Hidden Figures

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Hidden Figures Page 36

by Margot Lee Shetterly


  237 96 degrees in Hampton: Weather History for Hampton, Virginia, Farmer’s Almanac (accessed via Almanac.com).

  237 a car full of sorority members: Johnson interview, September 15, 2015.

  237 pink-and-green-clad women: Pink and green are the official colors of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

  237 the most promising young women:

  237 a full-time job training center: Ibid.

  237 Hillside’s thirty-three rooms: Matt Birkbeck, Deconstructing Sammy: Music, Money and Madness (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 162.

  238 bought the land with his Jewish business partner: Wendy Beech, Against All Odds: Ten Entrepreneurs Who Followed Their Hearts and Found Success (New York: Wiley, 2002), 204.

  238 The Hillside advertised: The Hillside was a mainstay of these black publications, its small black-and-white ad appearing regularly: “Pennsylvania’s Famous Resort Hotel HILLSIDE INN in the Heart of the Poconos Mountains Air Conditioned Rooms, Swimming Pool. Color TV . . .”

  238 sweet potato pie and peach cobbler for dessert: Lawrence Louis Squeri, Better in the Poconos: The Story of Pennsylvania’s Vacationland (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 2002), 182.

  238 students at black colleges in the South: Ibid.

  239 set the candle on fire at 9:37 a.m.: CBS News coverage of the launch of Apollo 11, July 17, 1969, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDhcYhrCPmc.

  239 Walter Cronkite to wield the jargon: Ibid.

  240 the mighty Saturn V rocket consumed: Ibid.

  249 $24 billion: Ibid.

  241 perceived mistreatment of Ed Dwight: Richard Paul and Steven Moss, We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015), loc. 1902.

  243 a celebrity NAACP civil rights fund-raiser: Nichelle Nichols interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, StarTalk Radio, July 11, 2011, http://startalkradio.net/show/a-conversation-with-nichelle-nichols/.

  243 “her greatest fan”: Ibid.

  243 face-to-face with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Ibid.

  243 fourth in command of the ship: Ibid.

  243 asked him to tear up the resignation letter: Ibid.

  244 curiosity always bested fear: Moore interview.

  244 Then, finally, at 10:38 p.m.: CBS News coverage of Apollo 11 lunar landing,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E96EPhqT-ds.

  244 Neil Armstrong handicapped the odds: Neil Armstrong, interview with Alex Malley, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfj2jqpst_Q.

  245 “You have to expect progress to be made”: Johnson interview, December 27, 2010.

  245 born at a time when the odds were more likely: 1920 US Census, Statistic of the Population.

  245 circling the Moon every fifty-nine minutes: Richard Orloff, Apollo by The Numbers: A Statistical Reference (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2005), http://histry.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-01_General_Background.htm.

  246 plot a course to Mars: Johnson interview, January 3, 2011; Harold A. Hamer and Katherine G. Johnson, “Simplified Interplanetary Guidance Procedures Using Onboard Optical Measurements,” Langley Research Center, May 1972, NTRS.

  246 “grand tour” of the outer planets: J. W. Young and M. E. Hannah, “Alternate Multiple-Outer-Planet Missions Using a Saturn-Jupiter Flyby Sequence,” Langley Research Center, December 1973, NTRS. Marge Hannah and John Young received NASA achievement awards for their work on this paper. See: “Reid Award Committee Selects Best Directorate Papers for Honorable Mentions,” Langley Researcher, November, 1974, 5; John Worth Young Obituary, http://www.memorialsolutions.com/sitemaker/memsol_data/2061/1292572/1292572_2061.pdf.

  EPILOGUE

  248 “I loved every single day of it”: Johnson interview, December 27, 2010.

  248 her greatest contribution to the space program: Johnson interview, September 27, 2013.

  248 So what do you do when the computers go out?: Warren, Black Women Scientists in the United States, 144.

  248 the first of a series of reports: Harold A. Hamer and Katherine G. Johnson, “An Approach Guidance Method Using a Single Onboard Optical Measurement,” NASA Langley Research Center, October 1970.

  249 with Earth’s terminator: Nancy Atkinson, “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13, Part 6: Navigating by Earth’s Terminator,” UniverseToday.com, April 16, 2010.

  249 “They are loud in their praise”: James L. Hicks, “Negroes in Key Roles in US Race for Space: Four Tan Yanks on Firing Team,” New York Amsterdam News, February 8, 1958.

  250 A STEM institute bearing her name: The Alpha Academy in Fayetteville, North Carolina, plans to unveil its Katherine G. Johnson STEM Institute in 2016.

  251 “Rockets, moon shots, spend it on the have-nots”: James Nyx Jr. and Marvin Gaye, “Inner City Blues,” What’s Going On, New York: Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 1971.

  252 “pollution, ecological damage, energy shortages, and the arms race”: Robert Ferguson, NASA’s First A: Aeronautics from 1958 to 2008 (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2012).

  252 “salt on the wounds”: Ibid.

  252 “big fat money pot”: Alan Wasser, “LBJ’s Space Race: What We Didn’t Know Then, Part Two,” The Space Settlement Institute, June 27, 2005, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/401/1.

  252 cancel its supersonic transport program: Christine M. Darden, “Affordable Supersonic Transport: Is It Near?” Japan Society for Aeronautical and Space Sciences lecture, Yokohama, Japan, October 9–11, 2002.

  252 an “Apollo moment”: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 102.

  252 “setting dogs to barking”: Lawrence R. Benson, Quieting the Boom: The Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstrator and the Quest for Quiet Supersonic Flight (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2013), 8.

  252 “death of pets and the insanity of livestock”: Ibid, 7.

  253 “164 million”: “Exploring in Aeronautics: An Introduction to Aeronautical Sciences Developed at the NASA Lewis Research Center,” NASA Lewis Research Center, 1971, 1.

  253 Langley announced a sweeping reorganization: Edgar M. Cortright, “Reorganization of Langley Research Center,” September 24, 1970.

  253 to a total of 3,853 from its peak of 4,485: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 102.

  253 “routine, quick-reaction and economical access to space”: “Tenth Anniversary of John Glenn’s Space Flight Observed,” Langley Researcher, March 3, 1972.

  254 Mary took FORTRAN classes: Jackson Personnel File.

  254 She made so many speeches: “Speaker’s Bureau,” Langley Researcher, February 20, 1976.

  254 “We have to do something like this”: “Personnel Profiles,” Langley Researcher, April 2, 1976.

  255 organized the retirement party for Kazimierz Czarnecki: “Retirement Parties,” Langley Researcher, December 15, 1978.

  255 papers to her name: Mary Jackson, “Mary W. Jackson, Federal Women’s Program Coordinator,” LHA, October 1979.

  255 This was a contrast with Goddard: Dunnigan, “Two Women Chart Way for Astronauts.”

  255 “to place a woman in at least one:” Edgar Cortright to Grove Webster, “NASA Plans to Attract More Qualified Women to Government Positions,” June 11, 1971, NARA Phil.

  255 restricted women to playing during the workday: Sharon H. Stack, personal interview, April 22, 2014.

  255 she had probably hit the glass ceiling: Champine interview.

  256 instrumental in bringing the separate: Mary Winston Jackson Obituary program, February 17, 2005, in author’s possession.

  256 equal opportunity employment counselor: “Meet Your EEO Counselors: Mary Jackson,” Langley Researcher, June 23, 1972.

  256 Langley’s Federal Women’s Program Advisory Committee: “Advisory Committee,” Langley Researcher, May 11, 1973.

  257 “fantasy that men were uniquely gifted”: Fries, “The History of Women in NASA.”

  258 “everybody’s daddy had a plane”: Gloria Champine, personal interview, July 23, 2014.
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  258 the “crazy things”: Gloria Champine, “XB-15: First of the Big Bombers of World War II,” NASA History website, http://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/historic/XB-15. Gloria’s father’s crew worked with the NACA’s chief test pilot, Melvin Gough, and a young Robert Gilruth to produce the report “Stalling Characteristics of the Boeing XB-15 Airplane (Air Corps No. 35-277), by M. N. Gough and R. R. Gilruth.

  258 “They kept testing you”: Champine interview.

  258 “hard head and strong shoulders and back”: Gloria Champine, interview with Sandra Johnson, JSC, May 1, 2008.

  259 Gloria marched her over to meet: “EEO Highlights,” Langley Researcher, July 20, 1973.

  259 “stay away from the woman stuff”: Champine interview, May 1, 2008.

  259 It was a decision that helped her: Claudia Goldin, “The Female Labor Force and American Economic Growth, 1890–1980,” in Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman, eds., Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 557–604.

  260 “We always thought it was so cool”: Wanda Jackson, telephone interview, February 15, 2016.

  260 “The Peninsula recently lost a woman of courage”: Gloria Champine, “Mary Jackson,” NASA website, February 2005, http://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/crgis/images/4/4a/MaryJackson.pdf.

  261 It was “deadly”: Fries, NASA Engineers in the Age of Apollo, loc. 1741.

  261 knocked off the board by a black man: Christine Darden, The History Makers.

  261 “Why is it that men get placed into engineering groups”: Darden interview.

  261 “Well, nobody’s ever complained”: Ibid.

  261 had been an “excellent mathematician”: John Becker, personal interview, August 10, 2014; Golemba, “Human Computers,” 4.

  262 self-described “wing man”: “David Earl Fetterman Jr.,” Daily Press, March 5, 2003.

  262 It took three years of work: Christine M. Darden, “Minimization of Sonic-Boom Parameters in Real and Isothermal Atmospheres,” Langley Research Center, 1975.

  262 sixty technical publications and presentations: Warren, Black Women Scientists in the United States, 78.

  262 seven men and one woman: Christine Darden, personal interview, February 12, 2012; Christine Darden, “Growing Up in the South During Brown v. Board,” Old Dominion University Commencement Address, December 15, 2012, http://justiceunbound.org/carousel/growing-up-in-the-south-during-brown-v-board/.

  262 “juggling the duties of Girl Scout mom”: Warren, Black Women Scientists in the United States, 77.

  263 Gloria Champine admired Christine Darden’s intelligence: Gloria Champine, personal interview, July 23, 2014.

  263 “It involved a promotion”: Hammond interview, April 4, 2014.

  264 was given to Roger Butler: Cortright, “Reorganization of the Langley Research Center.”

  264 Sara Bullock, the East Computer: Ibid.

  264 In 1971, there were still no female: Ibid.

  264 Only reluctantly did she agree: Hammond interview, April 3, 2014.

  INDEX

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.

  Abernathy, Ralph, 168, 202, 240–241

  ACD. SeeAnalysis and Computation Division

  aerodynamics

  blunt object reentry, 163, 188

  laminar flow airfoils, 55, 111

  NACA crash course, 54–55

  Aerospace Mechanics Division, 182

  Azimuth Angle report, 192, 211, 220

  Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory (OH), 41, 84

  aircraft name designations, 57

  aircraft production boost, 3, 41

  Aldrin, Buzz, 245

  Allen, Harvey, 163, 188

  Almond, J. Lindsay, 168, 184

  Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, 40, 94, 105, 120, 133, 186, 232, 235–239, 312

  Alston, Daisy (West Computer), 171, 204

  Alston v. Norfolk (1940), 70

  “America Is for Everybody” brochure, 227–228

  “American Century,” 137, 299

  Ames Aeronautical Laboratory (CA), 41, 82, 84

  Analysis and Computation Division (ACD)

  black employees, 241

  Dorothy Vaughan, 204–206, 218–219

  Anderson, Marian, 68, 228

  anti-Semitism, 102

  Area Rule, 110–111

  Armstrong, Neil, 244, 245

  astronauts

  civil rights support, 203, 309

  “dummy” orbital flight, 219, 222

  first American into space, 208–209

  first American orbital flight, 209, 213–217, 223–224

  first full day in space, 215

  first human to orbit, 208, 209

  heart rate tracking, 221

  no blacks, 225, 241

  Project Mercury selection, 188–189

  See also specific astronauts

  Atlas rocket, 189, 208, 213–214, 217–218, 221, 223

  atomic war, 98, 151–152, 301

  Azimuth Angle report, 192, 211, 220

  B for bombers, 57

  B-29 Superfortress, 57, 59, 99

  Baez, Joan, 228

  Baker, Josephine, 103

  Bassette, Ida (West Computer), 81

  Bassette, Pearl (West Computer), 16, 39, 42, 171, 204

  Bates, Daisy, 228, 312

  bathrooms segregated, xv, 48

  Colored Girls sign, 8, 43, 44

  East Side assignment, 108–109

  opting out, 129, 146–147, 179

  Soviet influence, 169–170

  Baumgartner Carl, Ann, 55

  Bay Shore Beach (Hampton, VA), 78, 93, 118

  Beck, Harold, 210

  Becker, John, 42, 82, 114–115, 163–164, 261

  Bell, Lawrence, 99–100

  Bell Telephone Laboratories, 137–138

  Bell X–1 plane, 85, 99–100

  Bethune, Mary McLeod, 66, 229

  Biggins, Virginia, xvi, 180

  Bird, John D. “Jaybird,” 42, 113–114, 180, 218

  black Americans

  African feet ashore, 228, 311

  after World War II, 140

  American dilemma, 109, 295

  Double V, 35–36

  engineers, xiv, 113–114, 145–147, 230

  first mathematics doctorates, 13, 24

  Hampton Institute president, 97, 203

  international view, 103–104, 150, 170

  Log Cabin Beach, 78–79

  “masked” around whites, 109

  Moon shot cost, 240–241

  nameless or renowned, 250, 251

  NASA employees, xiv, 217–219, 227–228, 241–242

  National Technical Association, 197

  soap box derby winner, 200

  top echelon via washerwomen, 12, 235–236

  treatment of vs. colonialism, 103–104

  women with college degrees, 40

  women’s average wage, 79

  See also civil rights movement; desegregation; segregation

  black newspapers

  Ace of Space John Glenn, 224

  Brown v. Board of Education, 141

  freedom fighting, 34–36

  Goble family, 185–186

  Hillside Inn advertisements, 238, 313

  Katherine Johnson celebrity, 225, 249

  school closings over integration, 169, 184

  Sputnik and education, 152

  Tuskegee airmen, 51–52

  Vaughan family, 10

  war job advertisements, 15

  Boaz, Aurelia (West Computer), 105

  Brown, Lawrence, 146, 166

  Brown, Yvette (West Computer), 39

  Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), 135, 140–141, 153–154, 157, 304

  Virginia versus, 168–169, 184–186, 203–204, 304, 309

  Bullock, Sara (East Computer), 138, 205, 264

  Burton, Mary Shep (math aide)
, 210

  bus segregation

  boycott of city buses, 168, 202

  Colored waiting room, 22

  entering and exiting, 30, 36

  illegal per Supreme Court, 44–45

  punishing violators, 31

  Virginia treatment of blacks, 69–70

  Butler, Melvin

  applicant sources, 5

  courting James Williams, 113

  Negro female candidates, 6–8

  permanent appointments, 81

  recruit installation, 1–2, 4

  Butler, Roger, 264

  Butler, Sherwood, 2, 7

  Butts, William Davis, 142

  Byrd, Harry

  Brown v. Board of Education and, 141, 168–169, 170, 184–185

  communist epithet, 66, 103, 170

  Byrdsong, Thomas, 145–147, 166, 218, 269

  C for cargo planes, 57

  Cadettes, 82, 289

  cafeteria segregated

  Colored Computers sign, 43–45, 48

  opting out, 130, 146–147

  Soviet influence, 169–170

  Camp Pickett laundry plant, 9–10, 11, 17

  Cape Canaveral (FL)

  filming activities, 217

  launch weather, 215

  mule train protest, 240–241

  Project Mercury, 206

  Cape Kennedy (FL), 240–241

  Carl, Ann Baumgartner, 55

  Carpenter, Scott, 188, 214

  Cascade Aerodynamics West Computers, 87

  Chaffee, Roger, 233

  Chambers, Lenoir, 184, 309

  Champine, Gloria, 257–261

  Cherry, Mary, 16

  Civil Rights Act (1964), 240

  civil rights movement

  astronaut support, 203, 309

  Autherine Lucy, 152

  bus segregation, 44–45, 168, 202

  Civil Rights Act, 240

  cost of Moon shot versus, 240–241, 251–252

  economic rights and, 6, 103. See also Randolph, A. Philip

  Housing Rights Act, 241

  Langley progress, 167–168

  Lieutenant Uhura, 242–243

  March on Washington, 228–229, 312

  Martin Luther King Jr., 6, 168, 202, 228, 229, 240, 243

  Mary McLeod Bethune, 66, 229

  Nina Simone, 156

  Poor People’s Campaign, 240–241

  Ralph Abernathy, 168, 202, 240–241

  sit-ins, 201–202

  teacher salaries, 63, 70, 75

  Vernon Johns, 33–34, 140

 

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