and orbits of America’s first satellites and manned space missions. Backing up a digital computer’s early efforts, she confirms final calculations for John Glenn’s history-making orbit of the Earth.
Mary Jackson takes on Virginia’s stridently segregationist education system to attain the graduate qualifications that allow her to become NASA’s first female African-American engineer.

The women face entrenched racist and sexist attitudes. However, their persistence and outstanding work boost the U.S. presence in space and blaze a path forward for achievement based on merit. The movie closely follows Margot Shetterly’s meticulously researched, award-winning, 2016 historical work of the same name. The validity of the film is confirmed by Katherine Johnson’s posthumously published memoir, My Remarkable Journey, at page 7, in which she states, that, “75% of what was shown in the movie is accurate,”

SELECTED AWARDS & CAST

Selected Awards: 2017 Academy Awards Nominations: Best Picture; Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Octavia Spencer); Best Adapted Screenplay; 2017 Golden Globe Nominations: Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Octavia Spencer); Best Original Score – Motion Picture; 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards: Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Featured Actors: Taraji P. Henson as Katherine G. Johnson; Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan; Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson; Kevin Costner as Al Harrison; Kirsten Dunst as Vivian Mitchell; Jim Parsons as Paul Stafford; Mahershala Ali as Colonel Jim Johnson; Aldis Hodge as Levi Jackson; Glen Powell as John Glenn; Kimberly Quinn as Ruth; Olek Krupa as Karl Zielinski; Kurt Krause as Sam Turner; Ken Strunk as Jim Webb.

Director: Theodore Melfi

BENEFITS OF THE MOVIE

“Hidden Figures” is well-crafted historical fiction that is inspirational for everyone, especially for girls and students of color. It tells a story that was “never hidden, but unseen.” The Mses. Vaughan, Johnson, and Jackson are outstanding role models for young people trying to break through barriers of prejudice and glass ceilings in employment. Additionally, the film provides a historical link to today’s STEM and STEAM initiatives in schools and can encourage students to seek out programs that will reinforce their skills and lead to careers in science and technical fields. The movie provides excellent opportunities for class discussion and assignments. [The quotation “never hidden, but unseen” is from Hidden to Modern Figures: Frequently Asked Questions , a NASA website, accessed April 24, 2017.]

Students will be introduced to: (1) a fascinating episode in American history; (2) the struggles of black women to reach racial and gender parity in the workplace; (3) the accomplishments of black women in technical fields and their contributions to America’s efforts in aeronautics and the space race of the second half of the 20th century; (4) the disruptive influence of WWII and the Cold War on sexist employment practices and racial discrimination; and (5) a few of the despicable aspects of Jim Crow.

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

Parenting points.

Watch the film with your children and tell them that the three leading actresses in the movie portray women who actually worked at NASA and that the film gives us a good idea of their experiences. Also, be sure to put the film into perspective. Hidden Figures doesn’t show the millions of people denied jobs due only to the color of their skin. It doesn’t show the full extent of the humiliation endured by black citizens of the United States living in the South during the “Jim Crow” era, the late 1800s through to the 1960s. During that time African Americans were humiliated on a daily basis and denied access to public facilities. In addition, they suffered from discrimination in education, employment and housing. At times they were beaten and lynched.

Beginning with small steps in the 1940s (President Roosevelt’s executive orders requiring the hiring of some African Americans in defense industries) and gaining strength each year with the Civil Rights Movement, the United States has developed a growing tradition of inclusion and equal opportunity for minority citizens that runs counter to the shameful tradition of racism. (As of January 2022 millions of African Americans have good jobs and have entered the middle-class. We have elected a black President, twice. There have been two black Secretaries of State and a black man heads the Department of Defense.) The work of well-intentioned Americans is to continue to bend the moral arc of the Universe toward reaching the ideals of the the Declaration of Independence.

HELPFUL BACKGROUND

Dorothy Vaughan

Katherine Johnson

Mary Jackson

The US National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) was the forerunner of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

NACA was established in 1917, at the end of the First World War, on the grounds of Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia. It was part of the effort to develop America’s fledgling aeronautical sector. In the mid-1930s, Langley began hiring female, or “girl,” mathematicians to compute solutions to equations using pen, paper, and analog adding machines. The women were called “computers.”

By the 1930s it was clear to American leaders that crucial battles in the next war would be fought in the air. It was therefore essential to transform America’s unimpressive aircraft arsenal into a powerful aerial armada. This opened the door a crack for women at Langley. During WWII, in the 1940s, when many of the men were sent to soldier in Europe and the Pacific, the need for manpower to fuel the American war materiel machine became a need for woman power as well. Thus, the door for women to serve in technical fields opened a little further.

Melvin Butler, the man responsible for filling the burgeoning job positions at Langley, devised recruitment tools designed to appeal to housewives looking for a different kind of work. His advertisements exhorted them to, “Reduce your household duties . . . .” He issued a challenge, citing the need for “women who are not afraid to roll up their sleeves . . . .” Shetterly, p. 5.

While increasing numbers of women were being integrated into the workforce, another social change was underway. In 1941, as American industry geared up to produce the weapons to fight WWII, a group of civil rights activists led by A. Philip Randolph, head of the union for black male porters, men who worked as sleeping car attendants on America’s railroads. Mr. Randolph and others formed the “March on Washington Movement.” They demanded that President Roosevelt end racial discrimination in hiring for the defense industry and threatened a massive march on Washington, D.C., to protest racial segregation in employment and in the military. Randolph is credited with forcing FDR to issue Executive Order 8802 which prohibited racial discrimination in hiring for national defense industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). While Executive Order 8802 didn’t end discrimination against African Americans in defense industries, it did lead to some job gains for black workers.

In 1943, employment applications began arriving at Langley from black women. For example, Dorothy Vaughan, one of the three main characters in the film, came to NASA when she saw a federal civil service bulletin intended to recruit white women. Even though there was still discrimination against “Negroes,” the relentless Mr. Butler began hiring well-qualified black women to work as human computers. He got around the scandalous implications of racial equality by setting up a segregated work area for the smaller number of “colored” computers. It was called West Computing because it was located in a building at Langley’s western end. White females worked at East Computing. Shetterly, p. 8.

Propelled by the Civil Rights Movement, opportunities for blacks to work in the aeronautics and space industries opened up a little more during the 1950s and 1960s. Spurred by Soviet Russia’s Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit the earth, the U. S. recognized the need to provide technical and scientific training to students and to move them into positions that could benefit America’s reach for the heavens. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded by increasing the resources that went into scientific research and training. Additionally, U. S. leaders were engaged in selling the American way of life to non-aligned nations during the Cold War. They worried that Jim Crow segregation and the second-class citizen status of American “Negroes” would not play well in the court of international opinion. Shetterly, p. 104.

Jim Crow Laws and Customs

In the American South after the Civil War and Reconstruction, the white power structure (formerly the slave-owning class) reasserted itself and imposed a racist system through “Jim Crow” laws and customs. These were designed to denigrate and suppress African Americans. One of the pillars of Jim Crow was separate sanitary facilities. Restrooms and drinking fountains were designated “White Only” or “Colored.” There were many fewer restrooms and drinking fountains for blacks than there were for whites. Every day in cities, towns, and villages across the South, African Americans faced personal emergencies when the only restroom available — for what could quickly become an urgent need — was forbidden territory. A black person in that situation had to find some alternative or run the substantial risk of arrest or a beating for using a “White Only” restroom. This disgraceful practice is treated semi-humorously in the film — cinematically, there was no other way to present it. However, the unavailability of restrooms was no laughing matter for African Americans who had to live under Jim Crow.

(The white husband of this writer was once detained, at age 15, by police for defacing a “White Only” sign on a laundromat in Tallahassee, Florida. It was Halloween night in 1963. Hard at work on his task, he heard a sound behind him, looked over his shoulder, and saw a police cruiser come to a stop. He was released after a few hours on the condition that he clean up the sign. An African-American teenager would probably not have been treated in such a lenient fashion.)

Ms. Shetterly’s book describes the proliferation of black middle-class neighborhoods around the Langley campus in the middle of the 20th Century. Despite economic and professional gains by African Americans since that time, segregation in housing hasn’t changed much.

… Brown University’s US2010 Project [has shown that] in 1940, the average black lived in a neighborhood that was 40 percent white. In 1950 it fell to 35 percent — where it remains today. This average, of course, aggregates data from many neighborhoods where blacks have virtually no exposure to whites, and others where integration is advanced. Nonetheless, by this measure there has been no progress in reducing segregation [in housing] for the last 60 years. Commentary by Richard Rothstein for the Economic Policy Institute, February 3, 2012, accessed on January 9, 2022.

The Impact of the Black Press and the “Double V” Campaign

African-American newspapers, journals, and magazines of the 1940s and 1950s were inspiring and influential in the segregated lives of America’s black citizens. They contributed to initiatives to integrate society and achieve economic and social justice. In WWII these publications promoted the “Double V Campaign:” Victory overseas in the war and victory over discrimination at home. This campaign intentionally echoed the concept of the double consciousness of blacks in a racist society, articulated by the African-American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois, and analyzed in his signature book, The Souls of Black Folk . Dubois wrote that blacks faced a nearly impossible task in constructing internally positive personal identities because they were forced to act in ways that were acceptable to an oppressive white society. To do this they had to see themselves through its eyes: devalued and negatively stereotyped. Shetterly, p. 33. This psychological conundrum confronts every oppressed group.

Euler’s Method

Euler’s Method, employed by Katherine Johnson in her breakthrough calculations for John Glenn’s Friendship Seven orbit, was devised in the 18th century. The idea behind Euler’s Method is to approximate a curve using the concept of local linearity to join multiple small line segments of the curve. Mathscoop.com. The method was one of many mathematical innovations developed by Leonhard Euler of Switzerland, one of the great mathematicians of his time. Euler lived from 1707 to 1783, dying just seven years after the U.S. declared independence from Great Britain.

USING THE MOVIE IN THE CLASSROOM

Unless the class has already studied American history of the 20th century, set the scene before for showing the film with direct instruction covering the following points:

This movie takes place during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, 1947 – 1991. From the end of WWII until 1957 most Americans thought the U.S. was the technological leader of the world. Then, on October 4, 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit the earth. Sputnik was followed by additional Russian successes in space: the first animal in orbit (1957, the dog Laika); the first animals and plants returned alive from space (1961); the first human in orbit (1961) etc. From 1957 to 1961 the Russians led the space race as the early U.S. space program was plagued by failures. People all over the world looked up at the sky and wondered at the Russian achievement. Americans of all races, classes, and backgrounds were united in their desire for the United States to put a man into orbit and bring him home safely, as soon as possible.

At the same time, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Civil Rights movement was gathering force. However, most of the Southern U.S., including Virginia, was still in the grip of laws and customs designed to denigrate and oppress African Americans. These were referred to as “Jim Crow.” In addition, black people and women of all races suffered from discrimination in employment.

In the early 1960s, electronic computers were in their infancy. The people designing airplanes and rockets used analog adding machines. An ingenious analog device called a slide rule assisted engineers and scientists with multiplication, division, and finding exponents, roots, and logarithms.

After Watching the Movie

Tell the class that the movie, “Hidden Figures,” does not claim to describe the full effects of racism or the broad scope of the Civil Rights movement. It shows an episode in the ongoing process of eliminating discrimination against blacks and women in employment in the U.S.

After watching the film, students will be interested in reading the Helpful Background section. Click here for a version in Microsoft Word, suitable to be printed and distributed to the class. Teachers should feel free to modify or add to the handout as may be appropriate for their classes.

What is Real, What is Dramatic License, and a Few Interesting Anecdotes

Katherine Johnson estimates that the film is 75% accurate. My Remarkable Journey, p. 7. The author of the book, Hidden Figures , Margot Shetterly, estimates that she has identified almost 50 black women who were working at Langley as computers, mathematicians, engineers, and researchers. She surmises that about “70 more can be shaken loose.” Approximately 400 white women were working in the same capacity.

Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson worked for Dorothy Vaughan in West Computing, but the three were not close friends.

The character of Al Harrison, Katherine Johnson’s boss at the Space Task Group, is a composite. NASA says he is largely based on Robert C. Gilruth, who became the director of the Space Task Group in 1958. Shetterly nominates engineer John Stack as the model for Harrison.

Fly-by-wire navigation (FBW), in which the trajectory of the flight is controlled by computer and not by the pilot, began with the Mercury mission. In 1962 FBW wasn’t as reliable as it is today. The early astronauts, who were all former test pilots, hated FBW and lobbied hard for back-up manual controls. As they said, they didn’t want to be “spam in a can.” In fact, the manual controls saved the life of at least one astronaut. For a description of the struggle between the astronauts and the engineers over FBW. See Learning Guide to The Right Stuff .

John Glenn really did request that Katherine Johnson double check the computer calculations. Glenn said, “. . . [G]et the girl. . . . If she says the numbers are good, then I’m ready to go.” NASA Biography of Catherine Johnson, accessed April 22, 2017 . Ms. Johnson did the computations in the days leading up to the launch, not when Glenn was about to climb into the spacecraft and blast off. My Remarkable Journey, pp. 160 & 161.

The characters who exhibit the most adherence to Jim Crow attitudes, the initially hostile police officer, the condescending white engineer in the Space Task Group, Paul Stafford, and Mrs. Mitchell, the white supervisor, all change their behavior. The policeman escorts the three protagonists to work. Mrs. Mitchell indicates her growing respect for Dorothy by addressing her as “Mrs. Vaughan” at the film’s end. And Paul Stafford reverses his resistance to Katherine’s presence and status, bringing her a cup of coffee. Coffee serves as a symbol for acceptance onto the NASA team.

Mrs. Mitchell’s real-life counterpart was Margery Hannah, who behaved differently than the character in the film. She “went out of her way to treat the West Area women as equals, and had even invited some of them to work-related social affairs at her apartment.” Shetterly p. 47.

It was actually Mary Jackson who lost her cool about the segregated bathrooms. Dorothy Vaughan had sent her on a special assignment to East Computing. Mary “blew her top” to wind tunnel engineer Kazimierz “Kaz” Czarnecki (Karl Zielinski in the movie) about the egregious situation. He listened, then invited her to come work for him. He became her mentor, and she eventually organized his retirement party. Shetterly, p. 254. Katherine Johnson did not have experiences of having to walk long distances to find a “Colored Women” bathroom, but other “colored computers” did. My Remarkable Journey, p. 7. The filmmakers scripted the scenes of Katherine Johnson racing across the campus and her (Mary Jackson’s) explosion to demonstrate what other black women had to endure.

The seating at the cafeteria at Langley was segregated. A West Computer named Miriam Mann found the “Colored Computers” table sign to be especially loathsome. She would periodically remove it, and it would reappear on the table some days later. Eventually, it wasn’t replaced. Shetterly, p. 44. This could have been the inspiration for Katherine’s humiliating coffee pot encounters which she does not recount in her memoir.

Dorothy’s visit to the segregated library with her children depicts another obstacle to equality in the Jim Crow South. Separate and unequal schools were not the only barriers to learning and advancement that confronted African Americans. The photo below tells it all.

In her personalized trailer for “Hidden Figures,” actress Octavia Spencer (“Dorothy Vaughan”) regrets that the number of women in math and computing has recently declined: “….[W]omen today hold only about a quarter of U.S. computing and mathematical jobs – a fraction that has actually fallen slightly over the past 15 years, even as women have made big strides in other fields.” Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women? by Liza Mundy, The Atlantic, April 2017.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Who or what is the antagonist in this story? What defeats the antagonist? Explain whether or not you believe that this shows a process that works in reality.

Suggested Response:

Racism (or “Jim Crow”) is the antagonist. This is what the heroines must overcome. The whites who show racist tendencies change by the end of the film when they come to understand that their African-American coworkers are valuable parts of the team. Racism is defeated by the need to get into space and by the courage of the “Colored” computers in challenging barriers to try to help the NASA team. This displays a process that has worked and continues to work at NASA, in the U.S. military, in business, in sports, and in many other areas. People working together for a common goal can lead to the end of prejudice. The question that whites in this film must answer is whether their racial prejudice is more important to them than getting a man into orbit. An example of team spirit triumphing over racial prejudice in sports is described in the movie Remember the Titans .

2. What or who are the “Hidden Figures” referred to in the title to this movie?

Shetterly cites two possibilities in her book Hidden Figures : One is the women, and especially the black women, whose contributions to America’s space effort went largely unrecognized until the movie was released. Another possibility is that the “Hidden Figures” are the mathematical figures that had to be uncovered in calculating trajectories and orbits for the astronauts.

3. Does this movie paint an accurate picture of racism in the Southern United States under Jim Crow? [or] What are some of the things about racism in the Southern U.S. under Jim Crow that this movie doesn’t show?

It’s not that the film is inaccurate, it’s simply that the story of the three black ladies who found jobs at NASA doesn’t lend itself to showing most of the terrible things that racists in the Southern U.S. did to black people: the daily humiliation, the beatings, the lynchings, etc. The movie doesn’t tell the story of the millions of people denied education and jobs because of the color of their skin.

4. What role does the scene with the policeman and the three protagonists play in the story? What does this tell you about the position of the black women in Virginia society in the late 1950s?

This scene foreshadows what happens in the film in terms of the attitude of many whites at NASA toward the black women with whom they work. It also serves as a reminder of the ever-present threat of force against black Americans inherent in Jim Crow, which continues to a lesser extent to this day.

5. [This question should be preceded by Question #1.] One view of human relations is that in our lives we are associated with different groups, called “tribes” in this formulation. There are involuntary tribes that we are born into, like families, clans, and countries. Then there are the tribes of affiliation which we join out of interest and belief. For example, Katherine Johnson could be said to belong to the following “tribes of affiliation:” mathematicians, the human computers, the NASA Space Task Group, mothers, church members, basket ball fans, etc. Analyze the conflict in this film in terms of this view of human relations.

Racism broke down because the voluntary “tribe” of the NASA workforce became more important than the societally assigned “tribe” of race. The concept of race and racial differences is a societal construct. To give an example, many people who are identified as African American have as many white ancestors as they do black ancestors. That means that many of their genes are, in fact, caucasian. So, why are they not classified that way?

Note: It’s a great exercise to ask students to identify the tribes to which they belong, both those assigned by tradition and society and those assumed voluntarily. Which are the most important?

6. Three characters in the film exhibit racist tendencies. Identify one of them, describe how their racism is shown, and what happens to their attitudes through the course of the film.

The characters who exhibit the most adherence to Jim Crow attitudes are the police officer shown at the beginning of the movie; Mrs. Mitchell, the Female Computers’ white supervisor, and Paul Stafford, the condescending white engineer in the Space Task Group. By the end of the film, each changes their attitudes: the policeman escorts the three protagonists to work; Mrs. Mitchell indicates her growing respect for Dorothy by addressing her as “Mrs. Vaughan,” and Paul Stafford reverses his resistance to Katherine’s presence and status, bringing her a cup of coffee.

7. Coffee serves as a symbol in this movie. What does it symbolize?

Professional respect and acceptance as a member of the NASA team.

8. What is the role of the romance between Katherine Johnson and the Army officer that she married in the story?

It shows that feminism is not just work related and that a man with the strength of character can appreciate and love a strong woman if he abandons stereotyped ways of viewing women. It is also an accurate portrayal of Mrs. Johnson’s second marriage and her second husband, Colonel Jim Johnson. My Remarkable Journey, pp. 140, 141, 207, 214 – 216.

HUMAN RIGHTS

See Discussion Questions numbered 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

1. Describe three acts of courage by the heroines in the film. Why are these actions particularly courageous?

There are several possibilities: Dorothy Vaughan: repeatedly asking to be promoted to the position of supervisor and walking into the computer room to work with the new machine; Katherine Johnson: entering the Space Task Group; and Mary Jackson: bringing her case to court and speaking up to the judge. These actions were particularly courageous because they required challenging the color bar, something that had been enforced in the South for four centuries through intimidation and violence. (For an example, see the picture above of the police forcibly removing a black woman from a library.)

MORAL-ETHICAL EMPHASIS (CHARACTER COUNTS)

(Treat others with respect; follow the Golden Rule; Be tolerant of differences; Use good manners, not bad language; Be considerate of the feelings of others; Don’t threaten, hit or hurt anyone; Deal peacefully with anger, insults, and disagreements)

1. What is the basic moral failing of racism?

There are many valid responses. Examples include racists do not treat others with respect; they do not follow the Golden Rule, and they are not tolerant of differences.

ASSIGNMENTS, PROJECTS & ACTIVITIES

Each of the discussion questions can serve as quick write or essay prompts.

1. The following are research topics for essays by students. Length of essay and extent of research depend upon the capabilities of the class.

Describe the origin and history of Jim Crow.
Define the terms”de facto” and “de jure” and describe how they relate to Jim Crow.
Compare and contrast racial discrimination in the North and in the South during the period 1950 – 1965. Use at least three sets of comparisons. Provide citations to newspaper articles, books, or pages on the Internet that show the particular incidents.
Describe the changes in American attitudes towards race and racism (both North and South) from before Brown v. Board of Education and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1954) to Selma and the passage of the Voting Rights Act (1964).
For students who live in the Southeastern United States, describe the history of Jim Crow laws or customs in your state/city.

[There is no correct answer to the the questions posed by the next two essay prompts. Students should be informed that any response that (a) is based on core Western values, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, (2) comports with the Golden Rule, and (3) uses logical analysis, will be acceptable.]

2. Write an essay evaluating whether the U.S. should pay reparations to its African-American citizens in light of the following:

National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates has written that the practice of “redlining,” or denying mortgage and financial services to blacks, has prevented the intergenerational transfer of wealth in families that is a mainstay of middle-class financial security in the U.S. The Case for Reparations — Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, June 2014 Issue .

3. Some people feel that ethnic or racially segregated neighborhoods afford groups of people a sense of belonging and an opportunity to “be themselves” and feel at home. Others believe that racially segregated neighborhoods are not only illegal but un-American. Write an essay answering the following question, “When do neighborhoods that are divided along racial or ethnic lines become ghettos?”

4. Research and present information on the STEM or STEAM program at your school. Describe any outreach efforts to enroll students of color or girls in these programs.

5. Research and present information on courses of study in engineering, computer programming, mathematics, or robotics at three of your top choice colleges/universities.

6. Write a persuasive job notice intended to recruit female students and students of color to the fields of math, computing, and sciences.

7. Conduct interviews (in person or via video conference) with math/science/engineering professionals of color/female professors about their career paths and the obstacles they have had to overcome.

CCSS ANCHOR STANDARDS

Multimedia:

Anchor Standard #7 for Reading (for both ELA classes and for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Classes). (The three Anchor Standards read: “Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media, including visually and quantitatively as well as in words.”) CCSS pp. 35 & 60. See also Anchor Standard # 2 for ELA Speaking and Listening, CCSS pg. 48.

Anchor Standards #s 1, 2, 7 and 8 for Reading and related standards (for both ELA classes and for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Classes). CCSS pp. 35 & 60.

Anchor Standards #s 1 – 5 and 7- 10 for Writing and related standards (for both ELA classes and for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Classes). CCSS pp. 41 & 63.

Speaking and Listening:

Anchor Standards #s 1 – 3 (for ELA classes). CCSS pg. 48.

Not all assignments reach all Anchor Standards. Teachers are encouraged to review the specific standards to make sure that over the term all standards are met.

LINKS TO THE INTERNET

‘Hidden Figures’: ‘The Right Stuff’ vs. Real Stuff in New Film About NASA History by Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor; 12/27/16;
The True Story of “Hidden Figures,” the Forgotten Women Who Helped Win the Space Race By Maya Wei-Haas smithsonian.com
The Human Computer Project ;
NASA Article on Katherine Johnson ;
NASA Biography for Mary Jackson ;
NASA Biography for Katherine Johnson ;
NASA Biography for Dorothy Vaughan ;
FDR, A. Philip Randolph and the Desegregation of the Defense Industries A lesson plan from the White House Historical Association;
1941 – Plans for a March on Washington form the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library; and
Article on Johann Euler from the History of Mathematics web site.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to websites which may be linked in the Guide and selected film reviews listed on the Movie Review Query Engine , the following resources were consulted in the preparation of this Learning Guide:

Shetterly, Margot Lee, Hidden Figures , New York, William Morrow, 2016; and
Johnson, Katherine with Joyce Hylick and Katherine Moore, My Remarkable Journey, A Memoire, Amistad, 2021.

This Learning Guide was written by Deborah Elliott and was published on May 9, 2017. It was revised with the assistance of James A. Frieden and republished on January 10, 2022.

LEARNING GUIDE MENU:

Benefits of the Movie Possible Problems Parenting Points Selected Awards & Cast Helpful Background Using the Movie in the Classroom Discussion Questions Social-Emotional Learning Moral-Ethical Emphasis Assignments and Projects CCSS Anchor Standards Links to the Internet Bibliography

MOVIE WORKSHEETS:

RANDALL KENNEDY, Professor, Harvard Law School on the two alternative traditions relating to racism in America:

“I say that the best way to address this issue is to address it forthrightly, and straightforwardly, and embrace the complicated history and the complicated presence of America. On the one hand, that’s right, slavery, and segregation, and racism, and white supremacy is deeply entrenched in America. At the same time, there has been a tremendous alternative tradition, a tradition against slavery, a tradition against segregation, a tradition against racism.

I mean, after all in the past 25 years, the United States of America has seen an African-American presence. As we speak, there is an African-American vice president. As we speak, there’s an African- American who is in charge of the Department of Defense. So we have a complicated situation. And I think the best way of addressing our race question is to just be straightforward, and be clear, and embrace the tensions, the contradictions, the complexities of race in American life. I think we need actually a new vocabulary.

So many of the terms we use, we use these terms over and over, starting with racism, structural racism, critical race theory. These words actually have been weaponized. They are vehicles for propaganda. I think we would be better off if we were more concrete, we talked about real problems, and we actually used a language that got us away from these overused terms that actually don’t mean that much. From Fahreed Zakaria, Global Public Square, CNN, December 26, 2021

Give your students new perspectives on race relations, on the history of the American Revolution, and on the contribution of the Founding Fathers to the cause of representative democracy. Check out TWM’s Guide: TWO CONTRASTING TRADITIONS RELATING TO RACISM IN AMERICA and a Tragic Irony of the American Revolution: the Sacrifice of Freedom for the African-American Slaves on the Altar of Representative Democracy.

QUICK FACT:

Today’s, cell phones have more computing power than entire rooms of the digital computers of the 1950s and 1960s.

The increases in funding for the sciences that followed Russia’s launch of Sputnik in 1957 were felt in many areas of science. This writer’s father-in-law was a poorly paid professor of biochemistry in the early 1950s. After Sputnik in 1957, his pay and status “skyrocketed” along with those of other scientists in academia.

Have your students read 1.5 pages on what Katherine Johnson wrote about her family’s commitment to education and their personal response to the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Click here for the reading in Word format.

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BASED ON A TRUE STORY

We’re in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1926. A young Katherine Johnson is waiting, naming the geometric shapes on the wall, while her parents talk to a teacher at a school for gifted students. They want Katherine to skip several grades because she is so intellectually advanced and a math genius. We see her as a young girl solving algebra equations that her teenaged classmates can’t.

We jump forward to the 1961 in Virginia where an adult Katherine (Taraji P. Henson) is stuck on the side of the road with her two coworkers that she carpools with -- Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). A police officer stops and asks for identification. When they explain that they work at NASA, he changes his tune, vocalizing that he’s surprised they hire black women. He seems very well-versed in NASA and points out that the Americans have to beat the Russians in the Space Race. He asks if they are friends with the astronauts; Mary answers that they are but it’s clear from the other’s expressions that they’re kept separate from them. Dorothy manages to get the car up and running and the police officer provides them an escort to the NASA field center which they find ironic since it’s not usually a group of black people speeding to follow a police car.

The Space Task Group has a meeting about how they are going to beat Russia, which has just had success with Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. They’re worried that the Soviets having access to space could allow them to spy on America. The man in charge demands that Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) get them up there because they can’t justify the cost of a space program that doesn’t put anyone in space. A man in the crowd, Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons), makes a snooty comment and is asked what his position is. He explains he is the head engineer.

The three women work at the West Area Computers division of the center, segregated from Langley Research Center, along with many other black women who work as “computers,” doing math by hand. Dorothy gives out new assignments to the group – Mary wants to work as an engineer but now she is told she is just going to be assisting them. Vivian Jackson (Kirsten Dunst), comes in to talk to Dorothy. She tells her the Space Test Group needs a new computer. Dorothy suggests Katherine because she’s the best at numbers.

Vivian escorts Katherine to the Flight Research Division elsewhere on the campus, telling her that it’s standard for women to wear skirts and no jewelry except maybe pearls. She tells Katherine they’ve never had a colored person in that department and not to embarrass her. Katherine enters the large area where white men are doing math equations. She is mistaken for a janitor and the men act rudely towards her.

In the engineering department, Mary carries her papers through the closed off area where a space shuttle is going to be tested. As it counts down, the heel of her shoe gets caught and she can’t pry it loose. They shout that her life is not worth a shoe so she abandons it and joins the male engineers behind the glass. The space shuttle explodes. They examine it and ask her opinion as to what went wrong. She is able to deduct that the heat shield flew off the shingles and knows what caused this to happen. Mary then explains how it could be corrected which impresses the engineer. He asks, if she was a white man, would she want to be an engineer? She responds that she wouldn’t have to; she’s already be one. Mary tells him the only schools that have the programs needed to become an engineer are off limits to colored people.

Dorothy asks Vivian if she can be promoted to supervisor since she’s doing the work of a supervisor already. But Vivian refuses which Dorothy has to remain diplomatic about because she’s not in a position to debate. Meanwhile, Katherine is given a lot of work to check by Paul Stafford, who is short with her, telling her his numbers are perfect and he needs it checked by the end of the day. He has also blacked out a lot of information as if Katherine couldn’t be trusted with it. She has to hold it up to the light to read it because she can’t solve the problems otherwise.

Time passes and Katherine needs to use the restroom. She asks a woman where it is and is told, “I don’t know where YOUR bathroom is.” Katherine goes outside, needing to pee, but realizes the bathroom in that building is for white women only and can’t sneak in because some women are loitering nearby. She has to leave the building and run half a mile to the West Area Computer division she used to work in. She brings her work with her and continues to proof it while she pees.

That night, Dorothy is in a bad mood as she drives the other two home, complaining about Vivian not making her a supervisor when she’s been working as one for years. Katherine gets home and finds her three daughters fighting in their bedroom. The young ones want to know why the oldest one gets her own bed. Katherine says if they want to take on the same chores and responsibilities, they can earn the right to the bed. The younger girls agree they are fine sharing. They complain that their mom has been gone for a long time and she cites her new position as the cause.

The three women go to church and a handsome colonel (Mahershala Ali) catches Katherine’s eye. At the barbecue afterwards, the women signal for the man, Jim Johnson, to come over and talk to Katherine. The two of them flirt with each other.

Back at NASA, Katherine goes to pour herself a cup of coffee, which unnerves all the white people as she is supposed to drink from a separate pot. Al Harrison joins the group and asks if anyone wants to take a crack at a math equation on a large chalkboard that has gone unsolved. Nobody notices but Katherine steps up and does the math. Time passes and Al asks who solved the math problem. When Katherine admits she did, he asks what she does and Katherine tells him she is checking work. She shows him and he asks how she’s able to work with all the blacked out sections. She admits she holds it up to the light and requests that she get the reports without being blacked out. He agrees, citing that she’s not a Russian spy so there’s no reason to keep information from her.

The NASA employees are gathered out on the launch site to meet John Glenn (Glen Powell) who will be piloting the Friendship 7, which would make him the first American in orbit. He is discouraged from greeting the black women, who are segregated from the white employees, but comes over anyway and proves to be friendly.

Katherine is given the assignment to write up reports and, because the majority of the research is hers, she assigns them to “Paul Stafford and Mary Goble.”

On a rainy day, Katherine sprints the long distance to use the Colored Women’s room. When she returns, Al asks her why she is gone for so long every day. Soaking wet, Katherine launches into a huge speech about how she has to use the Colored Women’s room and how she’s not allowed to drink coffee from the same pot and how she’s been forbidden to wear pearls but she’s never owned any. Al sympathizes with her and goes to the West Area Computer division and knocks down the COLORED WOMEN bathroom sign with a sledgehammer. He says, from now on, there will be no segregation of bathrooms.

Dorothy sneaks into the data processing center and studies the IBM machine they’ve set up. Later, she takes her children to the library and finds a book on FORTRAN programming. A white woman spots her and complains she’s in the wrong section. Dorothy tells her that they didn’t have the book she wanted in hers. She is kicked out of the library but reveals that she has taken the book with her. When her son asks her about it, Dorothy claims she’s a taxpayer and the library is government owned so she should be free to take the book.

Katherine sees Jim again at a picnic and he asks what she does for a living. When she tells him she works as a computer at NASA, he voices that he’s surprised that they let women handle that kind of math. Offended, Katherine tells him they don’t judge her by her skirt but by her glasses.

Now Katherine is respected amongst her white male colleagues. They pour her coffee from the same pot. She writes a report and puts her name on top again. Paul tells her not to do this because “computers” don’t get credited on reports. Katherine debates that it’s her math. She also voices to Al Harrison that she wants to be included on meetings since she is in charge of analyzing the discussions. Al points out there’s no protocol for women attending meetings but she responds by saying there’s no protocol for a man circling the Earth either. He wonders who can change the rules and Katherine points out that he’s the boss if he just acts like one. Despite Paul’s protestations, Al agrees to let her sit in, stating that they all work together or not at all.

Katherine attends her first meeting, with John Glenn and his crew. She hears of the latest problem, that they don’t know the no-go of the space shuttle and if they bring him in too soon, he will burn up on re-entry. They have to get the calculations perfect so they know exactly when he needs to return. The problem is the math they need doesn’t exist yet. Katherine is asked to go to the board and work on the problem. She points out that the shuttle will be travelling both in an elliptical and parabolic direction. She comes up with an equation that works, which impresses everyone, including John Glenn.

Mary goes to a judge and asks if she can attend a school that does not allow colored people, allowing her to get a degree in Engineering. She is granted permission to exclusively night classes, making her the first colored woman to attend. She goes to class and the white students are taken aback but it does not bother her.

When Vivian notes that they are short on computer programmers, Dorothy reveals that she has become proficient in FORTRAN. She arranges for all 30 of the women she had been working with to come along and join the staff, citing that they are short on manpower. Dorothy then tells the women that they’ve all been reassigned and they walk collectively to their new department.

Katherine continues writing reports with John Glenn’s launch approaching, eliminating her own name despite reluctance to do so. They let her know that, now that Friendship 7 is about to be launched, their need for Katherine has ended. Everyone has come to love her and they give her a gift of pearls as a send-off gift.

The day of John Glenn’s launch, Vivian runs into Dorothy in the bathroom. She apologizes to Dorothy for never making her supervisor and that she never treated her differently because she’s black. Before walking out, Dorothy studies her and pitifully says, “You really believe that.”

The whole world tunes in to watch John Glenn’s launch. Katherine is in the research department, alone, when a problem arises in the control center –the electronic computer’s calculations for John’s flight do not match a previous day’s, so they don’t know which coordinates to set for the launch and landing of the orbit. John requests that Katherine do the math by hand because she’s smart. Al is able to locate her and she is escorted into her old Computers office. She works on the equation until finally verifying which one is right. She revels in the achievement and then realizes she has to convey that information to John Glenn so he can launch as scheduled. She is raced back to the control center and the notebook is handed to Al, who is inside. The door is shut on Katherine, who stands outside, dejected, despite saving the day. A moment passes and then Al returns, ushering her inside with him.

Fifty million people watch the liftoff on television while Mary and Al watch from the control center. We see the horizon from the space shuttle as John Glenn sends Friendship 7 into orbit. After successful orbits around Earth, Glenn notices a control problem – the heat shield is not locked in position and only held in place by the straps of the retro package. He also complains that the temperature is getting too hot. Mary is watching the TV. She rushes to a payphone and calls NASA, screaming to let the control center know that John should keep the retro pack in place during reentry and retract the periscope manually. This information is relayed and proves correct.

The world is nervous about John’s reentry. He loses altitude and uses the fly-by-wire mode, experiencing peak reentry heating. But then he regains stability and re-enters. Katherine experiences this moment with the rest of the crew.

After the launch, the activity at NASA dies down. Dorothy learns that all the “computers” are going to be laid off, now that electronic computers are available. But she is kept on in the Research Center's Analysis and Computation Division. Mary gets her degree and becomes an engineer.

Katherine returns home after a long day and Jim Johnson is waiting for her. They have reconciled after their argument and he proposes to her. She accepts.

In post-script, we learn about all three of the women’s accomplishments at NASA. Katherine calculated the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon and on Apollo 13, as well. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. In 2016, the Langley Research Center in Virginia that she worked at was renamed the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility. She has remained married to Jim Johnson to this day.

In 1961 Virginia, three black women work at NASA as “computers,” doing math by hand given that they’re all fairly smart and educated. One by one, they work their way up the ranks of the space program. Katherine Goble, a math genius, ends up calculating the math for John Glenn’s spaceflight, which is the first time an American has ever orbited the Earth. Dorothy Vaughan studies FORTRAN programming and becomes a computer programmer. Mary Jackson goes to court to be granted permission to study engineering, which has been off-limits to colored women in the area, and eventually becomes an engineer.

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Places of hidden figures: black women mathematicians in aeronautics and the space race.

The content for this article was researched and written by Jade Ryerson, an intern with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education. In 2016, the film Hidden Figures skyrocketed Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan to household names. During the 1950s and 1960s, they joined dozens of other African American women who crunched numbers and processed data for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and its successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Many of these women got their start as “human computers,” performing complicated calculations that supported the work of male engineers. NACA began hiring white women as computers in 1935. The agency did not open these positions to African American women until 1943 to address labor shortages during World War II. At the time, opportunities for women to advance in their careers were limited. African American women faced additional barriers because of racial discrimination.

Nevertheless, African American women played a critical role in the Space Race and rose to new heights as mathematicians, computer programmers, team project leads, and engineers at NASA. This article features properties in the National Register of Historic Places that are related to their stories.

1. NASA Langley Research Center Historic District (Katherine Johnson)

When Katherine Johnson began her 33-year career in 1953, Langley Research Center was racially segregated. For her first two weeks, Johnson worked in the all-African American West Area Computing section. She was quickly reassigned to the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division. This assignment led to some of the achievements for which Johnson is best known. In 1961, she analyzed the flight trajectory for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 mission, the first human spaceflight completed by the United States. The next year, Johnson also verified an electronic computer’s calculations for the Friendship 7 mission. During this mission, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth. During the 1960s, her math also helped Project Apollo to send astronauts to the moon and make the moon landings a reality. Johnson considered her contributions to Project Apollo as her greatest achievement.

NASA Langley Research Center Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

2. Hampton City Hall (Mary W. Jackson)

After starting at NACA in 1951, Mary W. Jackson worked as a West Area computer for two years. Because of her mathematical skill, engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki invited Jackson to join his team working on the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. Jackson gained lots of hands-on experience in this role, but she had bigger dreams: to become an engineer herself. Czarnecki suggested that she enroll in a special training program to transition from a mathematician to an engineer. Although the University of Virginia ran the program, classes were held at Hampton High School. Because the school was segregated, the City of Hampton had to approve Jackson’s participation in the program. When Jackson appeared before a judge at Hampton City Hall to make her case, she was approved for enrollment. After completing the necessary courses, Jackson became the first African American woman engineer at NASA in 1958. That year, she also published her first report, “Effects of Nose Angle and Mach Number on Transition Cones at Supersonic Speeds,” with Czarnecki.

Hampton City Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

3. Wilberforce University (Dorothy Vaughan)

When she was 15 years old, Dorothy Vaughan received a full tuition scholarship to study at Wilberforce University, the first private historically Black college. Vaughan majored in mathematics and French. Her professors recommended that she pursue further graduate study at Howard University. Vaughan declined and took a job in the West Area Computing unit at Langley Research campus in 1943. For years, Vaughan was passed over for promotions despite her skills as a mathematician. Nevertheless, she continued to pursue a title worthy of her experience and skillset. She finally succeeded in 1949, becoming the first African American woman manager at NACA. During her career, she oversaw both Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson. When NACA became NASA in 1958, the agency began to eliminate segregated facilities, including West Computing. Vaughan and many other computers took new jobs in the Analysis and Computation Division, which was not segregated by race or gender. In that role, Vaughan blazed a trail, mastering the newest electronic computer programming technologies. She worked at NASA until her retirement in 1971.

Wilberforce University was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

Christine Darden in the control room of NASA Langley's Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel in 1975.

4. Hampton Institute (Christine Darden)

Christine Darden graduated from Hampton Institute with her bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1958. She briefly taught high school math before earning her master’s degree in applied mathematics at Virginia State College. Darden began working as a computer at NASA Langley Research Center in 1967. Although the agency began to desegregate its facilities in 1958, she still experienced discrimination. After working at NASA for 8 years without a promotion, Darden finally confronted a supervisor. She asked why the agency hired men who shared her educational background as engineers but did not offer her the same opportunities. The supervisor could not dispute Darden’s point and transferred her to the engineering section. After Darden began her career as an engineer, she spent the next 25 years pioneering sonic boom minimization and researching aerodynamics and supersonic flight. In 1983, she earned her doctorate in mechanical engineering from The George Washington University.

Hampton Institute was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

5. NASA Lewis Research Center–Development Engineering Building & Annex (Annie Easley)

When Annie Easley started working at NACA in 1955, she was one of four African Americans among 2,500 employees. She decided to apply after reading in the newspaper about two sisters who worked there as computers. Over the course of her 34-year career, Easley worked as computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist at Lewis (Glenn) Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. She became a leader on the team that developed software for the Centaur Upper Stage Rocket. The Centaur was a booster with a high-energy propellant, powerful enough to launch satellites and probes into orbit and beyond. Easley was committed to increasing diversity at NASA. She attended college career days and encouraged women and people of color to consider fields in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). She also became an Equal Employment Opportunity counselor and ensured NASA followed through on discrimination complaints.

NASA Lewis Research Center–Development Engineering Building & Annex was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

Melba Roy heads the group of NASA mathematicians

Photo courtesy NASA, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6452800

6. Spacecraft Magnetic Test Facility at Goddard Space Flight Center (Melba Roy Mouton)

After earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Howard University, Melba Roy Mouton spent several years working for the Army Map Service and the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1959, Mouton began working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. At Goddard, Mouton led the group of human computers who tracked the Echo Satellites 1 and 2. The calculations that they performed enabled NASA to predict the flight paths and locations of spacecraft in Earth’s orbit. Due to the gravitational pull of other planets, the moon, and Earth, this was a difficult task even for an electronic computer. During her 18 years at Goddard, Mouton served in several leadership roles in the computer programming, data systems, trajectory analysis, and research divisions.

The Spacecraft Magnetic Test Facility at Goddard Space Flight Center was added to the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985.

7. Propulsion and Structural Test Facility at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (Jeanette A. Scissum)

Jeanette A. Scissum received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Alabama A & M University. In 1964, she began her career at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. At Marshall, Scissum produced a report about magnetic activity on the surface of the sun. This report helped to improve how NASA predicted cyclical changes in solar activity. Scissum later worked in Marshall’s the Space Environment Branch and contributed to the Atmospheric, Magnetospheric, and Plasmas in Space project. She also volunteered as an Equal Opportunity officer.

The Propulsion and Structural Test Facility at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

Selected Sources

“Goddard’s Own ‘Hidden Figure,’ and a Legend of Invention.” Goddard View 13, no. 1 (January 2017): 9. Accessed February 3, 2021. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/goddardviewv13i1online.pdf .

Mills, Anne K. “Annie Easley, Computer Scientist.” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Edited by Kelly Heidman. Last modified August 7, 2017. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/annie-easley-computer-scientist .

Mohon, Lee. “Jeanette A. Scissum, Scientist and Mathematician at NASA Marshall.” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Last modified March 7, 2019. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/jeanette-scissum-3.html .

Shetterly, Margot Lee. Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women who Helped Launch Our Nation Into Space. New York: William Morrow and Company, 2016.

Smith, Yvette, ed. “Christine Darden: From Human Computer to Engineer.” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Last modified February 27, 2020. https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/christine-darden-from-human-computer-to-engineer .

Part of a series of articles titled Curiosity Kit: Black Women Mathematicians in Aeronautics .

Previous: Learning From Black Women Mathematicians at NASA

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Last updated: May 17, 2023

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The Math Projects Journal

Hidden figures’ lessons for the classroom.

On Math Math is More Than Computing. Yes, a team of nearly twenty African-American women was known as “the computers,” because in the days before calculators, computation was done by hand. However, the movies’ three protagonists, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson, were all given assignments for which the math went far beyond simple computation. They had to visualize geometrically, draw graphs, generate equations, assign units, assess another’s work, creatively program and, yes, solve lots of problems. Much of the work that was glorified in the movie was the application of mathematics, not calculation with mathematics. In fact, the director the Space Task Group, Al Harrison insisted:

“This isn’t about plugging in numbers, this is about inventing the math.”

Intellectual work is valuable. Several times in the movie there was reference made to the “work” done by the various NASA personnel.

Dorothy reference the number of people needed to run the new IBM: “We’re going to need a lot of manpower to program that beast. I can’t do it alone. My gals are ready. They can do the work.” *

Al Harrison in response to a politician’s inquiry: “That’s the math we don’t have yet, gentlemen. We’re working on it.”

Ruth (Katherine’s colleague) on Katherine’s last day on the Space Task Group: “You did good work around here.”

Al Harrison after John Glenn was returned safely to earth: “Nice work, Katherine.”

Dorothy instructing the other women in reference to Katherine re-computing John Glenn’s critical re-entry coordinates: “Alright, give her space. Let her work.”

Math put humans into space. Katherine upon being questioned about how she knows that one type of rocket is needed over another:

$hf-math$

That says it all.

The movie got the math and the science right. Hollywood has a track record for flunking math and science in movies, however, in this one, they earn a stellar score.

Katherine as an 8-year old child prodigy: “If the product of two terms is zero, then common sense says at least one of the two terms has to be zero to start with. So, if you move all the terms over to one side, you can put the quadratics into a form that can be factored, allowing that side of the equation to equal zero. Once you’ve done that, it’s pretty straight-forward from there…”

Stafford: “The Atlas Rocket can push us into orbit. It goes up. Delivers the capsule into an elliptical orbit. Earth’s gravity keeps pulling it, but it’s going so fast that it keeps missing the Earth – that’s how it stays in orbit.”

A+, Hollywood.

On Math Education All need to be encouraged to check their work. When Katherine Johnson was asked by her new boss to check the work of the lead engineer, Paul Stafford, Mr. Stafford balked. In response to his objection, Harrison gave a speech about the importance of the task, and that no one is above having his or her work checked.

“Do I need to remind everyone…that we are putting a human on top of a missile and shooting him into space? It’s never been done before. And because it’s never been done … everything we do between now and then is going to matter: it’s going to matter to their wives, their kids, I believe it’s going to matter to the whole damn country. So this Space Task Group will be as advertised. And America’s greatest engineering and scientific minds will not have a problem with having their work checked.”

Yes, those engineers had to check their work because the boss said so, but the boss also gave them the reason why… because getting the answer right is important. If NASA engineers needed to be reminded of this on occasion, then so do our math students.

Much of the math that launched John Glenn into space is taught in high school. Yes, the characters in the movie mentioned things like the Frenet Frame and the Gram-Schmidt, but many of the terms used and the equations shown in various scenes would be recognized by students in high school math classes across America.

Katherine: “On any given day, I analyze the manometer levels for air displacement, friction and velocity and compute over 10,000 calculations by cosine, square root and lately Analytic Geometry.”

Our math students should know that they are actually learning rocket science!

There is opportunity for everyone in STEM fields. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) The three women portrayed in Hidden Figures were specialists in three different STEM fields: Mathematics, Engineering, and Programming. These are all fields in which we have a shortage of American citizens earning a degree, to the point that much of the classified work in this country is being done by people who have citizenship from other countries. The STEM community sees this as an issue and would very much like to see more Americans pursuing careers in these fields. With the typical STEM job offering twice the annual earning of a non-STEM job, there is a huge opportunity for economic advancement for low-income students entering these vocations. If they are not choosing this on their own, then we educators should be doing more to encourage and support their election of these endeavors.

On Equity The oppressed are not victims. Hidden Figures is very much a story about victory over oppression, not victims of oppression. The victory was achieved by the heroines changing themselves, changing others, and changing the system…

In order to adapt to economic change, we must improve ourselves. When Dorothy Vaughn finds out that the new IBM computing machine means that the human computers will be obsolete, she not only makes moves to position herself well in the new age of computers, she encourages her friends to do the same.

“It’s not going to matter soon. This IBM’s going to put us all out of work… Only one thing to do: learn all we can. Make ourselves valuable. Somewhere down the line a human being’s going to have to hit the buttons… We have to know how to program it. Unless you’d rather be out of a job?”

Dorothy then goes to the public library and checks out a book on Fortran (one of the original programming languages). She even reads it aloud to her sons on the bus, as a mother’s lesson in overcoming adversity.

This message is extremely relevant in the political climate today. Many jobs are being lost to automation and changes in the global economy. The promise of today’s politicians to “bring those jobs back,” is equivalent to thinking that the emergence of the information age, represented in the film by the IBM machine, could have been prevented in order to maintain the human computing jobs. It is equally as silly to think that anyone today can stop the evolution of the job market. Instead, we educators should be teaching students, and ourselves, to do as Dorothy did, and adapt to the new 21 st Century economic environment.

They were strong women not just smart women. These three women were more than simply a mathematician, engineer and programmer; they were wives, mothers and daughters. Katherine Johnson was a single, widowed mother who had to raise and support three children. Mary Jackson was a married mother who held down a job and attended night school. It takes internal strength to balance that kind of life.

They were brave women not just strong, smart women. The three heroines each had a moment in the story in which they spoke truth to power. In the engineering lab, the courtroom, and the office. In each case, their courage effected change.

Black men are not thugs. The two primary black male roles in the movie, the husbands of Katherine and Mary, were not the gangsta and drug-addict that is too often the portrait of black men in movies. Jim Johnson and Levi Jackson were both strong, family-oriented men of solid character.

Prejudice and Discouragement are sometimes found in your backyard. The women of Hidden Figures were not only dealing with racial bigotry, but they faced sexism as well, even from their own friends. At the first meeting with her future husband, Katherine’s suitor puts a huge foot in his own mouth:

Jim Johnson: “Aeronautics. Pretty heady stuff. They let women handle that kind of- … I was just surprised something so taxing…”

Levi Jackson (Mary’s Husband commenting on her desire to become a NASA engineer): “All I’m saying, don’t play a fool. I don’t want to see you get hurt. NASA’s never given you gals your due, having another degree won’t change that. Civil rights ain’t always civil.”

Both men came around to offer full support of their ladies’ dreams, after their wives stood strong to their convictions. Sometimes the battles for equity must be fought in our homes and communities, not only against “them.”

Prejudice is sometimes harder to see now. We no longer have colored bathrooms, colored bus seats, colored drinking fountains or colored coffee pots, but we do have colored schools and even colored classrooms. We know that schools are just as segregated now, as before Brown vs. Board of Education. The inequity in funding and support for the black schools means segregation by opportunity, which is more criminal than segregation by race. The roster of my own class of “at-risk” students is 90% populated by students of color, while those same groups of students make up only 54% of the school population. When I brought this to the attention of the administration, they were genuinely unaware, but instantly concerned. Statistics like this, which exist on paper, are harder to see and less humiliating, but actually more dangerous than a “coloreds only” sign. Therefore, we educators need to be more vigilant in exposing these numbers and in changing the practices and policies that they represent.

People of all ethnicity and gender can contribute. This story was about more than whites and blacks sharing the same bathroom. It was about the talents and contributions of people of all backgrounds. Katherine makes this very point in the first meeting of her and her future husband.

Katherine: “So, yes…they let women do some things over at NASA, Mr. Johnson. But it’s not because we wear skirts…it’s because we wear glasses.”

Racial equality is pragmatic as well as moral. This important story of Johnson, Jackson and Vaughn is about more than women or blacks receiving a fair shake. It is about how one of the crowning achievements of America may not have been accomplished without them.

Vivian Mitchell (Dorothy’s Supervisor): “Seems like they’re gonna need a permanent team to feed that IBM.”

I don’t want to question Al Harrison’s sense of social justice, but his tearing down of the “Coloreds Only” bathroom sign was as much an action of practicality as it was a display of righteousness.

Harrison “Go wherever you damn well please. Preferably closer to your desk.”

His primary purpose was to get an American into orbit, not to get a black woman to urinate next a white one, but he saw that the path into space traveled through an integrated restroom. Katherine knew it also traveled through an integrated boardroom. She was being kept out of key meetings, because of her gender and race, when she knew that her work was being hindered by the locked door. She stated her case for inclusion to her boss, not on a basic of equality, but on a basis of practicality.

Katherine: “I cannot do my work effectively without having all of the data and all of the information as soon as it’s available. Indeed to be in that room, hearing what you hear.”

When Harrison has to stand for her presence in the meeting, he did not say, ‘We need more black women in these meetings.’ Instead, he claimed,

“This is Katherine Goble with our Trajectory and Launch Window Division. Her work is pertinent to today’s proceedings.”

On American Patriotism Black history is American history. The story of Hidden Figures is not the only story of African-American mathematicians and scientist who have made terrific contributions to our nation. In fact, those lists are long and distinguished:

List of African-American Mathematicians
List of African-American Scientists

Mary: “I’m a Negro woman. I’m not going to entertain the impossible.”

Zielinski (engineering colleague): “And I’m a Polish Jew whose parents died in a Nazi prison camp. Now I’m standing beneath a space ship that’s going to carry an astronaut to the stars. I think we can say, we’re living the impossible.”

Mary would be happy to know that over 50 years later, not only are women of all ethnicities being allowed to become engineers, they are being actively recruited for such a career, and we in the public school system are being charged with raising them up. Again, this is not a matter of equality; it is a matter of practicality. America needs more engineers, and any antiquated systems of injustice will keep us from achieving our technological potential, and from reaching our highest ideals of Friendship and Freedom.

* All Quotes from Hidden Figures Screenplay by Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi, May 12, 2015 (Based on the book Hidden Figures by Margot Shetterly).

Why does Katherine get the assignment in hidden figures?

Besides, what assignment does Katherine get in hidden figures?

Katherine Goble/Johnson was assigned to the Flight Research Division in 1953, a move that soon became permanent. When the Space Task Group was created in 1958, engineers from the Flight Research Division formed the core of the Group, and Katherine moved along with them.

Regarding this, why does Katherine get assigned?

Katherine gets an assignment to the Space Task Group. Why does she get the assignment ? What kind of math can she do? Mary wants to become an engineer but needs to take additional classes.

Dorothy is the manager and de-facto supervisor of a group of “computers”—about thirty black women, all skilled mathematicians—that includes Katherine and Mary.

What happens in hidden figures?

In Hampton, Virginia, in 1961, an adult Katherine (Taraji P. Henson), now Katherine Goble, is stuck on the side of the road with the two co-workers she carpools with, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). A racist police officer stops and asks for identification.

Why is hidden figures called hidden figures?

Hidden Figures . The title “ Hidden Figures ” has a double meaning, On one hand it refers to the mathematical calculations that went in to making John Glenn the first American man into space in 1962. On the other hand it describes Katherine G.

What is the main idea of hidden figures?

Hidden Figures illustrates the lives of three African American women and their significant contributions to the field of aeronautics while working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) during the 1950s and 60s. Main ideas throughout the book include racism , hard work, perseverance, and community.

What is the main problem in hidden figures?

In 1961, a time of segregation and rampant racism and sexism, three African-American women overcame every challenge they faced and helped NASA in the early days of the Space Race. The record of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson is a story that was ignored until now.

Why is hidden figures important?

The movie Hidden Figures portrays the untold story of three African-American women who played an important role in the 1960s space race, and serves to inspire future generations. It's about the at-the-time obscure math that helped launch men into space and bring them safely back to Earth.

Is hidden figures on Netflix or Amazon?

So here's what is known: Right now, you can buy Hidden Figures for $14.99 on Fox Digital HD from iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Video, Vudu, Fandago Now, and Cinema Now.

Is hidden figures movie true?

The film , based on a true story, follows three brilliant women "computers" at NASA in the '60s: Katherine Johnson, played by Taraji P. Henson, Dorothy Vaughan, played by Octavia Spencer, and Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monae. These women were indeed real, amazing people, but how accurate is Hidden Figures ?

Are the hidden figures still alive?

Newport News, Virginia, U.S. Katherine Johnson (born Creola Katherine Coleman; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020), also known as Katherine Goble, was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.

What is their job title at NASA in hidden figures?

NASA's Real ' Hidden Figures ' Mary Jackson was one of the "human computers" portrayed in the film " Hidden Figures ." The job title described someone who performed mathematical equations and calculations by hand, according to a NASA history. The computers worked at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia.

What happened to Katherine's husband in hidden figures?

Katherine and her husband , James Goble, decided to move the family to Newport News to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.

When did NASA desegregate?

Integration came to the nation's space agency in the mid-1960s. On May 13, 1961 , in its first issue after Alan Shepard's historic Mercury mission, the nation's leading black newspaper, the New York Amsterdam News, ran a front-page column that asked a question on the minds of millions of Americans.

Who is the engineer in hidden figures?

Mary Jackson (engineer) Mary Jackson (née Winston , April 9, 1921 – February 11, 2005) was an American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA ).

Who was hidden figures based on?

The film " Hidden Figures ," based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly, focuses on Katherine Johnson (left), Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan, African-American women who were essential to the success of early spaceflight.

Why Katherine Johnson is important?

Johnson also played an important role in NASA's Mercury program (1961–63) of manned spaceflights. In 1961 she calculated the path for Freedom 7, the spacecraft that put the first U.S astronaut in space, Alan B. Shepard, Jr. Johnson later worked on the space shuttle program. She retired from NASA in 1986.

How many multiplications can the IBM compute per second in hidden figures?

Much is made, in the movie, of the incredible speed of the 7090: 24,000 calculations per second !

When did Katherine Johnson die?

February 24, 2020

What does IBM stand for in hidden figures?

In the movie, the women refer to the IBM 7090 DPS, or Data Processing System, as "The IBM ." "Outthink Hidden " explores the stories of heroes featured in " Hidden Figures " as part of 10 innovators in STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

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IMAGES

Katherine Johnson, NASA Mathematician Featured in 'Hidden Figures
The Inspiring Story Of Katherine Johnson, NASA's 'Human Computer'
Hidden Figures: The True Story of NASA's 'Human Computers'
Why Katherine Johnson From Hidden Figures Looks So Familiar
"Hidden Figures" Mathematician Katherine Johnson at 100: A Life Told in
Barbie Debuts New Katherine Johnson ‘Hidden Figures’ Doll

COMMENTS

Hidden Figures: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis
Katherine's familiarity with higher-level math makes her an important figure in the Flight Research Division. Her confidence leads her to ask the engineers many questions about their work, and they, in turn, enjoy teaching her. Her first assignment is to help find the cause of an accident involving a small Piper propeller plane. Katherine participates in an experiment designed to recreate ...
'Hidden Figures': When Did John Glenn Ask for 'the Girl' to Check the
"Get the girl to check the numbers," directed astronaut John Glenn, both in real life and in the 20th Century Fox film "Hidden Figures," altering mathematician Katherine Johnson's role in history.
Hidden Figures Flashcards
No, Katherine had to leave the building to go to a colored women's bathroom. Were women treated the same as men? If no give an example. No, Katherine cannot attend the Pentagon meeting/ briefings because there is no protocol for a woman. Katherine gets an assignment to the Space Task Group. Why does she get the assignment? What kind of math can ...
Hidden Figures Flashcards
Give an example of the inequality. There were not very many women in the workplace. If there were, they were given lower positioned jobs. Why does Katherine get an assignment from the Space Task Group? Katherine is extremely smart and quick/good with numbers. What kind of math can see do?
Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson Character Analysis
Get everything you need to know about Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson in Hidden Figures. Analysis, related quotes, timeline.
Hidden Figures Movie vs the True Story of Katherine Johnson, NASA
We compare the Hidden Figures movie vs. the true story of the real Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan at NASA.
The True Story of 'Hidden Figures' and the Women Who Crunched ...
There's a moment halfway into Hidden Figures when head NASA engineer Paul Stafford refuses the request of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) to attend an editorial meeting about John Glenn's ...
The True Story of 'Hidden Figures': How Accurate are the Characters?
In Hidden Figures, he plays Col. Jim (James) Johnson, a captain and lieutenant in the United States Army. During the time the movie was based on, Jim Johnson is Katherine Johnson's love interest ...
Reading Guide: One Book 2019-2020
Chapter 12: Serendipity How did Katherine Goble get her job at Langley? Why did Katherine get attached to the Flight Research Division? Why is this change of department significant for her? What happened when Katherine sits down to wait to meet her new boss? What impact does this moment have on her? How does integration happen at Langley?
Describe Katherine Goble's character in Hidden Figures.
Get an answer for 'Describe Katherine Goble's character in Hidden Figures.' and find homework help for other Hidden Figures questions at eNotes
Hidden Figures: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis
Need help with Chapter 12: Serendipity in Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures? Check out our revolutionary side-by-side summary and analysis.
HIDDEN FIGURES
"Hidden Figures" is the story of three black women who made important contributions to the U.S. Space program both before and after the "human computers" were replaced by digital computers. The three real-life heroines of the movie are: Dorothy Vaughan, who supervises the "colored computers." She sees that digital computers are the wave of the future and learns the prototype ...
Movie Spoiler for the film
HIDDEN FIGURES. We're in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1926. A young Katherine Johnson is waiting, naming the geometric shapes on the wall, while her parents talk to a teacher at a school for gifted students. They want Katherine to skip several grades because she is so intellectually advanced and a math genius.
PDF Hidden Figures Viewing Guide and Discussion Questions
Hidden Figures the movie is an adaptation of the book that follows the lives of three very real heroes - Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan - and their indispensable contributions to the US space program. The movie focuses on the dramatic chain of events leading to the first manned Earth orbit by John Glenn in February, 1962.
Places of Hidden Figures: Black Women Mathematicians in Aeronautics and
In 2016, the film Hidden Figures skyrocketed Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan to household names. During the 1950s and 1960s, they joined dozens of other African American women who crunched numbers and processed data for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and its successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Hidden Figures Questions (docx)
Were women treated the same as men? ____ No ____ If no, give an example. There weren't many women in the workforce if they were given less money and lower positioned jobs. 3. Katherine gets an assignment to the Space Task Group. Why does she get the assignment? She is extremely smart and quick with numbers. What kind of math can she do?
Hidden Figures: Chapter 17 Summary & Analysis
Analysis. In March 1958, the US government wants to make sure Americans know space exploration is in the best interest of everybody for reasons that include national defense, global prestige, and the opportunity to expand human knowledge. Katherine and her colleagues at Langley try to learn everything they can about space, using their knowledge ...
Hidden Figures' Lessons for the Classroom
Hidden Figures' Lessons for the Classroom. Everyone in the theater applauded as the credits rolled at the end of the movie, Hidden Figures, and for good reason. It is an amazing, humorous, educational, inspiring and important movie. It is a film that every educator and math student should see.
Why does Katherine get the assignment in hidden figures?
Besides, what assignment does Katherine get in hidden figures? Katherine Goble/Johnson was assigned to the Flight Research Division in 1953, a move that soon became permanent. When the Space Task Group was created in 1958, engineers from the Flight Research Division formed the core of the Group, and Katherine moved along with them.
Hidden Figures Flashcards
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like When Katherine is a young girl, why are her parents talking to a school official?, Why do Katherine's parents have to move?, What type of problem does Katherine solve at the chalkboard? and more.
Hidden Figures
In "Hidden Figures", who knocked over the "colored women bathroom" sign and why? Quick answer: In "Hidden Figures", the "colored women bathroom" sign was knocked over by Al Harrison, the director ...