Hidden History

I just watched Hidden Figures. What an inspirational movie!!! I highly recommend you to watch it for two reasons.

The first reason is to appreciate the amazing work of Wynn Thomas as the production designer. While attending to the Produced By: New York event last October, I had the privilege to attend a panel where Wynn Thomas shared his perspective of his collaboration in this movie. Wynn Thomas was responsible to re-create the Space Task Group offices; the homes in Hampton, Virginia; and evoke the genesis of NASA in the early ’60s.

According to Thomas, he likes taking the viewer and audience on the same journey as the character does in the film. His mission was very well accomplished. This movie was filmed in Hampton, Virginia. I am very familiar with this area because I live in Virginia for ten years. I recognized several places while watching the movie such as Hampton University, Langley’s NASA Research Center, and several other sites in Hampton.

The well-documented story of remarkable African-American women with brilliant minds is the second reason. When I was an elementary school, I was able to mention the names of the men who were first to orbit the earth and land on the moon. I admired John Glenn by completing three orbit flights. However, I was not aware that there were hidden and forgotten Black women mathematicians who helped these astronauts get to space and return to Earth safely. I visited the NASA Langley Research Center several times and I have a friend who works at Langley’s NASA Research Center as a physicist – Theresa O’Neill.

Hidden Figures is a movie based on true events. It describes the groundbreaking work in space travel of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan. These names were hidden in U.S. history for many years. With this movie, I was able to know details on how these three African American women were able to cross gender, race, and career lines to create footprints for female scientists.

I enjoyed the performances of Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan, and Janelle Monae as Mary Jackson. I cried when I realized that Katherine Johnson was in the need to walk a mile away to go to a restroom designated for “colored female” at NASA. One of my favorite lines of the movie was given by Mary Jackson: “I cannot change the color of my skin, but I can be the first female African American engineer in NASA”. Octavia Spencer did a great job by showcasing her character’s struggle to get a deserved promotion as a supervisor of the “colored computing group”.

These hidden figures had a lot in common. For more than fifty years, their names were unknown. They were proactive and determined. They were able to achieve great milestones despite constant discrimination. Each of them has a significant legacy. Mary Jackson became NASA’s first female African-American aeronautical engineer. In 1979, she was appointed Langley’s Women’s Program Manager. Dorothy Vaughan became NASA’s first African-American supervisor. In 2015, Katherine Johnson was awarded with the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2016, NASA dedicated the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Building to honor of her work.

Thank you for your courage and determination, hidden figures!!!