The story of ordinary women doing extraordinary things

Hidden Figures:
In conversation with the Library of Congress.

Author Margot Lee Shetterly might not be a household name, but through her book, Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race, and the Academy Award-winning film Hidden Figures that was inspired by it, we've learned about a group of NASA black female professional mathematicians – "human computers" – who helped propel the United States to victory in the space race. Who knew?

"Why haven't I heard this story before?" is a familiar question the Hampton, Va. native, University of Virginia graduate Shetterly hears, more than a year and half after her book was published and turned into a big screen biographical drama starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe. Both the book (published by William Morrow/HarperCollins) and the film (distributed by 20th Century Fox) highlight the remarkable stories of pioneering black women mathematicians at NASA whose calculations fueled great achievements for the U.S. space program as it was competing for supremacy against Russia during the Cold War. These pioneers included: Katherine Goble Johnson, a mathematician who calculated flight trajectories for Project Mercury; Dorothy Vaughan, a NASA supervisor; and Mary Jackson, a NASA engineer.

These women weren't household names like NASA astronauts John Glenn and Alan Shepard. Yet, they accomplished great things and led extraordinary lives in eras of limited opportunity for women. They broke barriers before gender, race, science and politics became a rallying cry for females.

Hidden Figures author Margot Lee Shetterly.

Through Shetterly's storytelling, we learn there are scores of other black women – hidden figures – who worked for decades in anonymity as professional mathematicians, scientists and engineers. They overcame gender and racial hardships, and through their perseverance, they were all bright lights.

"Of course, the factors making their narrative so compelling to modern audiences are the same that conspired to keep the story under wraps for so long: racial segregation, gender bias and the arcane, sensitive nature of the work being done at NASA kept these women in the national blindspot," Shetterly wrote in the March/April issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. 

Last week, Shetterly and American film producer Donna Gigliotti, who developed Hidden Figures into an Academy Award-winning movie, appeared at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. as part of the Library's Women's History Month, in an hour-long forum, "Hidden Figures: Courage, Command, and Human Computers." As both spoke in conversation with Marie Arana, the Literary Advisor of the Library of Congress, black and white images of Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson were projected onto the stage celebrating these real-life hidden figures.

Hidden Figures producer Donna Gigliotti

"The truth is Margot was really onto something with her book that I could feel, that I knew it," said Gigliotti. "It was about American women not getting their due, African-American women not getting their due. It was about space, a confluence of things. I never doubted it wouldn't be successful."

Asked to describe how she researched Hidden Figures, Shetterly said, "The chain of knowledge was so interesting. One fact led to another. The first interview was with Katherine Johnson. She mentioned a number of people in that interview, such as Dorothy Vaughan. She mentioned Mary Jackson, who I did know because she worked with my father in the early part of his career.

"Every time I got a clue, I would just have to go off kind of like an archeologist and excavate the information. The information was really there, but it had never been collated into one place."

Shetterly said that the National Archives and the NASA History Office were particularly useful in her research as well as the interviews she conducted with principal hidden figures, such as Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson, and their children.

"There was so much information," said Shetterly. "Spending so much time with the math and the science and the engineering and with the reports was useful and it was like being in a time machine. I went back to 1943. Sometimes, it was about airplanes – because they were working with airplanes before space ships – other times it was about civil rights legislation that opened up public schools and public accommodations. Sometimes, it was about breakthroughs made by women during World War II. I got an incredible history lesson in doing this research. These people came back to life."

According to Shetterly, wrestling the information into a narrative was the hardest thing for her to accomplish. "It was important that the people led the story. It was always a human story and not just historical facts," she said.

Donna Gigliotti and Margot Lee Shetterly.

From listening to Shetterly and Gigliotti, I learned why storytelling matters and why, through books and films like Hidden Figures, it has the power to transform how each of us sees both our world and ourselves.

"When writers, historians and storytellers strive to present a more expansive – and truer – view of our shared past," said Shetterly, "we open the door to a more inclusive and equitable vision of our shared future."


Photos: All photos by Michael Dickens, © 2018.

Stars: Our fading fascination with space

The days of America sending astronauts into space is over.

Last week, NASA's Space Shuttle program ended with the successful landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis.

What has been a regular fabric of my lifetime ~ American's fascination with space exploration ~ has waned in recent years. There just isn't the same interest in the American space program that I remember as a child, when man was first exploring Moon, starting with the historic Apollo 11 flight in 1969. Remember "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind?"

While Space Shuttle Mission STS-135 was authorized last year, it initially had no appropriation in the NASA budget. There were questions about whether the mission would fly. After a lot of haggling on Capitol Hill, money was found and, finally, STS-135 got the green light to proceed in April. Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched on July 8 and was originally scheduled to land on July 20. However, it was extended by an additional day.

On July 21, Space Shuttle Atlantis safely returned to Earth at 5:57 a.m. EDT and NASA's space shuttle program, for all intents and purposes, ended with the mission's conclusion. Ironically, it was 53 years ago this week that President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created NASA.

Thinking about our nation's space exploration, I am reminded of the ethereal sound scape "Stars" by German electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss, a song I've been listening to on my iPod with great frequency.

Here
Beginning or end.
When it's all gone,
Why should I pretend?
All these days,
Will never come back.
Do you remember,
Or did you forget?


Losing with every step I take,
Losing with every move I make.
Turn into everything I hate,
Losing with every move I make.


Looking at the stars, must be a reason.
Why our hopes feel lost in the glow for every season.
Looking at the stars, I see that they move on.
Because I'm not sure if you miss me, I move on.
I move on ... 
Carry on.

Now, looking up at the sky and admiring all those bright stars on a clear night just won't be the same.

"Stars" lyrics by Ulrich Schnauss, copyright 2007.
Video courtesy of YouTube.