21 $850 annual salary: Ibid.
21 “instructor in mathematics”: Barker, “Farmville,” December 11, 1943.
21 only until the bell rang at the front door: Hammond interview, June 30, 2014.
22 in 1932 when they married: Hammond interview, April 4, 2014.
23 an evening extension course in education: Vaughan Personnel File.
23 accompanied him to White Sulphur Springs: Hammond interview, June 30, 2014.
23 setting foot on the hotel grounds: Ibid.
23 peering through the shrubbery-covered iron fence: Ibid.
23 German and Japanese detainees: Robert S. Conte, The History of the Greenbrier: America’s Resort (Parkersburg, WV: Trans Allegheny Books, 1989), 133.
23 an older Negro couple: Katherine Johnson, personal interview, September 17, 2011.
24 graduated from high school at fourteen: Katherine Johnson, personal interview, March 6, 2011.
24 every math course in the school’s catalog: Ibid.
24 created advanced math classes: Katherine Johnson, personal interview, September 27, 2013.
24 third Negro in the country: “University History: Pioneer African American Mathematicians,” University of Pennsylvania, http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/aframer/math.html.
24 in 1929: Ibid.
24 degree in math and French: Heather S. Deiss, “Katherine Johnson: A Lifetime of STEM,” NASA.gov, November 6, 2013, http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/a-lifetime-of-stem.html
24 she was denied admission: “Virginia Women in History: Alice Jackson Stuart,” Library of Virginia, http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawomen/2012/?bio=stuart.
24 continued until 1950: Ibid.
25 “unusually capable”: Albert P. Kalme, “Racial Desegregation and Integration in American Education: The Case History of West Virginia State College, 1891–1973,” PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa, 1976, 149.
25 decided to leave WVU’s graduate program: Johnson interview, March 6, 2011.
CHAPTER 4: THE DOUBLE V
27 by the hundreds of thousands: Charles F. Marsh, ed., The Hampton Roads Communities in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1951/2011), 77.
28 the melodies of a hundred different hearts and hometowns: “Hampton Roads Embarkation Series, 1942–1946,” US Army Signal Corps Photograph Collection, Library of Virginia digital archive; http://www.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/treasures/arts/art-m12.htm. All descriptions in this paragraph are taken from photographs in the collection.
28 coverall-clad women: “What’s a War Boom Like?” Business Week, June 6, 1942, 24.
28 hired women to pose as mannequins: Ibid.
28 exploded from 393,000 to 576,000: Marsh, The Hampton Roads Communities, 77.
28 from 15,000 to more than 150,000: Ibid.
28 PLEASE WASH AT HOME: “What’s a War Boom Like?” 28.
28 showed movies from 11:00 a.m. to midnight: Ibid.
29 Victory Through Air Power: Walt Disney Productions, 1943.
29 still enjoyed a waiting list: “What’s a War Boom Like?”; Marsh, The Hampton Roads Communities; William Reginald, The Road to Victory: A History of Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in World War II (Newport News, VA: City of Newport News, 1946).
29 5,200 prefabricated demountable homes: “Newsome Park Homes Defense Workers,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, March 6, 1943.
29 arrived in Newport News on a Thursday: Vaughan Personnel File.
29 “avoid embarrassment”: W. Kemble Johnson to Staff, “Living Facilities for New Employees,” September 1, 1942, NARA Phil.
29 Five dollars a week: “Local Housing Facilities Available to NACA Employees,” January 1944, NARA Phil.
29 Frederick and Annie Lucy: Ann Vaughan Hammond, personal interview, June 30, 2014; 1940 US Census, Ancestry.com.
29 owned a grocery store: Ibid.
30 plans to open the city’s first Negro pharmacy: “Smith’s Pharmacy,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, National Park Service, April 18, 2002, http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/NewportNews/121-5066_Smiths_Pharmacy_2002_Final_Nomination.pdf
30 Whittaker Memorial opened earlier in 1943: “Whittaker Memorial Hospital,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, National Park Service, August 19, 2009, http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/NewportNews/121-5072_Whittaker_Memorial_Hospital_2009_FINAL_NR.pdf.
30 Whites entered and exited: Virginius Dabney, “To Lessen Race Friction,” Richmond Times Dispatch, November 13, 1943; “VPS Begins Two Man Operation,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, November 14, 1942.
31 wrote a letter to the bus company: Theresa Holloman and Evelyn Fauntleroy, “Local Women Protest Bus Drivers’ Discourtesies,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 5, 1943.
31 denied entry to Negro men: “An Investigation Is Indicated Here,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, March 17, 1945.
31 “Men of every creed”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Four Freedoms: Message to the 77th Congress, January 6, 1941, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/pdfs/fftext.pdf.
31 “Four Freedoms”: Ibid.
32 “With thousands of your sons in the camps”: Herbert Aptheker, “Status of Negroes in Wartime Revealed,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, April 26, 1941.
32 “I felt damned glad”: Genna Rae McNeil, Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 1283.
33 A 1915 rule requiring a photo: Samuel Krislov, The Negro in Federal Employment (New Orleans: Quid Pro Quo, 2012).
33 purging the rolls of high-ranking black officials: John A. Davis and Cornelius Golightly, “Negro Employment in the Federal Government,” Phylon, 1942, 338.
33 “There is no power in the world”: John Temple Graves, “The Southern Negro and the War Crisis,” Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1942.
33 ripped Negroes asunder: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903, University of Virginia, http://web.archive.org/web/20081004090243/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html.
33 “Every type of brutality perpetrated by the Germans”: Cooney and Powell, The Life and Times of the Prophet Vernon Johns. http://www.vernonjohns.org/tcal001/vjthelgy.html.
34 “brilliant scholar-preacher”: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 6.
34 “Help us to get some of the blessings of democracy”: P. B. Young, “Service or Betrayal?” Norfolk Journal and Guide, April 25, 1942.
34 “Being an American of dark complexion”: James G. Thompson, “Should I Sacrifice to Live ‘Half-American’?” Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1942.
35 “as surely as the Axis forces”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 5: MANIFEST DESTINY
37 “If the Placement Officer shall see fit”: “The First Epistle of the NACAites,” Air Scoop, January 19, 1945.
38 a disproportionate number of Hampton citizens: F. R. Burgess, “Uncle Sam’s Eagle’s Saved Hampton,” Richmond Times Dispatch, January 13, 1935.
38 “The future of this favored section of Virginia”: Hansen, Engineer in Charge, 16.
38 “life-giving energy”: Ibid.
40 2 percent of all black women: Blood, Negro Women War Workers, 19–23.
40 Exactly zero percent: Ibid.
40 10 percent of white women: US Bureau of the Census 1940 population survey.
40 “best and biggest aeronautical research complex”: Hansen, Engineer in Charge, 188.
40 after graduating from Idaho State University: Margery E. Hannah Personnel File, US Civil Service Commission, NPRC.
40 the “English critic”: Edward Sharp to Staff, “Change in Computers’ Telephone Number,” July 31, 1935, NARA Phil.
42 “You men and women working here”: “Frank Knox Praises NACA,” Air Scoop, November 6–12, 1943.
42 The employees spread out from one side of the room: All descriptions are from the Lan
gley archive photo L-35045, NASA Cultural Resources, November 4, 1943, http://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/historic/File:L-35045.jpg.
43 walked over to the cafeteria: “Knox to Visit LMAL Nov. 4,” Air Scoop, October 30–November 4, 1943. The lab rescheduled the employees’ usual lunch times that day in order to accommodate Knox’s speech.
43 COLORED COMPUTERS: Miriam Mann Harris, personal interview, May 6, 2014; Miriam Mann Harris, “Miriam Daniel Mann Biography,” NASA Cultural Resources, September 12, 2011, http://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/crgis/images/d/d3/MannBio.pdf.
44 Anne Wythe Hall: “Girls Prepare to Move into Wythe Hall,” Air Scoop, November 20–26, 1943.
44 “There’s my sign for today”: Harris interview.
44 banish it to the recesses of her purse: Ibid.
44 Irene Morgan: Derek C. Catsam and Brendan Wolfe, “Morgan v. Virginia (1946),” Encyclopedia Virginia, October 20, 2014.
45 The NAACP Legal Defense Fund: Richard Goldstein, “Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, 90, Rights Pioneer, Dies,” New York Times, August 13, 2007.
45 “They are going to fire you”: Harris interview.
45 former plantation named Shellbanks Farm: Sharon Loury, “Notes from The Beverley Family of Virginia,” NASA Cultural Resources, 1956, http://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/crgis/images/9/90/BeverleyFamily.pdf.
45 the sale of the 770-acre property: “Hampton Institute Sells Farm to War Department,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 4, 1941.
45 one of the largest air bases in the world: Ibid.
45 a thousand black naval recruits: S. A. Haynes, “Navy Officials Praise Work at Hampton Naval Training Station, First of Its Kind,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, September 11, 1943.
46 Naval Air Station Patuxent River: James A. Johnson, personal interview, June 11, 2011.
46 “the greatest break in history”: “Workers in War Industry Discussed in Conference,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, July 4, 1942.
46 he urged white colleges: “White Colleges Urged to Employ Colored Profs,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 24, 1941.
46 dance with a Hampton coed: “Dr. MacLean’s Resignation Accepted by Hampton Board,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 6, 1943.
46 corresponding with Orville Wright: H. J. E. Reid’s correspondence is almost as interesting a record of local happenings as it is a chronicle of operations at the laboratory. NARA Phil.
46 Kiwanis Club set: “Dr. MacLean’s Resignation Accepted by Hampton Board.”
46 neither left fingerprints: After six years of research, a formal document that paved the way for the establishment of the West Computing office remains elusive. Given the need to establish a segregated office and separate bathrooms for the black women, and given the customs of the time and place, this certainly seems to be the kind of decision that would have required knowledge and sign-off—from the top. But after scouring MacLean’s papers at Hampton Institute, reviewing the FEPC documents from his time as the head of the committee, poring over NASA and Langley archives at the Langley Research Center and NASA headquarters, examining Reid’s correspondence and Fair Employment files at NARA Philadelphia, going through the wartime records of the Education Department (which oversaw the ESMWT), and the civil service and War Manpower Commission records (at NARA College Park and NARA Philadelphia, respectively) I am led to conclude that this was a handshake deal.
47 the world was coming to an end: Women Computers.
47 made Marge a pariah: Katherine Johnson, interview with Aaron Gillette, September 17, 1992, NASA HQ.
47 harassing a black man: Dave Lawrence, “Langley Engineer Is Remembered for Part in History,” Daily Press, August 21, 1999.
47 Arthur Kantrowitz, bailed Jones out: Ibid.
48 purchase of war bonds: Each weekly issue of Air Scoop, from 1942 through 1945, tallied war bond purchases by group; West Computing was routinely at the top of the list.
CHAPTER 6: WAR BIRDS
51 Flyers Help Smash Nazis!: Norfolk Journal and Guide, May 27, 1944.
51 The “Tan Yanks”: John Jordan, “Negro Pilots Sink Nazi Warship,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, July 8, 1944.
51 flying North American P-51 Mustangs: Ibid.
52 “as the war enters its decisive stage”: “Missions Take Fliers into Five Countries,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, July 15, 1944.
52 “a ‘pilot’s airplane’ ”: “New US ‘Mustang’ Heralded as Best Fighter Plane of 1943,” Washington Post, November 27, 1942.
52 “I will get you up in the air”: “Tuskegee Airman Reunites with ‘Best Plane in the World,’ ” NASA, June 10, 2004, http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/improvingflight/tuskegee.html.
52 “Laboratories at war!”: “Cites Importance of Research in War Effort,” Air Scoop, March 25–31, 1944.
52 “You tell it to someone”: Air Scoop, March 25–31, 1944.
53 nearly lost her raccoon coat: Hansen, Engineer in Charge, 254.
53 “New York Jews”: Pearl I. Young, interview with Michael D. Keller, January 10, 1966, LAC.
53 “weirdos”: Parke Rouse, “Early Days at Langley Were Colorful,” Daily Press, March 25, 1990.
53 dismantling a toaster: Milton A. Silveira, interview with Sandra Johnson, JSC, October 5, 2005.
53 with books on their steering wheels: Women Computers.
53 as a runway: Golemba, “Human Computers,” 37.
54 best engineering graduate school program in the world: Alex Roland, Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 1915–1958 (Washington, DC: NASA, 1985), 275.
54 for new computers: “Computers Attend Physics Classes,” LMAL Bulletin, June 28, 1943.
54 weekly two-hour laboratory session: Ibid.
54 four hours of homework: Ibid.
54 men such as Arthur Kantrowitz: Ibid.
55 P-51 Mustang was the first production plane: Hansen, Engineer in Charge, 116.
55 Ann Baumgartner Carl: Katherine Calos, “Ann G. B. Carl, First US woman to Fly Jet, Dies,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 22, 2008.
55 “damn fool’s job”: “Transport: Damn Fool’s Job,” Time, April 1, 1935.
56 No organization came close to Langley: Hansen, Engineer in Charge, 46.
57 the lab’s Flight Research Division: Fitchett Personnel File.
58 results and recommendations of the NACA: “We Backed the Attack,” LMAL Bulletin, June 24–30, 1944.
58 “a cut above”: Sugenia M. Johnson, interview with Rebecca Wright, JSC, April 2, 2014.
58 “Woe unto thee”: “Second Epistle of the NACAites,” Air Scoop, January 26, 1945.
59 “final bombing of Japan”: “We Backed the Attack.”
CHAPTER 7: THE DURATION
61 She signed a lease: K. Elizabeth Paige, “Newsome Park Echoes,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, July 8, 1944.
61 Protective paper . . . covered the floors: Newsome Park Reunion: The Legacy of a Village, event program, September 6, 2006, 6, in author’s possession.
62 stay with her during a school break: Hammond interview, June 30, 2014.
62 Aberdeen Gardens, a Depression-era subdivision: “Aberdeen Gardens,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, National Park Service, March 7, 1944, http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/Hampton/114-0146_Aberdeen_Gardens_HD_1994_Final_Nomination.pdf.
62 440 acres: Ibid.
62 “high type suburban community for Negro families”: W. R. Walker Jr., “Mimosa Crescent, Post-War Housing Project, Started,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, July 15, 1944.
63 peddling their wares to the neighbors: Catherine R. Weaver, “Memories of the Village,” Newsome Park Reunion, event program, September 3, 2005, 6, in author’s possession.
64 flooded “joyous tumult”: C. I. Wiliams, “City Greets Victory With Joyous Tumult,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, August 19, 1945.
65 “indescribable noise-making devices”: Ibid.
65 “It seems impossible to escape the conclusion”: “Hampton Roads Area Faces Drastic Cut in Employment,” W
ashington Post, October 21, 1945.
66 their white, Gentile-only employment policies: “Jobs Open for Whites Only,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, September 1, 1945.
66 “the most dangerous idea ever seriously considered”: Glenn Feldman, The Great Melding: War, the Dixiecrat Rebellion, and the Southern Model for America’s New Conservatism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2015), 211.
66 “following the Communists’ lead”: Ibid., 299.
66 “the most urbane and genteel dictatorship in America”: John Gunther, Inside USA. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947), 705.
66 helped fellow Virginian Woodrow Wilson win the White House in 1912: Ronald L. Heinmann, “The Byrd Legacy: Integrity, Honesty, Lack of Imagination, Massive Resistance,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 25, 2013.
67 “war-devastated populations in Europe”: “Realtors Win Efforts for Post-war Riddance of Federal Housing Units,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 30, 1945.
67 “not permanent in its current location”: Ibid.
67 room and board to a returning military man: Hammond interview, June 30, 2014.
67 hosting a party for nearly twenty people: K. Elizabeth Paige, “Newsome Park Echoes,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, September 30, 1944.
CHAPTER 8: THOSE WHO MOVE FORWARD
69 at least eight people in Smyth County: Katherine Johnson, personal interview, March 13, 2011.
69 careful to keep her teaching certificate current: Ibid.
69 “If you can play the piano”: Ibid.
69 were ordered to move to the back: “Katherine Johnson, National Visionary,” National Visionary Leadership Project, http://www.visionaryproject.org/johnsonkatherine/.
70 evicted the black passengers: Ibid.
70 Katherine earned $50 a month: Johnson interview, March 13, 2011.
70 less money than the school’s white janitor: Mark St. John Erickson, “No Easy Journey,” Daily Press, May 1, 2004.
70 when a $110-a-month job offer: Johnson interview, March 13, 2011.
70 “and no one is better than you”: Johnson interview, December 27, 2010.
71 how many board feet a tree would yield: “What Matters—Katherine Johnson: NASA Pioneer and ‘Computer,’ ” WHRO Television Broadcast, February 25, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8gJqKyIGhE.
Hidden Figures Page 32