Hidden Figures
Page 36
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
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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