Book
Review: HIDDEN FIGURES by Margot Lee Shetterly; 2016; history
Although
slavery was outlawed in USA in the 1860's, non-white people were
still treated as inferior for the next hundred years. Excluded from
“white” schools, universities, restaurants, and all but the most
menial jobs; even required in southern states to use separate toilets
and drinking fountains, and separate seating on public buses.
“Colored” women working outside their own homes, could only hope
for work as servants, laundry, or cleaning. They could become
teachers, but only in “black” schools.
The
second World War began to change all that. Firstly, air power became
dominant over tanks and ships. Secondly, most men were required to
join the armed forces. Women often filled the vacancies on factory
assembly lines, a la “Rosie the Riveter”. By 1943, America was
building tens of thousands of planes per year, not only for its own
needs, but for its allies. President Roosevelt signed an executive
order desegregating the defense industry, making government jobs open
to blacks – including black women. The application form for the
Langley Aeronautical Laboratory required no photograph, only the
applicant's qualifications. Black teachers studied mathematics, and
some of them excelled at it.
Dorothy
Vaughan was one such. Her step-mother taught her to read before she
entered school. She was valedictorian of her high school class and
earned a full-tuition scholarship to
Wilberforce
University, the nation's oldest private Negro college. She chose
mathematics as her major. Then came the Great Depression; she
switched to a degree in education and become a teacher to help
support her family. In 1943 she saw a notice in the post office about
a federal agency in Hampton, Virginia, seeking women to fill
mathematics jobs relating to airplanes.
Katherine
Coleman was another girl with special talent in math. She graduated
from high school at age fourteen, then attended West Virginia State
Institute, where a
math
professor, one of the first black PhDs, created advanced classes just
for her. Kathrine married a fellow school teacher, Jimmy Goble, and
raised a family. but in 1952, she and Jimmy moved to Newport News,
Virginia, where he had a good job and she heard that there were jobs
for female mathematicians. She applied, and found she already knew
her boss, Dorothy Vaughan as a neighbor from West Virginia days. She
was hired, and assigned to the Flight Research Division. Three years
later, Jimmy died of a brain tumor. Katherine was a single mom to her
daughters for three years, while continuing her work at Langley. Then
she met an army captain in church, Jim Johnson. In 1959 they married.
In
May, 1957, Soviet Russia launched Sputnik, the first space satellite,
causing panic among many Americans. Russia, once America's ally
against Hitler's Germany, now had the atomic bomb, and with Sputnik,
had the ability to drop one anywhere in America. The nation entered
the space age, and the Langley Research Center, including its staff
of mathematicians became the first home of the National Aeronautics
and Space Agency (NASA).
NASA's
task was more complicated than just handling aircraft. A spacecraft
had to be launched like a missile, had to attain a speed sufficient
to maintain it in continuous orbit. Then, most critical of all, bring
its human cargo safely back to earth in an area of a few square miles
of water where a ship or aircraft will already be waiting. The
“brakes” (retro-rockets) must be applied at a precise spot with
precise force to hit that target area thousands of miles ahead,
considering many factors such as temperature, weight, shape of the
earth (not a perfect sphere, but flattened by a few miles at its
poles.) What if a power source failed in the mechanical computers? A
human computer needed to stand by during the critical entry mode. For
that first spacecraft flight, the human was Katherine Johnson
standing by. In that first re-entry landing, her own brain's data
matched that of the mechanical computer almost exactly.
Vaughan
and Johnson are representative of several hundred human computers, of
course, female and male, white and colored. Their importance is not
only about space travel, but even more about human equality. The
black women mathematicians proved beyond any doubt that high
intelligence and ability occur in humans of any race or gender.
Author
Shetterly provides an interesting corollary to her research: In the
popular TV series “Star Trek” the producer populated the officer
crew of the star ship Enterprise with many races – among them
Lieutenant Uhura, the ship's communications officer and fourth in
command, played by actress Nichelle Nichols. Ms Nichols wrote a
letter of resignation after the first year, in order to pursue her
stage career. At an NAACP fundraiser, she was told that her greatest
fan wanted to meet her. She found herself facing Martin Luther King,
Jr. King never missed an episode, and it was the only TV show his
children were allowed to watch. She thanked him, and mentioned her
resignation. King interrupted her. “You can't leave the show. We
are there because you are there. . . . This is not a black role, this
is not a female role. This is a unique role that brings to life what
we are marching for: equality.” And that is what the black
mathematicians fought for too.
The
book is inspiring but hard to follow, switching back and forth among
several dozen characters. The movie of the same name is easier to
follow, but is without the very helpful index.
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