In the midst of 1950s and 1960s, when black community was fighting racial segregation, three African-American women were helping launch America into space and be the first to land the man on the moon.
Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson, along with their white peers, were part of the mathematician team, then called “Human computers,” who worked out flight paths to these historical achievements at a time when the United States was vying for superiority in space with the Soviet Union in the post-World War II era.
Many people will, for the first time, have an opportunity to look into the lives of the talented-trio in a movie “Hidden Figures” planned to be released in January 2017, on Martin Luther King Day weekend, according to TheWrap.com
Pop star Janelle Monae (playing Mary Jackson) will share lead roles with Taraji P. Henson (Katherine Johnson) and Octavia Spencer (Dorothy Vaughan) in the Fox 2000 space drama based on a new book “Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race” by Margot Lee Shetterly.
The movie brings to life untold stories of these talented women whose contributions to the scientific achievements and technological innovations created one of America’s proudest moments in a turbulent decade and half when non-violent protests and civil disobedience drew attention to the plight of African-Americans.
It was also the time when the United States and the Soviet Union were entering into a new conflict in the aftermath of the World War II, known as the Cold War, and space was the new arena the two would strive for domination and superiority.
Shortage of male mathematicians created the opportunities for these women and their white peers to get jobs in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a precursor to National Air and Space Administration (NASA).
Known as the “human computers” these women were hired to perform mathematical calculations as engineers were finding it difficult to compute their findings after running a research project, and also needed someone to recheck their calculations.
The enforcement of Jim Crow laws — a series of rigid anti-black laws, which relegated African Americans to the status of second-grade citizens between 1877 and mid-1960s — were manifested in NACA’s working environment.
“These three African-American computers report they not only had segregated working conditions but also had segregated dinning and restrooms facilities, “writes Dr. Beverly E. Golemba in her manuscript “Human Computers” The Women in Aeronautical Research” she donated to Saint Leo College, a Universities & Colleges company at Hampton, Virginia in 1995.
Her work is based on the first-hand account of these three and 10 other women “computers” called as such as they performed all of the mathematical calculations by hand in the early development of aeronautics and the later development of space research.
Katherine, one of the three lead characters in the movie, worked on calculating the trajectory for American’s first trip with Alan Shepherd’s 1961 mission, and went on to do the calculating for the first actual moon landing in 1969. “NASA would not be what it is if not for you, Mrs. Johnson,” says a snapshot of the lady on NASA’s website.
Jackson, the youngest of the three, began her NASA career in 1951 and remained with NASA for several decades, and she and Katherine and Dorothy Vaughan were the brains behind NASA’s Friendship 7 mission, that saw astronaut John Glenn become the first American to orbit the Earth in February 1962.
Vaughan, who remained with NASA between 1943 and 1971, did computer programing, becoming proficient in computer coding such as FORTRAN, and also contributed to the space program through her work on the SCOUT project – an acronym for Solid Controlled Orbital Utility Test system. Scout developed into “one of the finest pieces of technology in the history of space exploration,” according to NASA.
The book on these three women by Shetterly will come out in September, four months before the launch of the movie based on the novel.
