![]() “These women’s paths set the stage for mine,” Margot writes, “immersing myself in their stories helped me understand my own. In 2015, Katherine Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. Too few people have a Margot to champion their stories. Until we get to Heaven, we may not get to see the truth of them all. There are so many people whose contributions to history are likely to remain hidden in this life. It’s Margot’s hope that these amazing women’s stories brought to life in the book, and later in the movie, won’t be viewed as a separate history, but “as a part of the story we all know.” Five of his seven siblings were engineers and technologists. …I thought that’s just what black folks did.” Margot’s father had joined Langley in 1964 and retired in 2004 as a respected climate scientist. “…growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine. In the prologue to Hidden Figures, Margot writes that in growing up, she was used to African Americans working in science, math and engineering. I thought that’s just what black folks did.” – Margot Lee ShetterleyĪstronaut John Glenn considered Katherine’s calculations so reliable that he specifically asked for her to double check the trajectory equations provided by the automated computers for his orbital mission in 1962. ![]() “Growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine. Katherine was one of the “West Computers,” so called because as African American women, they had to work in a separate section on the west side. She listened to the ninety-three-year-old mathematician’s stories of working at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory-especially during the time of segregation. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly is the 2016 nonfiction account of the Black women who worked as human computers at NACA and NASA from the 1930s to the 1960s. Above her head was a framed American flag that had been to the Moon. Within two weeks, Margot was sitting on the couch in Katherine Johnson’s living room. ![]() “And Katherine Johnson,” he said, “…calculated the launch windows for the first astronauts.” Margot’s husband, Aran asked, “Why haven’t I heard about them before?” Later as the family headed out for brunch, Margot’s dad mentioned that a lot of women around the area, black and white, had worked as computers during the 1960s. Land wasn’t about to miss a Sunday service at First Baptist. Land at church, and they had a chance to talk for a while. It was during a visit home to Hampton, Virginia in 2010 to visit her parents that Margot ran into Mrs. Land, a fellow African American woman, had worked as one of the “human computers.” Margot Lee Shetterley first got the idea to write the book, Hidden Figures when she learned that her favorite Sunday School teacher had been a mathematician at NASA in the 1960s. A “computer” used to be a person-not a machine.
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