Hidden Figures: Young Readers Edition

In February of 1960, four Black students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked to be served. The staff refused, and the students refused to leave until the store closed. The next day, more protesters arrived, and within a week, the peaceful protests known as “sit-ins” had spread across North Carolina and to other states.

Hampton Institute, where Christine Mann was studying near the Langley Laboratory, also organized sit-ins. The school had a special connection to the Civil Rights Movement because Rosa Parks, famous for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, had worked as a hostess in the faculty dining room after being forced to leave Alabama. Christine Mann was a junior at Hampton, studying math and physics. She participated in sit-ins and worked on voter registration drives in Black neighborhoods.

Things were changing at the Langley Laboratory, too. Dorothy now worked in the Analysis and Computation Division alongside Black and white women who had formerly been separated into the East and West Computers. Remarkably, computing had become “a respected coed division” (164), and men also worked on the team. Instead of the old mechanical calculating machines, the mathematicians used “room-sized computers that cost more than $1 million” (164). While some of the older mathematicians “fell behind,” Dorothy “reinvented herself as a computer programmer” and learned to use the new machines (164).

Maintaining contact with the astronaut was one of the biggest challenges of orbiting Earth. This meant that NASA had to build 18 communication stations around the world so that Mission Control could always communicate with the spacecraft. Project Mercury was so complex that the deadline was moved from 1960 to 1961. Meanwhile, on April 12, 1961, the Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin became the first person to go to space and orbit the Earth. The NASA team was frustrated but still determined. They completed 1.2 million “tests, simulations, investigations, inspections, verifications, experiments, checkouts, and dry runs” (168), including sending a chimpanzee named Ham into space before the team was ready.

Approximately 45 million Americans watched the launch of Mercury-Redstone 3, the United States’ first manned space mission. Astronaut Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight was only 15 minutes and 22 seconds long, but it was a success. Afterward, President John F. Kennedy promised the country that the United States would put a human on the Moon before the end of the decade. This seemed like an “unimaginably complex” goal, but the teams at NASA were committed to their work.

NASA needed more employees and workspace to put a human on the Moon. The agency developed a new research center in Houston, Texas, and Katherine Johnson was invited to transfer with the Project Mercury team. She declined, wanting to stay close to her family. Anyway, there was still plenty of exciting work at the Langley Laboratory.

Katherine was most worried about bringing the astronauts safely home after their visit to space. Every part of the mission had to work perfectly; any tiny flaw or mistake could mean catastrophe. John Glenn, the astronaut chosen for the United States’ first orbital mission, also knew that he had to be prepared for anything and trained tirelessly. However, the Project Mercury launch that was delayed from 1960 to 1961 was delayed again to 1962. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union continued to launch missions, completing a 17-orbit flight around Earth that lasted almost a whole day.

By February 1962, Project Mercury was finally ready. However, John Glenn had one final request: “Get the girl to check the numbers” (178), Glenn asked before launching. He trusted Katherine Johnson’s calculations more than the electronic computer’s, and he wanted her to double-check the numbers that his life depended on. Katherine was “very nervous” as she did her calculations. It took her a day and a half to check the computer’s work, but by the end, “she had no doubt that her numbers were correct” (181).

On February 20, 1962, John Glenn was launched into space with 135 million people watching on live television. The automatic control system malfunctioned in the capsule’s first orbit, but Glenn used the manual controls without issue. During the second orbit, a light warned that the heat shield, which would protect from the high temperatures reentering Earth’s atmosphere, was loose. Mission Control told Glenn to keep the final rocket pack attached to the capsule, hoping to hold the shield in place. When it was time for John Glenn to reenter Earth’s atmosphere, Mission Control lost contact with the capsule. There were 14 long minutes of silence, but then contact was restored; Glenn was alive and on track to land in the Atlantic Ocean, right in line with Katherine’s calculations.

John Glenn was celebrated as a national hero, and Katherine Johnson’s contribution to the mission “made the rounds in the African American community” (184).

In April of 1963, the US Department of Labor published a brochure claiming, “American is for everybody” (185). The photos showed African Americans in various jobs, including Katherine Johnson at her desk at NASA, and the text addressed “the social and economic progress” of the past 100 years (185). In August of that same year, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was organized, and approximately 300,000 people marched to the National Mall, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Shetterly suggests that Dorothy Vaughan and the other African Americans working at NASA had achieved the dream Dr. King spoke about. Dorothy was celebrated for 20 years of service. However, there were still very few Black people working at NASA; there were only five African American engineers and 16 mathematicians. One of the problems was the community outside of the laboratory, where racial segregation still took place.

One day, Katherine Johnson saw a new family at her church and introduced herself. It was Christine Mann Darden, now married with two daughters. Christine had gone to college with Katherine’s daughter, and she and Katherine had met briefly years earlier. Christine started working at NASA, becoming “part of the next generation of women” led by women like Katherine, Mary, and Dorothy (189). Although Katherine and Christine never worked together, they became friends outside the laboratory.

Even through tragedies like the death of three astronauts during the Apollo 1 mission, NASA never lost sight of its goal of putting a human on the Moon. The mission would take six days and include 21 hours to explore the Moon’s surface. Katherine Johnson’s job was to calculate the relationship between the part of the spacecraft that would remain in orbit around the Moon and the part that would land on the Moon’s surface. She later described the task as “the highlight of her career at NASA” (192). She often stayed in the lab for 14-16 hours a day, working with the engineers to anticipate any possible problem.

The mission to send a man to the Moon cost $24 billion ($156 billion adjusted for inflation), and some people argued that this money could have been better spent at home on Earth. They also argued that more astronauts and engineers should be Black because “outer space belonged to people of every race” (195). Few people knew about the contributions of Black women like Dorothy, Mary, Katherine, and Christine.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon as 600 million people watched on television. Katherine Johnson watched from a hotel in Pennsylvania, unable to relax until the mission was completed and the astronauts were safe. 400,000 people had worked on the mission, but landing on the Moon was the most difficult part; the astronauts believed that there was a 50% chance of success. Katherine, however, believed in her numbers, and she always “expect[ed] progress to be made” (197).

The whole mission was a success, and Katherine looked forward to the next mission, maybe to Mars or “on a grand tour” of the solar system (198). It would be difficult, but Katherine knew that their team was capable and that “once you took the first step, anything was possible” (198).