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Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and
written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder, based on the non-fiction book of the same
name by Margot Lee Shetterly about African American female mathematicians who worked at
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Space Race. The film
stars Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who calculated flight trajectories
for Project Mercury and other missions. The film also features Octavia Spencer as NASA
supervisor Dorothy Vaughan and Janelle Mone as NASA engineer Mary Jackson, with Kevin
Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Glen Powell and Mahershala Ali in supporting roles.

Principal photography began in March 2016 in Atlanta and was wrapped up in May
2016. Hidden Figures was released on December 25, 2016, by 20th Century Fox, received
positive reviews from critics and grossed $229 million worldwide. It was chosen by National
Board of Review as one of the top ten films of 2016[4] and was nominated for numerous awards,
including three Oscar nomnations (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting
Actress for Spencer) and two Golden Globes (Best Supporting Actress for Spencer and Best
Original Score). It won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in
a Motion Picture.

Historical accuracy
The film, set at NASA in 1961, depicts segregated facilities such as the West Area Computing
unit, an all-black group of female mathematicians, who were originally required to use separate
dining and bathroom facilities. However, in reality, Dorothy Vaughan was promoted to
supervisor of West Computing in 1949, becoming the first black supervisor at the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and one of the few female supervisors. In 1958,
when NACA made the transition to NASA, segregated facilities, including the West Computing
office, were abolished. Dorothy Vaughan and many of the former West Computers transferred to
the new Analysis and Computation Division (ACD), a racially and gender-integrated group.

Mary Jackson was the one who had to find her own way to a colored bathroom, which did exist
on the East Side]Katherine (then Goble) was originally unaware that the East Side bathrooms
were segregated, and used the unlabeled "whites-only" bathrooms for years before anyone
complained. She ignored the complaint, and the issue was dropped. In an interview with WHRO-
TV, Katherine Johnson played down the feeling of segregation. "I didn't feel the segregation at
NASA, because everybody there was doing research. You had a mission and you worked on it,
and it was important to you to do your job...and play bridge at lunch. I didn't feel any
segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it."

Mary Jackson did not have to get a court order to attend night classes at the whites-only high
school. She asked the city of Hampton for an exception, and it was granted. The school turned
out to be run down and dilapidated, a hidden cost of running two parallel school systems. She
completed her engineering courses and earned a promotion to engineer in 1958.

Hidden Figures: the true story behind


the women who changed Nasa's
place in the Space Race
(WIRED speaks to Nasa's chief historian Bill Barry about the role the Katherine G. Johnson,
Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson played in the agency)

Its 1961 and segregation is rife in America. The US and USSR are locked in a Cold War and the
Space Race is its most public battle. Each country is ferociously trying to assert its power over
the other while their citizens live in perpetual fear.

All the while, three unassuming women in an office in Virginia are changing the course of
history.

Hidden Figures tells the story of these three African-American mathematicians; Katherine G.
Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. During the Cold War, the trio worked
at Nasas Langley Research Centre in Hampton as the US raced against the USSR to put a man
into space. The intellectuals played a vital role in the launch of the now late astronaut John Glenn
into orbit as well as in orchestrating his safe return.

The highly lauded film which has already won awards from the Screen Actors Guild, African-
American Film Critics Association, Casting Society of America and received nominations for the
Academy Awards and British Academy Film Awards is released in the UK on February 17.
Based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, it aims to showcase
what can be done in the face of adversity, when sexism and racism tries to put you in a box and
what can happen when these walls are knocked down.

"The locals thought [Nasa] guys were weird so they were


able to do weird things like hire African-American
women" Bill Barry, Nasa's chief historian.
It wasnt a story that was well known even in the historical community at Nasa, Bill Barry,
Nasas chief historian told WIRED. I was familiar with the fact there were people who did
computing and that they were African-American women but I wasnt aware there was a
completely segregated unit at one point in time.

To make the film as historically accurate as possible, the Hidden Figures production crew liaised
with a select team at the space agency, which included Barry. They sent the script over, I
commented on it and then spent a lot of time on the phone with Ted [Melfi, the films director],
talking it, back and forth. Then the questions started pouring in. People all across Nasa wanted to
be involved in making sure the film was as accurate as possible.
Mary taught in Maryland prior to joining Nasa. She retired from the Nasa Langley
Research Center in 1985 as an Aeronautical Engineer after 34 years.

Every scene was painstakingly combed over to capture the essence of 1960s Nasa and America,
even down to the details the lamposts, the trees and even the size of the spaces in the car park
at Langley (which was actually shot in a parking lot in Georgia). Langley is still at the heart of
Nasa; it is one of the 10 major research centres in the US, but for financial and security reasons
the film was shot on location in Atlanta. They did a great job re-creating the working feel of
Langley at those sets, Barry said.

When we first meet Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson in the film they're employed as computers
at Langley. Computers worked on intense math calculations to support the work of the male
engineers and scientists at the agency at the time. During the 1960s, the organization was
working on Project Mercury the first human spaceflight program of the US with the goal of
putting a man into Earths orbit and have him return to Earth safely.

PROJECT MERCURY: GETTING MAN INTO SPACE


PROJECT MERCURY: GETTING MAN INTO SPACE

Project Mercury was the Nasa program that put the first American astronauts in space.
The first of six flights under the program was made in 1961, the last took place in 1963.

Two of Project Mercury's flights were suborbital, meaning they reached space and
returned immediately. The other four went into orbit and circled Earth.

Before astronauts flew in Project Mercury, Nasa conducted unmanned test flights. The
first Atlas rocket with a Mercury capsule exploded, while the first Mercury-Redstone
launch only went four inches off the ground.

A rhesus monkey called Sam, and two chimpanzees, Ham and Enos, flew in Mercury
capsules before humans. Enos launched on an Atlas rocket and made two orbits around
Earth, proving to Nasa the journey was safe for astronauts.

Alan Shepard made the first Mercury flight, becoming the first American in space,
followed by Gus Grissom and later John Glenn who, in 1962, became the first American
to orbit Earth.

During World War Two, President Roosevelt had said there was a needed to get more African-
Americans to work in the war effort, continued Barry. So the leadership at Langley, despite the
cultural prejudice in the area, hired these African-American women as mathematicians and
computers. They did a great job at it and that situation changed.

In fact, Nasa was one of the few employers at the time willing to employ African-American
women. One of the reasons Nasa and Langley were able to buck this trend was because it was, as
Barry describes it, nerd-heaven.

People from all over the country flocked there if they wanted to work in aeronautics research. A
lot of them werent from the South so the environment at Langley on the work side was different
from the local area. The locals in Hampton thought the [Nasa] guys were weird and eccentric so
they were able to do weird things like hire African-American women for semi-professional
jobs, which would never have happened in another business in Virginia.
Hidden Figures we see these barriers of racial
discrimination outside Langley being broken down
as the women strive to be more than just
computers:
Throughout Hidden Figures we see these barriers of racial discrimination outside Langley being
broken down as the women strive to be more than just computers. There is a poignant scene in
which the character Al Harrison, Johnsons supervisor played by Kevin Costner, breaks down the
colored bathroom sign. Its symbolic as an example of the racial barriers being smashed for
black people at Nasa. Unfortunately, its not an entirely true representation of the organisation at
the time.

Its a great moment in the film, but they took a little dramatic license with it, said Barry. The
movie takes a lot of things that happened in the 1950s and moved them into that time period to
tell the story effectively.

Though African-Americans had to use separate bathrooms and dining rooms when working at
Nasa in the first half of the 20th Century, segregation at Langley had mostly been eliminated by
the late 1950s. As Nasa was part of the US federal government, it had been working towards de-
segregation quietly, so as not to attract the attention of the Virginia state government. By
1961-62, when the movie happened, most of the physical trappings of segregation would have
gone from Langley.

Even though the physical barriers of segregation were removed, the women still faced much
discrimination and battled against it for decades.

MARY JACKSON
Date of Birth: April 9, 1921
Hometown: Hampton, VA
Education: B.S., Mathematics and Physical Science, Hampton Institute, 1942
Hired by NACA: April 1951
Retired from NASA: 1985
Date of Death: February 11, 2005
Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Janelle Mone

For Mary Winston Jackson, a love of science and a commitment to improving the lives of the
people around her were one and the same. In the 1970s, she helped the youngsters in the science
club at Hamptons King Street Community center build their own wind tunnel and use it to
conduct experiments. We have to do something like this to get them interested in science," she
said in an article for the local newspaper. "Sometimes they are not aware of the number of black
scientists, and don't even know of the career opportunities until it is too late."

Marys own path to an engineering career at the NASA Langley Research Center was far from
direct. A native of Hampton, Virginia, she graduated from Hampton Institute in 1942 with a dual
degree in Math and Physical Sciences, and accepted a job as a math teacher at a black school in
Calvert County, Maryland. Hampton had become one of the nerve centers of the World War II
home front effort, and after a year of teaching, Mary returned home, finding a position as the
receptionist at the King Street USO Club, which served the citys black population. It would take
three more career changesa post as a bookkeeper in Hampton Institutes Health Department, a
stint at home following the birth of her son, Levi, and a job as an Army secretary at Fort Monroe
before Mary landed at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratorys segregated West Area
Computing section in 1951, reporting to the groups supervisor Dorothy Vaughan.

After two years in the computing pool, Mary Jackson received an offer to work for engineer
Kazimierz Czarnecki in the 4-foot by 4-foot Supersonic Pressure Tunnel, a 60,000 horsepower
wind tunnel capable of blasting models with winds approaching twice the speed of sound.
Czarnecki offered Mary hands-on experience conducting experiments in the facility, and
eventually suggested that she enter a training program that would allow her to earn a promotion
from mathematician to engineer. Trainees had to take graduate level math and physics in after-
work courses managed by the University of Virginia. Because the classes were held at then-
segregated Hampton High School, however, Mary needed special permission from the City of
Hampton to join her white peers in the classroom. Never one to flinch in the face of a challenge,
Mary completed the courses, earned the promotion, and in 1958 became NASAs first black
female engineer. That same year, she co-authored her first report, Effects of Nose Angle and
Mach Number on Transition on Cones at Supersonic Speeds.

Mary Jackson began her engineering career in an era in which female engineers of any
background were a rarity; in the 1950s, she very well may have been the only black female
aeronautical engineer in the field. For nearly two decades she enjoyed a productive engineering
career, authoring or co-authoring a dozen or so research reports, most focused on the behavior of
the boundary layer of air around airplanes. As the years progressed, the promotions slowed, and
she became frustrated at her inability to break into management-level grades. In 1979, seeing that
the glass ceiling was the rule rather than the exception for the centers female professionals, she
made a final, dramatic career change, leaving engineering and taking a demotion to fill the open
position of Langleys Federal Womens Program Manager. There, she worked hard to impact the
hiring and promotion of the next generation of all of NASAs female mathematicians, engineers
and scientists.

Mary retired from Langley in 1985. Among her many honors were an Apollo Group
Achievement Award, and being named Langleys Volunteer of the Year in 1976. She served as
the chair of one of the centers annual United Way campaigns, was a Girl Scout troop leader for
more than three decades, and a member of the National Technical Association (the oldest African
American technical organization in the United States). She and her husband Levi had an open-
door policy for young Langley recruits trying to gain their footing in a new town and a new
career. A 1976 Langley Researcher profile might have done the best job capturing Mary
Jacksons spirit and character, calling her a gentlelady, wife and mother, humanitarian and
scientist. For Mary Jackson, science and service went hand in hand.

Mary Jackson played by Janelle Monae, became the first African-American female engineer at
Nasa but was forced to leave in the 1970s after becoming frustrated that women werent being
given the promotions they deserved. She gave up her job as an engineer to work as an equal
opportunity person at Langley. She used her engineering skills and math skills to prove that
promotion reach for women was statistically not fair, said Barry. She actually got the
promotions system changed at Langley, and across Nasa, as a result of her research. Jackson
died in 2005.

Dorothy Vaughan
Date of Birth: September 20, 1910
Hometown: Kansas City, MO
Education: B.A., Mathematics, Wilberforce University, 1929
Hired by NACA: December 1943
Retired from NASA: 1971
Date of Death: November 10, 2008
Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Octavia Spencer

In an era when NASA is led by an African American man (Administrator Charles Bolden) and a
woman (Deputy Administrator Dava Newman), and when recent NASA Center Directors come
from a variety of backgrounds, it's easy to overlook the people who paved the way for the
agency's current robust and diverse workforce and leadership. Those who speak of NASA's
pioneers rarely mention the name Dorothy Vaughan, but as the head of the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics (NACAs) segregated West Area Computing Unit from 1949 until
1958, Vaughan was both a respected mathematician and NASA's first African-American
manager.

Dorothy Vaughan came to the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1943, during the
height of World War II, leaving her position as the math teacher at Robert Russa Moton High
School in Farmville, VA to take what she believed would be a temporary war job. Two years
after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 into law, prohibiting racial, religious and
ethnic discrimination in the country's defense industry, the Laboratory began hiring black women
to meet the skyrocketing demand for processing aeronautical research data. Urgency and twenty-
four hour shifts prevailed-- as did Jim Crow laws which required newly-hired "colored"
mathematicians to work separately from their white female counterparts. Dorothy Vaughan was
assigned to the segregated "West Area Computing" unit, an all-black group of female
mathematicians, who were originally required to use separate dining and bathroom facilities.
Over time, both individually and as a group, the West Computers distinguished themselves with
contributions to virtually every area of research at Langley.

The group's original section heads (first Margery Hannah, then Blanche Sponsler) were white. In
1949, Dorothy Vaughan was promoted to lead the group, making her the NACA's first black
supervisor, and one of the NACA's few female supervisors. The Section Head title gave Dorothy
rare Laboratory-wide visibility, and she collaborated with other well-known (white) computers
like Vera Huckel and Sara Bullock on projects such as compiling a handbook for algebraic
methods for calculating machines. Vaughan was a steadfast advocate for the women of West
Computing, and even intervened on behalf of white computers in other groups who deserved
promotions or pay raises. Engineers valued her recommendations as to the best "girls" for a
particular project, and for challenging assignments they often requested that she personally
handle the work.

Dorothy Vaughan helmed West Computing for nearly a decade. In 1958, when the NACA made
the transition to NASA, segregated facilities, including the West Computing office, were
abolished. Dorothy Vaughan and many of the former West Computers joined the new Analysis
and Computation Division (ACD), a racially and gender-integrated group on the frontier of
electronic computing. Dorothy Vaughan became an expert FORTRAN programmer, and she also
contributed to the Scout Launch Vehicle Program.

Dorothy Vaughan retired from NASA in 1971. She sought, but never received, another
management position at Langley. Her legacy lives on in the successful careers of notable West
Computing alumni, including Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Eunice Smith and Kathryn
Peddrew, and the achievements of second-generation mathematicians and engineers such as Dr.
Christine Darden.

Dorothy Vaughan, played by Octavia Spencer, moved from being a computer to a computer
programmer when IBM machines were introduced at Nasa. She became the first African-
American female supervisor at the organization, and continued to work there until the 1970s. She
died in 2008.
Katherine Johnson
Date of Birth: August 26, 1918
Hometown: White Sulphur Springs, WV
Education: B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937
Hired by NACA: June 1953
Retired from NASA: 1986
Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson

Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginias graduate schools
is something that many people would consider one of their lifes most notable moments, but its
just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnsons long and remarkable
life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918, Katherine Johnsons intense curiosity
and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By thirteen, she was
attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At
eighteen, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the schools math
curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African
American to earn a PhD in Mathematics. Katherine graduated with highest honors in 1937 and
took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia.

When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia
States president Dr. John W. Davis selected Katherine and two male students as the first black
students to be offered spots at the states flagship school, West Virginia University. Katherine left
her teaching job, and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session,
however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her husband. She returned to
teaching when her three daughters got older, but it wasnt until 1952 that a relative told her about
open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics (NACAs) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy
Vaughan. Katherine and her husband, James Goble, decided to move the family to Newport
News to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953.
Just two weeks into Katherines tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project
in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherines temporary
position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight test,
and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was
wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.
The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed historyand Katherine Johnsons life.
In 1957, Katherine provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space
Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research
Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD). Engineers from those groups
formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACAs first official foray into space travel, and
Katherine, who had worked with many of them since coming to Langley, came along with the
program as the NACA became NASA later that year. She did trajectory analysis for Alan
Shepards May 1961 mission Freedom 7, Americas first human spaceflight. In 1960, she and
engineer Ted Skopinski coauthored Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a
Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, a report laying out the equations describing an orbital
spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. It was the first time a
woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.

In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine Johnson was called
upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight
had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations
around the world to IBM computers in Washington, DC, Cape Canaveral, and Bermuda. The
computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of
the capsule in Glenns Friendship 7 mission, from blast off to splashdown, but the astronauts
were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were
prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to get
the girlKatherine Johnsonto run the same numbers through the same equations that had
been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating
machine. If she says theyre good, Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, then
Im ready to go. Glenns flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition
between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Katherine Johnson talks
about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollos Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting
Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources
Satellite, and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after thirty-three
years at Langley. I loved going to work every single day, she says. In 2015, at age 97,
Katherine Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Obama
awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Americas highest civilian honor.
Hidden Figures Shows How a Bathroom Break Can Change History

In fact, its not so surprising that a movie about breaking race and gender

barriers would address bathroom politics. As weve seen in the recent debate

over anti-trans bathroom bills, public restrooms are a unique liminal space where

abstract ideas about justice and access play out in intimate ways. Public

bathrooms have long been a key landmark in the civil-rights fight, a zone onto

which people project their anxieties about social change, a locus where the

personal and political intersect.

We see this again later in the film, when a womens bathroom becomes the scene of another
pivotal moment: a confrontation between Dorothy Vaughan and her supervisor Vivian (Kirsten
Dunst). Its the first time Dorothy has been allowed in the white bathroom, and the difference
is striking. The colored bathroom was gray and dilapidated, with no paper towels or soap. The
white bathroom is clean and well-appointed, bathed in a lamps rosy light a visual
embodiment of separate but not equal.

Throughout the film, Vivian has consistently disrespected Dorothy and failed to give her the
promotion she deserves. But in this private women-only space, where everyone pees the same
color, we see for the first time, Vivian engaging her co-worker as a human being. Despite what
you think, I dont have anything against yall, Vivian says. Its one of the films most resonant
moments: America may not have racially segregated bathrooms anymore, but its still rife with
Vivians way of thinking, with the cognitive dissonance that allows people to support racist
policies while decrying racism, or to cheer a film like Hidden Figures while believing that trans
people shouldnt be allowed equal access to public restrooms. In response, Dorothy fixes Vivian
with a pitying gaze and delivers one of the films most stirring lines: I know you probably
believe that.

HIDDEN FIGURES IS A SUBTLE AND


POWERFUL WORK OF COUNTER-HISTORY

These women did not complain about the problems, the circumstances, the issues," she
continued. "They focused on solutions. Therefore, these brave women helped put men into
space.

This story is about what happens when we put our differences aside, and we come together as a
human race. We win. Love wins every time... They are hidden figures no more!

Hidden Figures is a film of calm and bright rage at the way things werean exemplary reproach to
the very notion of political nostalgia. It depicts repugnant attitudes and practices of white supremacy
that poisoned earlier generations achievements and that are inseparable from those achievements.

Hidden Figures is a subtle and powerful work of counter-history, or, rather, of a finally and long-
deferred accurate history, that fills in the general outlines of these womens roles in the space
program. Its redress of the record begins in West Virginia in 1926, where the sixth-grade math
prodigy Katherine Coleman is given a scholarship to a school that one of her teachers refers to as the
only one in the region for black children that goes beyond the eighth grade. She quickly displays her
genius therebut the schools narrow horizons suggests the sharply limited opportunities for black
people over all.

Each of the three women has a particular conflict to confront, a


particular focus in the struggle for equality.
In Hidden Figures, the civil-rights movement isnt just a barely sketched backdrop; its in virtual
competition with the efforts in personal advancement and achievement heroically made by the three
women at the center of the film. In the movie, the three women never speak directly of civil rights. In
the warmhearted romance at the center of the movieKatherines relationship with Col. Jim Johnson
(Mahershala Ali)the subject never comes up. (Katherine Johnson is now ninety-eight; a title card at
the end of the film declares that she and Johnson recently celebrated their fifty-sixth wedding
anniversary.) The movie presents three women whose life experiences have been extraordinary; their
work, their personal lives, and their struggle for justice are uncompromisingly heroic. What the
movie is missing, above all, is their voices.

These women are not in any way submissive or passive. On the contrary, each one speaks up and
takes action at great personal risk. (For instance, Dorothy steals a book that the library wont let her
borrow and then speaks sharply to the guard who hustles her and her sons out.) The movies emphasis
on individual action and achievement in the face of vast obstacles is both beautiful and salutary, but
its near-effacement of collective organization and political activity at a time when they were at their
historical apogeefor that matter, its elision of politics as suchnarrows the drama and, all the more
grievously, the characters at its center.

What the women at the center of Hidden Figures lived through in their youth, in the deep age of
Jim Crow, and, later, at a time of protest and of legal change, remain unspoken; their wisdom and
insight remain unexpressed. For all the emotional power and historical redress of the movieabove
all, in the simple recognition of the centrality of its three protagonists to the modern worldit pushes
to the fore a moderation, based solely on personal accomplishment, in pursuit of justice. This is
different from the civil-rights goal of a universal equality based on humanity alone, extended to the
ordinary as well as to the exceptional. This is, by no means, a complaint about the real-life people on
whom the movie is based; its purely a matter of aesthetics, a result of decisions by the director and
screenwriter, Theodore Melfi, and his co-writer, Allison Schroeder, about how they imagined and
developed the characters. (I found myself thinking, by contrast, of recently published stories by the
late filmmaker Kathleen Collins, with their incisive observations regarding participants and observers
of civil-rights activism.)
Melfi and Schroeder are white; perhaps they conceived the film to be as nonthreatening to white
viewers as possible, or perhaps they anticipated that it would be released at a time of promised
progress. Instead, its being released in a time of resurgent, unabashed racism. The time for protest
has returned; for all the inspired celebration of hitherto unrecognized black heroes that Hidden
Figures offers, and all the retrospective outrage that Hidden Figures sparks, I can only imagine the
movie as it might have been made, much more amply, imaginatively, and resonantly, linking history
and the present tense, by Ava DuVernay or Spike Lee, Julie Dash or Charles Burnett.

Hidden Figures and Change Making

In the 1960s, America was segregated and racing towards space. Engaged in a passive battle with
Russia to see who could get a man into space and orbiting around the planet first, we were
ignoring the racial injustice right before us. In our search for progress, we werent
acknowledging the inhumane state our own country was in.

The recent movie Hidden Figures (Rated PG from 2oth Century Fox) tells the story about the
collision of racial segregation, sexism, and the Space Race As NASA was trying everything they
could to become the victors of space, they found untapped mathematical talent in a group of
African American women; living computers if you will. These women ultimately became the
turning point for NASA, allowing us to launch John Glenn into space and getting him back down
to our planet safe and alive.

If it wasnt for the giant dreams, persistence, and refusal to give up shown by Dorothy Vaughan
(played by Octavia Spencer), Mary Jackson (played by Janelle Mone), and Katherine Johnson
(played by Taraji P. Henson), NASA and space exploration would look drastically different
today. These women changed the direction of the race, and at the same time, made leaps and
bounds against the injustice shown by segregation. They demonstrated how to make change
happen in this country.

Having their story shared in a cinematic form couldnt be timelier. In a country that is currently
being torn apart by bitter race relations, rioting disguised as protest, and animosity from all
sides, its important to remember how true change, needed change occurs.

Hidden Figures teaches us several lessons about


change making:

Be confident in your ability


Even though, as African American women, Vaughan, Jackson, and Johnson were looked down
on, they KNEW how good they were. They remained confident in their abilities, and used that
confidence to successfully do the job no one else could, effectively changing minds and making
people question NASA segregation. Confidence in what you can do to benefit the world will help
you actually end up creating successful change.

Be persistent
They didnt give up. Jackson knew that she was smart and talented enough to be an engineer, she
just wasnt a white male as was the norm in this time period. That didnt stop her from defying
odds, taking classes, and getting the necessary training to qualify her to apply for the NASA
Langley engineering program.

If you truly want to create lasting change, you have to be persistent and be ready to hunker down
and be in it for the long haul.

Think small before thinking big


These women werent trying to rid the country of segregation; they were trying to display the
need for NASA integration, the injustice done by segregation within the agency, and the talent
that was being missed by dismissing the African American women working as computers. Trying
to make a large, widespread impact has its place. However, you will always be most effective if
you start trying to generate change in your own environment and in ways that you are directly
involved in. Work on creating positive change in your community and state before trying to
create it across the country!
Kindness and levelheadedness are keyies
The rioting and Black Lives Matter protests that have been occurring across the nation are
lacking two very large components of helping make effective change: Kindness and
levelheadedness. In order to be an effective change maker, you must be passionate and tough, yet
kind, well reasoned, and factual. The women in Hidden Figures could have been absolutely nasty
to everyone they proved wrong, yet they werent. Remember: Those opposed to you are not your
enemies-they are just havent come over to the side of truth yet.

Find your niche


Finally, to be an effective change maker, you must find your niche in which to create change.
The NASA Langley ladies had opinions about many things going on in the country, but since
they were such skilled mathematicians, they were able to make the most difference doing what
they were excellent at: Math. I am pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, and hold many other
conservative views, but I find that my best niche to create change is talking with other
Millennials about how big government harms them. Look for your own niche, and then think
about how you can help create change there.

The colored computers unit at NASA Langley helped pave the way to integration. They were
change makers, movers and shakers, and determined. Instead of looking at the flawed lessons
culture tries to teach on enacting change, let us look to their example instead.

Empowering everyone
Hidden Figures is about empowering everyone. The movie will inspire people to into math and
science fields, says Barry. It gets the word out those women, in particular, but people of all
races and genders are looked at, at Nasa based on their capabilities, not what they look like. And
we need all kinds of people to help us get to Mars in the future.
Numbers are leveling. They do not care about
ones gender. They do not care about the color of
ones skin.

9 Leadership Lessons from 'Hidden Figures'


About Workplace Diversity and Inclusion
1. Remove obstacles for your workers.

After realizing that Katherine Goble (played by Taraji P. Henson) had to spend half an hour
walking across Langley each time she needed to use the bathroom, Al Harrison (played by Kevin
Costner) uses a crowbar to smash down the sign that identifies the only bathroom at Langley
reserved for women of color, and then quips here at NASA we all pee the same color! In so
doing, he effectively removes a significant obstacle to make Gobles work easier. And, as is often
the case, by identifying and fixing the problem for one person, he removed an obstacle that was
impacting a large number of talented people.

2. Strive to be more inclusive to gain access


to a greater talent pool.
In the movie, the storyline justifies Katherine Gobles appointment simply by mentioning that
Harrison's Space Task Group was looking for a new computer (literally, a person to perform
manual calculations). However, as explained in the book, the United States involvement in
World War II created huge demand for skilled labor in the Defense Sector. Women began being
recruited at Langley in 1935, but by 1943 the need for talent was becoming desperate. Just two
years earlier, President Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 8802, ordering the desegregation
of the defense industry. This opened the door for Langley to expand their talent search to include
women of color, with spectacular results.

3. Dare to be first to break new ground.


In one of the most powerful scenes in the movie, Mary Jackson (played by Janelle Mone) needs
a judges permission to attend classes at a local white school at a time when Virginia was still
segregated. Faced with monumental odds against her, she asks the judge: Out of all the cases
you are going to hear today, which one is going to make you the first? No matter how daunting
the challenge may seem, you should not be afraid to be the first, and you should support those on
your team who have the desire to break new ground.

4. Small gestures go a long way in creating a


sense of belonging.
When a team of astronauts visits Langley, the entire staff is lined up outside to greet them, with
the women of color relegated to the far end of the line. Rather than skipping them, John Glenn
(played by Glen Powell) walks over to shake hands with them. This small gesture makes a
significant impression on the women, and gives them a greater sense of inclusion and belonging.

5. Even with the best intentions, bias can


make your talent feel unwelcome.
Just as we were getting used to the shocking depictions of discrimination fueled by racism and
bigotry, the movie threw us a bit of a curve. As Colonel Jim Johnson (played by Mahershala Ali)
is trying to woo Katherine Goble, he learns that she works as a computer at NASA. Without
thinking he says thats pretty heady stuff do they let women handle that sort of work? In the
middle of a movie that highlights racial discrimination, this bit of gender bias shows that
discrimination can take many forms.
6. When we mess up, its important to
apologize.
Colonel Johnsons remarks elicit a rather fiery reaction from Katherine Goble. And although his
initial attempt to apologize makes things even more awkward, he later comes back with a sincere
apology, and eventually wins her heart. While it is almost impossible to get rid of all of our
unconscious biases, being ready to acknowledge our mistakes can help to defuse potentially
damaging situations.

7. Use your privilege to empower someone.


Toward the end of the movie, as John Glenn is preparing for his historic flight, he specifically
asks Al Harrison whether Katherine Goble had checked all the figures. In the movie, this is a
critical moment because Goble, who had recently been moved to a different group, is catapulted
into a prominent role. Without Glenns support, she would no longer have been in the Space Task
Group.

8. Supporting others is the best way to help


you.
When Dorothy Vaughan (played by Octavia Spencer) learns that a new IBM computer has been
installed on the base, she takes it upon herself to learn how to use it. However, instead of keeping
that knowledge to herself, she gets all of her colleagues to learn how to use it. Building up the
team places her in a position of strength when the Langley managers realize they need personnel
who can operate the new computing machines.

9. When we focus on performance, diversity


emerges naturally.
The entire movie sends a clear message: when it does not come to driving for success, skin color
nor gender should matter. The only thing that can make a difference is performance. And it is the
performance of individuals like Katherine Goble, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan and countless
other African American women, that began to pave the way for greater equality in the workplace.
In short, performance is the great equalizer .

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