Hidden Figures:

A Biography
By Margot Lee Shetterly
The Book
★ It was published in 2016 by author Margot
Lee Shetterly
★ She was born in 1969
★ She grew up in Hampton, Virginia
○ This was where African American women worked
at and made a difference at NASA.
Time Period
★ Takes place from the 1930s to
1960s
★ World War II began during this time
★ Segregation was a major issue
★ When African Americans, and
African American women, went to
work, they began fighting for their
rights
Why did women begin working during this time?
★ When World War II was in full
effect, there was a shortage of
male workers
★ Women went into jobs that were
normally occupied by men
★ They did not get paid the same as
men, as there was not gender or
racial equality
Prejudice
★ Racial discrimination remained strong and few jobs existed
for African-Americans, regardless of gender
★ The first black computers didn’t set foot at Langley until the
1940s
★ In 1941 A. Philip Randolph, pioneering civil rights activist,
proposed a march on Washington, D.C., to draw attention
to the continued injustices of racial discrimination.
★ President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order
8802, preventing racial discrimination in hiring for federal
and war-related work
★ This order also cleared the way for the black computers,
slide rule in hand, to make their way into NACA history.
Who are the women of Hidden Figures?
★ There were many African American
women who were unrecognized
contributors to NACA/NASA
★ Three of the women who stood out
and are part of the book are:
○ Katherine Johnson
○ Dorothy Vaughan
○ Mary Jackson
The Job
★ African American were employed as human
computers
★ They used math to help calculate important
numbers to help humans get into space.
★ It was a thankless job, with the African American
women computers being the least recognized
★ It was one of the most important jobs
○ Without these human computers, they would not have
been able to calculate the necessary math to get into
space
★ Remember, technology was not advanced then;
computers as we know them did not exist.
Katherine Johnson 08/26/1919-02/24/2020
★ African American woman who grew
up in West Virginia
★ She worked at NASA for 33 years
★ calculations of orbital mechanics as a
NASA employee were critical to the
success of the first and subsequent
U.S. crewed spaceflights
★ calculated the trajectories for the
Mercury and Apollo missions.
★ In 2015, President Barack Obama
awarded Johnson the Presidential
Medal of Freedom
Dorothy Vaughan 09/20/1910-11/10/2008
★ American mathematician and human computer who
worked for the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics (NACA), and NASA, at Langley
Research Center
★ In 1949, she became acting supervisor of the West
Area Computers, the first African-American woman to
receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at
the center.
○ Before her official promotion, she performed
duties of a supervisor
Mary Jackson 04/09/1921-02/11/2005
★ an American mathematician and aerospace
engineer at the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics (NACA)
★ She worked at Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career
★ She started as a computer at the segregated
West Area Computing division in 1951.
★ She took advanced engineering classes and, in
1958, became NASA's first black female engineer
Hidden Figures Questions

Directions: Divide your page like Cornell Notes. Write the question on the
left and your answer on the right. At least one complete sentence each.
1. What issues did African Americans face when working in these new
jobs?
2. What issues did women face when working these new jobs?
3. How did those issues become worse when it was an African American
woman?
4. Why do you believe it took so long to give credit to the African
American women computers?