The novel, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly, particularily captured my attention when I saw the title. In middle school, I had watched a film about how these African American women were the brain and computers behind the construction of NASA’s spacecrafts. It really captivated me how during WWII, a time of bloodshed and violence, they were able to use their mathematical skills and intelligence, to make one calculation at a time, though seemingly small, but combined, they made a significant progress in America’s discovery of outerspace, gender, and racial equality. This book taught me exactly what I had hoped, it told me more about these sedulous women and encouraged me to always stay passionate and hardworking while studying.

Below is my reflection after reading the book in correspondence to what I was learning in AP US History class.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “All men are created equal”. However, history contradicts this as the fight for equality between genders and between races has not yet ended even as of now in the twenty-first century. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly was set in the 1960s, when the civil rights movement was prominent as people protested unfair laws and when the feminist movement had people fighting for greater personal freedom. Since the time at which the book was set in, even though gender and racial injustice still exist in America, with the tireless efforts of activists, there have also been many changes in the present day regarding the fight for equality between races and between genders.

In the book, Shetterly describes the story of Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, and Mary Jackson, mathematicians who worked as human computers engineers at NASA during the space race, and of how they, as African American women, were able to overcome discrimination. In 1943, President Roosevelt’s order challenging the nation to increase the airplane production for the Army Air Corps meant that NASA needed to hire many more engineers. As a result, Melvin Butler started Langley’s first female computing pool in 1935, and young African American women who were highly experienced in physics and math were chosen for the job. Dorothy Vaughan, unsatisfied with the mindless task associated with working at the laundry, received a college degree in education and taught at a local high school in Moton until she received the job at Langley. Traveling to work, she used the Colored waiting room and arrived at her new job. She arrived in Newport and started work at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.

The Double Victory campaign advocated for the advancement both in the foreign campaign fought as part of the second world war, and at home in the civil rights movement. African Americans had to sit in the back of buses, live in poor areas, have long workdays, and face police brutality. Fortunately, these racial discriminations decreased by a bit after the establishment of Executive Order 8802 and the Fair Employment Practices Committee. NAACP as well as the AME church were formed as black communities.

At work, Dorothy and other Black women, many of whom also previously served as teachers, had to sit in separate sections in the lunchroom for “colored computers’’, signs that even after Executive Order 8802, some groups were more equal than others. Black women used separate busing, housing, and bathrooms. Miriam Mann stood up against these signs by removing one and placing it into her purse. Even with Supreme Court decisions such as Morgan v. Virginia, they had few real impacts on the daily lives of these girls. The “Tan Yanks” were a group of black GIs fighting overseas as American pilots, their bravery and professionalism brought them acclaim back home. Dorthy and the women of West Computing were responsible for small tasks and worked efficiently and accurately though faced with doubts by men.

Katherine Goble later returned to work as a teacher but her husband, Jimmy, fell ill with undulant fever from drinking unpasteurized fever. When Katherin and Jimmy first met at a summer session in West Virginia University’s 1940 summer session. At the end of the summer, Katherine expected her first child and as a result, she did not attend graduate school unlike how her father previously planned. Working at the West Computers, she and other women held onto their jobs tightly since it was a very well-paid job for black and for females. Thousands of women took employment at Langley during WWII and proved their professionalism.

Finally, with the hard work of these “human computers”, the coding of the orbit made by Katherine, on February 29, 1959, the Atlas rocket-boosted Friendship 7 into orbit, the rest of the flight went smoothly and a successful landing followed after. Katherine and others paraded outside Darling Stadium and congratulated John Glenn’s accomplishment, he is now a hero. The contribution of Katherine and other women’s roles was publicized as well, and they earned much acclaim in the black community.

Against all the odds toward them, Katherin Johnson and other girls were acclaimed for their work and Katherine continued her work with much passion. It is with the continued efforts of these dedicated, brave, and smart women who grasped this opportunity, with their math and physics calculation, that the launch of the following NASA mission was successful, that the stereotype of girls cannot STEM is broken, at least a little.

During World War II, the feminist movement was able to make immense progress as the urgent demand for workers in the labor force caused by the Space Race gave women more opportunity to move away from work in the traditional domestic sphere. This allowed women to be able to show their capabilities unlike before, which largely fueled the growth of the feminist movement as they found this new fulfillment. In the 1960s, second-wave feminism had just started and it focused on encouraging women to understand how their personal lives reflected sexist power structures. They encouraged focusing on extending civil rights rather than marrying. On the other hand, third-wave feminism, which arose in the mid-1990s sought to get rid of the perceived ideological rigidity of feminist practice and “third wavers feel entitled to interact with men as equals” (Snyder). The fight is continuous for brave feminist leaders, however, during the different time periods, the focus of their agenda has shifted as time evolves.

During the mid-twentieth century, playboy bunny girls were part of the emerging popularity of playboy clubs where women dressed as bunnies in revealing clothing and served drinks at these bars. In the picture, Gloria Steinem dresses as a Playboy Bunny and is experienced working at Hugh Hefner’s New York Playboy Club (Steinem). The clothing Steinem wore in the picture is more exposed than traditional clothes for women, and the role of playboy bunnies is considered scandalous by more conservative people. During this time, some women took these types of new jobs to demonstrate their strong desire for liberal freedom and shift from traditional, strict expectations for women. It also shows that women during that time were able to earn a bit more autonomy as they are able to work outside the domestic sphere and protest for more freedom using their own manner. The most recent wave of feminism is the fourth wave, which started in 2012 and focused on sexual harassment, body shaming, and rape culture, among other issues. Socially, there are still feminist movements in the fight for equality。 However, not all statistics are as promising, despite the hard work by feminist leaders, women remain a minority working in the aerospace industry, especially for holding high-profile jobs. According to the Washington Post, “Women make up only about a third of NASA’s workforce. They comprise just 28 percent of senior executive leadership positions and are only 16 percent of senior scientific employees”(Davenport). On the bright side, however, women nowadays do share more freedom in choosing their job. The overall statistic is promising. According to research done by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of employed women has increased dramatically between the 1960s and the 1980s. In addition, “women’s earnings as a proportion of men’s earnings have grown over time: women working full time earned 62 percent of what men earned in 1979 and 81 percent in 2018” (Women in the labor force). Compared to the twentieth century, women’s employment and educational level increased, while the gap in wage difference between women and men decreased. Now, as feminist movements continue to impact American society, it continues to break the traditions and reaches a level of cultural relevance it hasn’t enjoyed in years. Through the different waves of feminism in history, this movement has been expanding, attracting more and more supporters.

In the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement had been growing tremendously as people wanted to stop racial segregation. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation in schools violated the 14th Amendment. After this decision, schools could not be segregated and children of different races went to school together (Roberts). However, laws do not always solve problems, as although it was ruled that segregated schools were not allowed, there continued to be racial segregation and prejudices against African Americans shown by the Little Rock Nine. In September 1957, when nine black students attempted to enroll at an all-white high school, Governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to bar them. Angry white mobs appeared daily to taunt the students and chanted degrading insults and terrible things. Little Rock showed that southern officials had more loyalty to local customs than to the law. Similar to how the white people in the mobs chanted insults to the students simply because of their race, in the book, the African American women are looked down upon and not respected because of their race and gender before people realize how capable they are. To protest the racial inequality, many major civil rights organizations developed and got more prominent and they used non-violent tactics, staged sit-ins, and trained future civil rights activists. Successful events against racial inequality like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, spurred by Rosa Parks’ decision to defy the racist laws, and the Greensboro Sit-Ins caused the growth of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. was very prominent in this era, as he arranged non-violent protests and worked hard to further the civil rights movement. After much protest, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and it outlawed discrimination based on race, sex, origin, and religion, and it allowed the government could cut off money where the discrimination occurred. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, and many people mourned his death and protested for racial equality in his honor (Sengstacke).

Since the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the fight for racial equality has continued. Over the years, the issue of racism has improved, yet there are still many significant problems. Recently, there was the Black Lives Matter movement, which brought attention to many important issues like systematic racism. Although the Black Lives Matter movement has been ongoing since 2013, George Floyd’s death in May 2020 was the main instigator for the tremendous sudden growth of the movement. Millions of people on the internet were horrified when looking at a video of a police officer, Derek Chauvin, killing Floyd by kneeling on his neck, and believed that the police officer should not have acted like that. Along with the impactful George Floyd case, many other cases of police officers using excessive force against black people emerged and people began protesting for Black Lives Matter and justice for the victims, hoping to spread awareness and make social and political change. Millions of people protested around the world, and it may be the largest movement in U.S. History (Buchanan). In the BLM protests, people raised signs demanding changes such as defunding the police and justice for George Floyd. In many of these protests, there was chaos and police officers often reacted with violence and used strong weapons like tear gas and pepper spray, causing protests and causing people witnessing all of this online to be outraged as this was excessive violence once again (Nova). Although racism has improved over the years as there is significantly less blatant segregation, the fight for racial equality will still need to be continued.

During the Cold War, the increased demand for mathematicians working in NASA gave these African American women in Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly an opportunity to work as human computers. Their skilled proficiency in math and dedication directly helped the US win the Space Race against the Soviet Union and send the first men to the moon. It is with their admirable commitments and professionalism that the public’s opinion on women and African Americans gradually began to change. With the hard work of activists, these traditionally marginalized groups earned the right to vote; however, with recent events such as the Black Lives Matter movement, one can see the fight for complete equality has not been yet reached and continued activism is needed to ensure that everyone is truly equal and have the same opportunity to achieve the American dream.

Work Cited:

1. Shetterly, Margot Lee. Hidden Figures: the American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
2. Snyder, R. Claire. “What Is Third‐Wave Feminism? A New Directions Essay.” Signs, vol. 34, no. 1, 2008, pp. 175–196. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/588436. Accessed 29 May 2021.
3. “Undercover Reporting.” II-“A Bunny’s Tale” - Gloria Steinem - Show Magazine · Undercover Reporting, undercover.hosting.nyu.edu/s/undercover-reporting/item/13089.
4. Sengstacke, Robert Abbott. “A group of demonstrators holding signs reading ‘Union Justice Now’,… Nieuwsfoto’s.” Getty Images, www.gettyimages.nl/detail/nieuwsfoto%27s/group-of-demonstrators-holding-signs-reading-union-nieuwsfotos/95746120?et=e-vIPARsQRlmoe0QrOR48g&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fcnu.libguides.com%2F. Accessed 29 May 2021.
5. Davenport, Christian. “At NASA, 2019 Was the Year of the Woman, Yet Women Still Are a Big Minority at the Space Agency.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 2 Dec. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/26/nasa-was-year-woman-yet-women-still-are-big-minority-space-agency/.
6. “Women in the Labor Force: a Databook : BLS Reports.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1 Dec. 2019, www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-databook/2019/home.htm.
7. Roberts, Armstrong. “Group Of Grade School Children Running Down School Stairs With Books Bags Stockfoto.” Getty Images, www.gettyimages.nl/detail/foto/group-of-grade-school-children-running-down-school-royalty-free-beeld/81773303?et=e-vIPARsQRlmoe0QrOR48g&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fcnu.libguides.com%2F. Accessed 29 May 2021.
8. Buchanan, Larry, et al. “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History.” The New York Times, 9 May 2021, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.
9. Nova, Jessica. “George Floyd Protest Photos: Powerful Images Show Clashes with Police, Demonstrators.” ABC7 Los Angeles, 31 May 2020, abc7.com/george-floyd-protests-photos-protest-pictures/6222890.