Starting in the 1950s, her invaluable mathematical calculations had helped push NASA’s space exploration to untold heights. When Katherine Johnson retired from NASA in 1986, she capped off an astonishing career as one of the most invaluable “computers” in the history of the agency. The film’s director, Theodore Melfi, explained that parts of their story were known but that the segregated computer group existed only for a short time before IBM brought in the first computers in 1961.NASA/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images Katherine Johnson at her desk while working for NASA in 1962. In the late 1980s, a Nasa researcher noticed the black women in agency photographs from the period. But the in the pre-civil rights era, African Americans occupied a segregated wing and used separate facilities. They were assigned the work of reading, calculating and plotting test data. The agency considered women more patient and detail-oriented than men – and they could be paid less. Following an executive order prohibiting racial discrimination in the defence industry, Nasa’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (Naca) began recruiting African Americans with college degrees in the 1940s for the computer pool. The story of Nasa’s black female mathematicians has always been celebrated within the agency, but not widely known about beyond. “Up until recently, a woman’s contribution to history has often been dismissed, discounted and often at times even erased from public acknowledgment,” he told the Directors Guild of America last month. Pharrell Williams, one of the film’s executive producers who also wrote several songs for the film, added his voice to calls for women’s role in science to be more widely acknowledged. “We’re out there but it’s going to take all of us coming together – just like going into space – to get it done or it does not get done,” Monáe said. Their plans include putting on a women-focused pop and tech festival next year. Photograph: Courtesy the Family of Dorothy Johnson Vaughan “But to be portrayed as brilliant-minded, outspoken, to dress sharply and be the voice of a new generation of women – now audiences are going to see a different side of us.”ĭorothy Vaughan in her twenties. “Most of the time we’re portrayed as the maid, the nanny or the secretary,” she said. “But these were two things they could not change – and would not want to – because was a proud black woman.”Ī corresponding breakthrough, said Monáe, was Hollywood’s willingness to make a mainstream film about African-American women. “These women were told that their dreams were not valid because of their gender and the colour of their skin,” said Monáe. Jackson fought through the courts to join courses that would allow her to even be admitted to the Nasa programme. Monáe, who plays Jackson, told the Observer that the three women broke through and changed the face of a white male profession. Glenn’s death at the age of 95 last week, coupled with the film industry’s desire to correct last year’s damaging #OscarSoWhite controversy and celebrate how the women broke through the racial and gender discrimination of an all-male flight research team, suggests the film will now have the momentum to launch itself forcefully into the film awards season. Katherine Johnson at Nasa Langley Research Center in 1980.
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