Hidden Fences
The story told in the movie Hidden Figures directed by Theodore Melfi is a story based on the untold story of the three courageous African-American female mathematicians who worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. First of all, pat yourself in the back if you got that reference! Anyway, The movie takes place during the Space Race (20-century competition between cold war rivals Soviet Union and and the United States for supremacy in spaceflight capability) These females who contributed to the Space race were known as Katherine Goble, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan. Throughout the movie, for some reason, Katherine Goble(later known as Johnson) received the most screentime. Born in White Sulphur Springs, …show more content…
Mary was offered a job as a math teacher at an all African-American school in Hampton. After World War II had risen, Hampton had become a home front effort, Mary returned home to find a position as the receptionist at the King Street USO Club (a position which served the city’s black population). After this job, Mary had changed her career three times (a post as a bookkeeper in Hampton Institute's Health Department, a stint at home following the birth of her son, Levi, and a job as an Army Secretary at Fort Monroe) before landing a job at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory’s segregated West Area Computing section in 1951. After two years in the job in the computing pool, Mary had been offered to work for engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki in the 4-foot by 4-foot Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. After Czarnecki saw what Mary’s mind was capable of, he then told her, “A person with the mind of an engineer should be an engineer,” suggesting that she enter a training program which allowed her to earn a promotion from mathematician to engineer. Mary had liked the idea but knew that she’d need to be a graduate from courses which were at the time only give by the University of Virginia, a segregated High School in Hampton. This however, did not stop Mary, Mary received special permission from the City of Hampton to take the courses. Never to fear and challenge all odds which were against her because of her color, Mary had completed the courses, earned the promotion and became NASA’s first African-American female engineer in 1958. Though, Mary had achieved what seemed like the impossible, Mary had still been frustrated. Due to the decreasing rates of promotions, Mary wanted to change that, so she had taken a demotion and left engineering to a job as Langley’s Federal Women’s Program Manager. Mary had worked hard to impact the hiring and promotion of the next generation of all of NASA’s female