![]() Also balancing children and a social life, Mary Jackson pushed political and social lines within NASA and the Virginia government, which helped her eventually become NASA’s first female African American Engineer.ĭorothy Vaughn, depicted by Spencer, did the work of a supervisor without the pay or title until she faced obsolescence when the first computer, the International Business Machine (IBM), came to NASA. Mary Jackson, portrayed by Monáe, was a theoretical physicist for the engineering aspect of Project Mercury with such a good mind that she was encouraged to get her engineering degree despite Virginia’s segreation laws. ![]() While balancing being a single mother with three children, Katherine worked days, nights, and anything in between to secure her position in the program. Goble was the mathematician whose analytic geometry calculated the launch and landing trajectories for launches up to Alan Shepard's Friendship-7 suborbital launch and including putting the first American man, John H. The story starts with Henson as Katherine Goble, and her friends Mary Jackson (Monáe), and Dorothy Vaughn (Spencer), calculating in the colored west wing of Langley Research Station. ![]() The women who calculated all of the mathematics and physics required to put men in space were the untold facet until Margot Lee Shetterly’s novel Hidden Figures hit the shelves. The untold story of the computers, particularly African American women, put the Jim Crow era into perspective. This film offers a glimpse into Jim Crow era Virginia with an upbeat undertone led by African American women making their mark on segregation and the establishment thereof.īeginning in 1958 and continuing until 1963, NASA’s Project Mercury was initiated in response to Russia’s attempts to put the first man in space. Henson, Janelle Monáe, and Octavia Spencer as the main trifecta. The recent box office hit Hidden Figures (2017) illuminates a once virtually unknown story of the female computers involved NASA’s Project Mercury in the 1960s. Hidden Figures: a Story of Space, Race, and the Space Race By Katie Hansche, '18
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |