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White to move and mate in two #627 - Hidden Figures [1]
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Date: 2025-02-13
The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
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Through groups like ACD and Reentry Physics still employed several of the former West Computers,Katherine and others found themselves the only black employees in their branch. They were maybe less visible at work now that segregation had been ended. But they were perhaps more invisible professionally in the black community. The white NASA folks tended to live in enclaves, carpooling together and barbecuing together and sending their kids to school together. They talked about work and imported the hierarchies and nuances of their work lives into their neighborhoods.
The black NASA people spread out among other black professionals, where they were better known as the sorority sister or the member of the church choir or the diehard Hampton Institute alum who never missed a football game. Their neighbors might know they worked at NASA but have no concept of exactly what they did, or how close they were to the headline-grabbing events of the day. Because of the overwhelmingly white public face of the space program, the black engineers, scientists, and mathematicians who were deeply involved with the space race nevertheless lived in its shadows, even within the black community.
Katherine was sensitive to the disconnect. She, like Mary Jackson and many of Langley’s other black employees, had worked hard for years to cultivate interest in math and sciece and space through the networks of their sororities and alumni associations and churches with mixed results. In 1966, however, something had happened that looked like it might give them a tailwind.
Star Trek landed in American homes on September 8, 1966, an NBC network prime-time program. While NASA and the Project Gemini astronauts worked their way through twelve missions in the 1960s, in the fictional 2260s, the starship Enterprise set off from Earth on a peacekeeping and deep-space exploration mission, manned by a multinational, multiracial, mixed-gender crew. The corps, led by the suave, unflappable Captain James T. Kirk, included natives of an advanced United Earth, its history of poverty and war now in the past. Enemies in a former Earth Age labored side by side as colleagues and fellow citizens. Chekov, the Russian ensign; Sulu, the Japanese American helmsman; and the half-human, half-Vulcan first officer, Mr. Spock, added an interstellar touch of diversity. And there, on the bridge, a vision in a red minidress opened viewers’ minds to what a truly democratic future might look like. Lieutenant Uhura, a black woman and proud citizen of the United States of Africa, served as the Enterprise’s communications officer.
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