My Remarkable Journey

by Katherine Johnson

  Silence.

  They knew there was no law. But this had been the practice for as long as there had been female computers. In their minds, their practice was the law, especially since it had never been challenged. But it just made sense for me to be there. I was the one working on the equations. Wouldn’t it broaden my perspective to understand firsthand the answers they were trying to get? I didn’t argue for myself. I didn’t say another word. The silence spoke for me. One of the things I loved about working with the guys is that at the end of the day, everything was about the work. They were smart, logical men. And I knew their minds were silently shooting down every gender- or race-based argument their human nature might have made.

  “Let her go,” the boss said after some awkward moments.

  And just like that, I was in the room.

  There were all kinds of meetings, as experts were brought in from various governmental agencies and private industry that had intricate knowledge of flight and space. The engineers recognized that the data they were collecting would be useful down the road, and they decided to compile the data as our own inhouse textbook. Some of the mathematical equations that I had worked out were also included. The book was called Notes on Space Technology, and each office was given a copy.

  This was such a hopeful time. I was working in my dream job. And the world—not just the world around me—was changing. Negroes were pushing back against segregation and discriminatory laws that had so long upheld unjust treatment. I’d read with pride a few years earlier about the refusal of seamstress Rosa Parks, a woman just five years older than I, to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. I wouldn’t learn for decades about the brave, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin, who had been arrested for the same in March of that year as she headed home from school. But I was proud of my people there as they galvanized, and for more than a year chose to walk, catch rides, and do whatever they had to do to avoid taking a bus during the famous Montgomery bus boycott. Since Negroes made up about 75 percent of the ridership, the boycott nearly crippled the city’s public transportation system, and in December 1956, the month that Jimmie died, the US Supreme Court outlawed segregation on public buses, just as it had done for public schools. But Mrs. Parks and her husband, Raymond, had been fired from their jobs during the boycott and were unable to find work in that city afterward. That’s when the president of Hampton Institute at the time, Alonzo G. Moron, stepped up and offered Mrs. Parks a job as hostess at the university’s faculty dining room, the Holly Tree Inn. “In this job you have an opportunity to meet many interesting people, for we always have visitors at Hampton,” he said to her in a letter. Mrs. Parks accepted the job and arrived on campus a short time later, on September 23, 1957. She worked at the university for a year before returning to Detroit, where she spent the remainder of her life.

  At about the time that Mrs. Parks arrived on Hampton’s campus, President Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first such legislation in eighty-two years. The measure had been designed to protect the voting rights of Negroes, who were being harassed and barred from voting in many southern states. But some civil rights leaders complained that southern Democrats watered down the legislation, rendering it practically useless. Nevertheless, the law created the US Commission on Civil Rights and assigned the US Department of Justice to monitor civil rights abuses. Change was coming. And no matter how hard the segregationists tried they couldn’t stop the force of change sweeping the nation.

  As NACA prepared to soar into the Space Age, it, too, had to release the baggage of segregation. On May 5, 1958, an administrative memo, announcing the official end of segregation at Langley, circulated among the higher-ups. I hadn’t paid attention anyway to one of the most demeaning markers of segregation at Langley, the “colored” restrooms. And I’d mostly avoided the “colored” section of the cafeteria by eating at my desk. But I was relieved for those restrictions to disappear. My emotions were mixed, though, about another of the memo’s edicts: the dissolution of the West Area Computers. As a practical matter, only a handful of the Negro computers were left in the general pool and would have to be reassigned. Most of the others, including Erma and me, already were working permanently in other divisions. But I would never forget the emotional impact of walking into that room and discovering this secret sisterhood of smart women whose mere presence as math professionals defied stereotypes. A particular bit of sadness I felt was for Dorothy Vaughan. She was the most brilliant of us all, and I was confident that she would fare well in the transition. But I lamented that her status as NASA’s only Negro supervisor would fade away with her unit.

  Time kept rolling, and amid all that was happening at work, my oldest daughter was navigating through her senior year of high school. Among the highlights was Joylette’s formal introduction to society as a debutante in December 1957. The two-year debutante program was sponsored by a group called the Junior League, which had been formed by a group of mothers from our church and community, including me, to help shape our daughters into refined, respectable young ladies. The debutante tradition was an old, high-society ritual that we wanted our daughters to experience, even though most of us were working and middle-class mothers. The training sessions began in their tenth-grade year, with our daughters learning proper etiquette, everything from which utensils to use at the dinner table to how to dress and comport themselves for formal occasions. They also attended and sponsored community events, such as high teas, to put their acquired skills to use. Then, in their senior year of high school, the club hosted a formal debutante ball, with the girls looking like young brides in their flowing white gowns. Joylette looked radiant in a dress that I made. When Connie and Kathy made their debut three years later, I designed and made their beautiful dresses as well. My brother Charlie stood in Jimmie’s place as Joylette’s escort, and he did the same for Kathy in December 1960. Connie’s escort that year would be the handsome military officer who had come into my life by then.

  At the end of May 1958, my family celebrated Joylette’s high school graduation. I could hardly believe how quickly the years had passed, and I wished Jimmie could have been there to commemorate those occasions with us. He would have been especially proud as Joylette stood before her classmates on graduation night and gave the salutatory address. I did, however, keep my promise to him. The summer after Joylette’s graduation, the girls and I moved into our dream home on the lot that Jimmie and I had chosen on Mimosa Crescent. Daddy, who had come with Mamà from White Sulphur Springs for graduation, stayed to oversee the construction. About thirteen truckloads of dirt had been needed to build up that soggy ground. Daddy took his role so seriously that he even made the construction crew pull up the initial concrete foundation because his precise measurements showed that it was not level. The remaining construction of our new home came together nicely. The girls loved choosing the colors and decorating their new rooms—a salmon shade of pink for Joylette and beige for Connie and Kathy. I chose aqua, which made me think of the ocean. Our part of the neighborhood was very quiet. We lived at the base of the U-shaped street with no immediate neighbors, so when we saw vehicle headlights pointed toward us at night, we knew we were having company.

  Then, in no time at all Joylette was headed off to college. Nineteen fifty-eight was proving to be an eventful year, and there was even more.

  I was at choir practice one evening, as usual, when a new member strolled into the choir loft and was introduced as Captain James A. Johnson. He had a beautiful bass voice, an easy smile, and a kind spirit. He walked with the straight-back poise of a soldier, but beyond welcoming him to the choir, I didn’t show him much attention. The following Sunday, during church service, our pastor introduced the military man to the congregation as a new member and then added, “Ladies, he’s single.”

  Our pastor fancied himself a matchmaker, and I began to suspect that he had done a little behind-the-scenes maneuvering when a short time later at
a church picnic Captain Johnson made a beeline to me. His interest in me caught me by surprise. I was a forty-year-old widow with three daughters, and back then under those circumstances, let’s just say the chances of finding love again were slim. Plus I wasn’t even looking. He was younger, thirty-three, but seemed quite mature and intriguing. He instructed me to call him Jim; Captain Johnson seemed far too formal. Soon we were chatting nonstop, getting to know one another, and I was blushing like a schoolgirl.

  Jim had been born in a small, rural Virginia community called Whaleyville, in the Hampton Roads area. But he had lived in Hampton since he was a boy and considered it home. He enlisted in the US Navy right out of high school in October 1943 during World War II and was shipped to a naval boot camp in Illinois, where he studied propeller repair.

  After the war, he attended Hampton Institute on the GI Bill (a benefit that paid for service members to attend college). He joined the US Army’s Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) unit there and in January 1951 received his commission as an artillery officer. The following July he was called into active duty to serve during the Korean War, this time as a second lieutenant in the US Army. Thus he had to leave the Institute before finishing his degree. He served on active duty until January 1956, returned to Hampton to finish his degree, and went to work for the US Postal Service as a mail carrier, one of the jobs most frequently available to Negro men returning from active duty. Jim loved being a military man, and he kept his connection as a member of the Army Reserve. For church or formal functions, he proudly dressed in his full military regalia.

  We began keeping company, going for walks on the beach, to the movies, dinner parties, and dances. When I was confident that I would be seeing a lot more of Jim, I officially introduced him to the girls. They thought he was very nice.

  “Mom, he’s cute!” Connie gushed later. That was my Connie, never one to hold back.

  I could tell the girls enjoyed seeing me happy and suddenly fussing over my hair, makeup, and clothes again. The next year, Jim asked me to marry him, but not in the big, romantic way depicted by Hollywood. He was a simple guy. He simply asked. I said “yes.” And in a small, private ceremony before God, family, and a few close friends in my home, I became Mrs. Katherine Johnson. We celebrated with a reception in the backyard.

  After so much darkness, tomorrow seemed extra bright.

  Chapter 8

  Love What You Do

  I loved my job. I never played sick to stay at home. I never needed inspiration to go to work. My work inspired me. I wanted to be there. I wanted to contribute. I’ve always believed that to do your best work, you’ve got to love what you do.

  Every day I looked forward to what was next, and I felt fortunate to be close to the action as the nation took its first steps toward outer space. On October 1, 1958, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) officially faded into history, as the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) took its place to chart our country’s way into space. Most workers’ jobs stayed the same, but there were changes throughout the agency to reflect our added space mission. The name of the Hampton-based facility where I worked was changed to Langley Research Center, and a few other department names were changed as well. New departments were created, new employees hired, and others were shifted into new or expanded jobs, as needed, to advance the mission. The Space Race was on, and the American public was engaged as never before. A poll by pioneer opinion researcher Claude E. Robinson, which was taken just after the Soviets sent both Sputniks into orbit, showed that a stunning 95 percent of the public was aware of the launches—and this was long before the twenty-four-hour news cycle and instant access to information. According to the poll, a minority of the public (40 percent) dismissed the Sputniks “without serious thought as to what it might mean to them and their country” and the vast majority of them (80 percent) believed America was “at least even” with the Soviets or would “catch up soon.” Newspaper editors surveyed for the poll expressed greater concerns.

  It seemed clear, though, that the Soviets were dominating the start of the race. By sending a dog into orbit in Sputnik 2, they seemed to be advancing toward human spaceflight. With America still playing catch-up, the focus at the new NASA turned to sending the first man into space. This, of course, significantly raised the stakes. Sending a satellite beyond the surface of the Earth was one thing, and even sending a dog into space with no viable plan for its return seemed to much of the public at the time a worthy sacrifice for the sake of scientific discovery. But for this go-round, our scientists knew that it would not be enough just to get a human into space. The agency’s best brains had to figure out before our competitors how to get that manned flight back home safely.

  Just six days after the birth of NASA, a special panel, led by Langley assistant director Robert R. Gilruth, adopted preliminary plans and schedules for that spaceflight. Mr. Gilruth and his group of about ten engineers had worked practically around the clock to develop the fundamentals of the flight, including the capsule’s design, the decision to use existing rockets to power it, and mission control procedures. A Langley veteran who had earned the agency’s confidence over decades, Mr. Gilruth would become the quiet force leading the agency into space. He joined Langley in January 1937, shortly after earning a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering at the University of Minnesota. He became a leading researcher in transonic and supersonic aircraft and was among the engineers at the old NACA who had shown an early interest in launch technology and human spaceflight. In 1945 he organized an engineering team to investigate experimental rocket-power aircraft, which later became Langley’s Pilotless Aircraft Research Division. He headed that division for many years. His research also led to the creation of NACA’s Wallops Island launching range in Virginia and successful testing there. Afterward Mr. Gilruth was named assistant director at Langley. Kevin Costner’s role in the movie Hidden Figures was based primarily on him.

  After Mr. Gilruth’s panel laid the groundwork for the mission, a new forty-five-member team was created to make it happen. Mr. Gilruth also led that team of thirty-seven engineers and eight secretaries and computers (called math aides after the transition). The assistant project manager was Charles Donlan, technical assistant to the director at Langley. The two men pulled key engineers from all over the agency, fourteen of them from the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division alone, another five from Flight Research, and six others from four other divisions at Langley. Another ten engineers were assigned to the group from Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. By the end of November 1958, the team had an official name, the Space Task Group, and its manned spaceflight mission was called Project Mercury. In Roman mythology, Mercury was, among other things, the god of travelers.

  Building on the findings of hundreds of previous military studies about the viability of spaceflight, Project Mercury aimed to send a manned spacecraft into orbit around the Earth and to investigate the capabilities of humans to perform in space. The ultimate goal, of course, was to be able to return the space travelers and their space mobiles back to Earth safely. Given that we were already trailing the Soviets, our space team hoped to do all of this by maximizing the use of current technology. There was no time for bold new inventions and years and years of developmental testing.

  The Space Task Group decided to call the first space travelers “astronauts,” and these men would have to undergo an extensive selection process. First, President Eisenhower specified that the applicants were to come from the pool of military test pilots. That simplified the process somewhat because military pilots had been screened extensively already for national security concerns, and they had significant flight experience. The Space Task Group added additional criteria: The applicants had to be less than 40 years old, under 5 feet, 11 inches tall to fit in the specially designed capsule, in excellent physical condition, and had to have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent. In addition to being a test pilot school graduate, they had to have a mini
mum of 1,500 hours of flying time and be a qualified jet pilot. NASA records show that 508 service records were examined, which narrowed the list to 110 men who met the criteria.

  The number was reduced further to 32 men, who went through individual interviews, physical and psychological examinations, and training exercises. Finally, the remaining 7 astronauts were introduced at a press conference in April 1959, and they became instant celebrities. They were the walking embodiment of our nation’s space dreams. They were willing to risk their lives to travel to the unknown and push the boundaries of human exploration.

  “These men, the nation’s Project Mercury astronauts, are here after a long and perhaps unprecedented series of evaluations, which told our medical consultants and scientists their superb adaptability to their coming flight,” NASA administrator Dr. T. Keith Glennan said at that press conference. “Which of these men will be first to orbit the Earth, I cannot tell you. He won’t know himself until the day of the flight.”

  It was so exciting when those of us behind the scenes occasionally ran into the astronauts at the office, but they were just as excited to meet us. They were assigned to the Space Task Group and each had a job to do: Scott Carpenter was assigned to handle communication and navigation; Gordon Cooper served as liaison with the team developing the launch systems; John Glenn worked on cockpit and instrument panel design; Gus Grissom developed the control systems; Wally Schirra worked on space suits and other life support; Alan Shepard worked on tracking and capsule recovery; and Deke Slayton worked to integrate the Mercury capsule with the rocket that would boost it into space.

  The rest of the Space Task Group was organized into divisions, with each responsible for a different element of the flight. John Mayer was the first of my officemates to be transferred there. He was assigned to the Flight Systems Division, headed by Maxime A. Faget, the engineer who had designed the blunt-ended, cork-shaped capsule chosen to carry the first man into space. The group worked in a separate building, but John regularly made his way back over to Flight Research (renamed the Aerospace Mechanics Division) to get computing help from Carl Huss and Ted Skopinski. As usual, Ted brought me in to assist. I had worked closely with Ted as his computer, and he trusted my mathematical and analytical skills. We spent many hours working through the equations, analyzing the math, drawing diagrams, and going back to the drawing board again and again.