The Magazine of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu July 2017 - 14

FEATURE
while working at the space administration's facility in
Langley, Md.

skills, she helped NASA's engineers program its first IBM
data processing machine.

The Friendship 7 mission took place during a time when
racism was still deeply seated in the United States,
when bathrooms, water fountains, and classrooms were
segregated. Early in the film, the main characters, called
computers-a title NASA gave to employees calculating
intricate math problems-were shown working in a
separate room for "colored computers." As the women,
who all have mathematics degrees, move up the ranks,
their colleagues' innate racism seems to grow stronger.

Jackson was encouraged by a NASA mission specialist-
based on her real-life colleague Kazimierz Czarnecki-to
become an engineer. She called the idea ludicrous. "I
am a Negro woman. I am not going to consider the
impossible," she said. But the idea stayed with her.

The film centers around Katherine Johnson (played by
actress Taraji P. Henson), a child math prodigy and the only
NASA employee who was well-versed in analytical geometry
at the time. The other two women are Dorothy Vaughan
(Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe).

DISCRIMINATION AT THE AGENGY
Johnson proved herself time and again. For example,
she came up with the "go-no go" mathematical formula,
also known as a launch status check, to ensure the
Mercury's travel trajectories were safe. Glenn orbited the
Earth three times-a trip that lasted a little less than five
hours-before his spacecraft landed safely in the ocean
near the Bahamas.
Johnson received little to no publicity at the time, but in
2015 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
the highest civilian award of the United States, for
calculating and verifying trajectories that took the first
Americans to space and to the moon.
While working on the Friendship 7 launch, she was shunned
by her white male coworkers. She was not allowed to
drink coffee out of the same carafe as them; instead,
they designated a pot with a sticker that said colored. The
only ladies room designated for African-Americans was a
40-minute round trip from her workplace.
Her friends Vaughan and Jackson also experienced
racism.
Vaughan supervised the group of 20 black women
who worked as computers. Despite her skills and hard
work, NASA did not promote her. Vaughan, who also
knew how to fix cars, decided to teach herself the early
computer language Fortran from a programming book
that she stole from a local library's whites-only section.
Armed with her knowledge of Fortran and mechanical
14

When she looked into courses required to become a
NASA engineer, she discovered they were being offered
only at an all-white high school. At the time, AfricanAmericans were not permitted to attend that school, but
Johnson filed a lawsuit and persuaded a judge to let her
attend. He did, but only the night courses.
All three women went on to become NASA pioneers:
the first African-American woman to help launch a man
into space, the first female African-American supervisor,
and the first female African-American engineer.

LESSONS LEARNED
Despite the women's incredible accomplishments, how
many of us knew their stories until Hidden Figures? I
admit that I didn't.
When, in the movie, a police officer and even a love
interest (who later becomes Johnson's husband) are
shocked to learn African-American women worked as
mathematicians at NASA, I realized that stereotypes of
female engineers and technologists still exist today. I
wonder how much has really changed for women and
underrepresented groups in tech.
The Institute has published several articles about the
difficulty the engineering field has in recruiting a more
diverse group of candidates. I believe teaching students
about the unsung heroes in Hidden Figures would be an
important part of that process. It's imperative that those
who teach or volunteer their time with STEM (science,
technology, engineering, and math) education programs
show the film to students to encourage them that they,
too, can do seemingly impossible things.
The three women spotlighted in the movie achieved what
they did at NASA not because of their circumstances-
opportunities were not handed to them-but because
of their merit. And that's the message we should be
teaching students today, which is that perseverance and
knowledge can get them far and they should not give
up because they believe a career in engineering is not
for them.
www.hkn.org //

THE BRIDGE

http://www.hkn.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Magazine of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu July 2017