Hidden Figures
The
1960s is known as a decade filled with change and progress, yet until recent
years many key individuals behind the Space Race were kept hidden and didn’t
receive the credit they were due. Following the release of the 2016 film Hidden
Figures, based on the book Hidden
Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women
Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterley,
there has been light shed onto a previously untold story, leading to wider
recognition to the role of African American women in the space program.[1] The story is centred
around the lives of three black women, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine
Johnson, who in the early 1960s worked to calculate the launch and re-entry of John Glenn’s 1962
mission to orbit the earth.[2] Their work was vital in 1962
as electronic computers were still in the early phases and not as trusted as
the female computers at Langley, shown by John Glenn’s famous request to get “the
girl”, meaning Katherine Johnson, to check the numbers for his re-entry.[3]
From
as early as 1935, Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory moved towards employing
female computers, with Virginia Tucker being one of the first four to be
included in the new programme.[4] The demands of the Second
World War on the Aerospace industry and Roosevelt’s policy of desegregation in
the military, meant that they moved towards employing African American women as
well, in the late 1940s.[5] It offered women an unrivalled
position as they were able to continue working there after marriage and whilst
raising a family, which was unusual at the time.[6] It represented a challenge
for the women, a way for them to use their education and feel fulfilled, rather
than resigning to the life of a housewife and mother.
But Hidden
Figures is not just one example of how the space race is being
re-examined. Historian Roger Launius has termed it the ‘New Aerospace History’,
as there has been a shift in recent years towards looking at the space race in
terms of the wider context of the social and political issues of the time.[7] It is hard to examine the
work of NASA without considering the effect
of Cold War politics, which was a large motivator for the need to launch a man
into space and beat their Russian counterparts in the process. The popularity
of the book and film show the increasing interest in stories that centre around
women overcoming the restrictions of gender within the workplace and society in
general.
Through highlighting the
work of these women, we are not just highlighting how African American
contributions are often overlooked, but how African Americans made considerable
contributions to society, in an era when they were considered second class and
inferior to whites. The 1960s was full of protests and movements to improve
civil rights for blacks, and while there was some success, it is a shame that
it has taken over 50 years for success stories such as Hidden
Figures to be brought into the light.
By Fyona Cunningham
[1] Teasel
Muir-Harmony, ‘The Women Who Advanced Aerospace’, Reviews in American History, Vol. 47 No. 2 (June 2019), pp. 263-270
(p. 264).
[2] Marie
Hicks, ‘Hidden Figures is a groundbreaking book. But the film? Not so much’,
The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2017/feb/13/film-hidden-figures-nasa-black-women-mathematicians-book
(last accessed 4th March 2020).
[3]
Kerry Kolbe, ‘Man versus machine: how computers replaced humans in the Space
Race’, The Telegraph, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/hidden-figures/space-race-man-versus-machine/
(last accessed 4th March 2020).
[4] ‘Human
Computers’, NASA, https://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/historic/Human_Computers
(last accessed 4th March 2020).
[5]
Muir-Harmony, pp. 265-266.
[6] ‘Human
Computers’.
[7] Muir-Harmony,
p. 264.
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