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Hidden figures
Chapter 1

Summary
It’s 1943 and Melvin Butler, the personnel officer at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, has a
problem: one of Langley’s divisions needs to hire 100 junior physicists and mathematicians, 100 assistant
computers, 75 minor laboratory apprentices, 125 helper trainees, and 50 stenographers and typists
immediately
...
” Since the NACA operates out of the Langley airfield, its scientists are in
the midst of army planes, which reminds them that the physics and engineering problems they are working
out will have real world implications
...
To build and design planes, aircraft
manufacturers work daily with scientists at the Langley laboratory
...
At this time, mathematicians are mostly women, and Melvin Butler spreads the word
throughout colleges and universities in the South that Langley needs math graduates to come and work
...
Under much pressure, Roosevelt gives in, which
means that jobs at Langley open up to black women
...
Because Hampton, VA is segregated, the black women work
in a separate workspace on the west side of the laboratory, called West Area
...
He does, however, affix a
metal sign to a bathroom that reads COLORED
...
She also signals to the reader,
through her mention of the army planes, that her story is not simply about the forgotten computers—it’s also
about the significance of Langley and the technology developed there to the American military and to scientific
history
...
She also positions the reader at a point in history when US aerospace technology
was advancing more rapidly than ever before, demonstrating again the role technology and science will play
in her story
...
She points to the significance of the fact that black women started working alongside white women at
Langley at a point when the South operated under segregationist Jim Crow laws
...
This will continue to be true throughout the book
...
The women who work there fold socks and trousers for the black and
white soldiers who come to Camp Pickett for basic training
...
Most of the women have left behind jobs working as domestic
servants or laborers to work in the laundry
...
Nonetheless, it feels like a lot to them
...
Teachers are considered
very accomplished in the black community because they are thought of as the leaders of social movements
...
She lives in a large Victorian house with her in-laws
and their parents
...
The laundry is 40 miles away from her home, which means she has to
live in worker housing during the week
...
She wants to use it to send them to college
...

Dorothy knows the money she is making at the laundry will buy school clothes and help her send her children
to school
...

Dorothy was born in 1910 in Kansas City, Missouri
...
Susie taught Dorothy to read before she started school, which
allowed her to skip two grades
...
Dorothy graduated early from
high school as valedictorian, then won a full-tuition scholarship to Wilberforce University, the country’s oldest
private black college
...

At Wilberforce, Dorothy’s professors recommended her for a master’s degree in mathematics at Howard
University, which was the best black university in the country
...
Dorothy decided not to go to graduate school, however
...
She stayed home to help out and to
ensure that her sister could also go to college
...
At the time, black colleges got calls from schools nationwide requesting
teachers and Dorothy, through her alma mater, landed a job at a school in rural Illinois
...
After losing a
second teaching job, she took a job as a waitress until 1941, when she took a teaching job in Farmville
...
The two married
...

In 1943, Dorothy goes to the post office and sees Melvin Butler’s bulletin advertising jobs at the NACA
...
The article is called “Paving the Way for
Women Engineers” and under the headline, Dorothy spots a picture of eleven “well-dressed Negro women,”
all graduates of Hampton’s engineering school
...
That spring, she fills out the application
...
Shetterly is about to show us how much more they are capable of, and how much
they are able to prove themselves once they get higher level jobs
...

Dorothy’s work as a teacher signals that she is a woman from a middle class background and an important
member of her community
...

Dorothy’s work at Camp Pickett points to the sacrifices many black women had to make at this time simply
to ensure a future for their children
...
Due to racial discrimination and economic inequality, black families
had to work harder than whites for less pay to ensure their children’s’ futures
...
This is cruel and tragic
...
From her work at Camp Pickett, it’s clear that Dorothy is hardworking
and focused, but this passage makes clear her intelligence and ambition
...

The fact that Dorothy made it into the master’s program at Howard as a young woman signals that she was a
rare talent
...
Women were expected to take care
of their families, pursue stable careers, and work in the service of others uncomplainingly before they could
follow their own ambitions
...
Though she was brilliant enough to get into a master’s
program in math, Dorothy faces tremendous obstacles in finding work, even as a teacher
...

Serendipity and luck play a massive role in the fates of Shetterly’s computers, and this is only the first of many
moments in the book that demonstrate this
...
However, it’s not only luck—her preparation for the role, her intelligence, and her
persistence ultimately allow her to succeed
...
Dorothy is a member of her local parent-teacher association and a founding board member of her
town’s chapter of the NAACP
...
Nevertheless, she maintains high standards, to the point of correcting errors
she finds in the school’s textbooks and contacting their publishers
...
She also teaches a class called “Wartime Mathematics,” using math
to help students understand household budgeting and wartime rations, and writing fighter plane trajectories
into her lesson plans
...
To take the job she has to leave her family and the school and
town she loves behind
...


Dorothy waits at the Greyhound bus station to board the bus to Newport News, 137 miles away from
Farmville
...
On the bus, she wonders what
it’ll be like to work with white people, whether she will be homesick, and how she will adjust
...

Dorothy had supported her husband’s travels for his hotel work
...
The Vaughan children played around the hotel grounds,
though they were forbidden to set foot inside
...
Dorothy listened to the Colemans tell stories about their oldest
daughter, Katherine Coleman, who was very bright
...
Like Dorothy, Katherine
worked as a math teacher, and she too had graduated early from high school and enrolled at a nearby black
college
...
He’d graduated from Howard
in 1929 and taken a seat in the school’s master’s degree program in mathematics—which was the same
opportunity Dorothy had been offered but had been unable to accept because of the Great Depression
...
Pearson, which brought an end to graduate school admission policies that explicitly
barred black students
...
The state of Virginia refused to comply, and instead set up a fund to subsidize
the graduate educations of black students if they pursued them outside of Virginia, a practice that continued
until 1950
...
Katherine Coleman was accepted to West
Virginia University in Morgantown in the summer of 1940
...
Both Katherine and Dorothy
followed parallel trajectories in that they chose not to pursue master’s degrees even though they had the
opportunity to do so
...
Just like
Dorothy, Katherine will ultimately find herself at Langley, too, in a coincidence that resembles destiny
...
Here, Dorothy is shown to be
hardworking, detail-oriented, and particularly interested in how math and military technology intersect
...

To take advantage of her new opportunities, Dorothy had to be willing to give up the security and comfort of
her home and family, something that would have been very difficult to do
...

Dorothy’s insecurity about her decisions points to the larger economic insecurities that plagued black people
attempting to seek their fortunes in white-dominated work places
...

Though Katherine was younger than Dorothy, the two women’s families knew one another, and, though they
didn’t know it yet, their paths would cross again and again going forward from this point
...


Black men and women in mathematics were divided by the opportunities available to them
...
Though they were perhaps equally gifted, they did not have the same opportunities to make a mark
in their field
...
The opportunities Dorothy and Katherine were able to pursue came because of
the foundation laid down by lawyers and activists before them, again highlighting the importance of
community to the forward progress of African-Americans
...
The odds were stacked against women—
especially black women—at this time, because, in general, society expected them to prioritize the home above
their careers and ambitions
...

By emphasizing the role of destiny here in bringing Dorothy and Katherine together at the same time at the
NACA, Shetterly highlights the fact that their fates are deeply intertwined
...

Chapter 4

Summary
Dorothy Vaughn disembarks from her bus in Newport News, a booming hub of military manufacturing
activity
...
She hears the port band play “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Carolina in My
Mind,” La Marseillaise”—a mix of sounds from the soldiers’ various hometowns
...
The city’s
population has recently exploded and the economy is booming
...
Newsreels before and after each show keep Americans up to date with battlefield
exploits
...
A federally-funded housing project for workers in Newsome Park, designed to fix the sudden
housing shortage, is where Dorothy will eventually live
...
Complicated Jim Crow
laws make public transportation confusing for both blacks and whites, slowing down travel for everyone
...

This moment in history proves especially confusing for black soldiers, who are called upon to serve their
country while at the same time facing discrimination and prejudice in their daily lives
...
S
...
On the front lines, black soldiers can’t serve alongside whites and they
have to use segregated showers
...

Analysis
The wartime atmosphere makes clear the importance—moral, patriotic, and historical—of the job that Dorothy
is about to do
...


Dorothy is but a small part of a massive transformation taking place in Newport News as a result of the war
...

Shetterly indicates that every aspect of the black worker’s life was fraught at this time, demonstrating how
difficult it was for any African-Americans to carve out a financial foothold for themselves, given that even
taking the bus to and from work posed a risk
...
This
contradiction was particularly stark in light of the fact that they were fighting against racial prejudice and
discrimination abroad
Chapter 5

Summary
Dorothy Vaughn swears the US Civil Service Oath and accepts her employee badge, a blue metal circle with
an image of her face on it and the winged NACA logo on either side
...

The Langley Laboratory was established in 1917, starting with a single wind tunnel
...
The city’s
clerk of courts sold parcels of land to the federal government to test planes and perform aeronautical research
...
In 1942, the entire structure
was painted dark green to camouflage the facility against possible attack by Axis forces
...

Dorothy gets dropped off at the Warehouse Building
...
The room is full of black women using calculating machines to research
aeronautical engineering at its most finely-detailed level
...
The white women in the East
Area come from schools like Sweetbriar and Hollins, while the West Area computers come from black colleges
like the Virginia State College for Negroes and Hampton Institute
...
The
previous May, it was their photo Dorothy had seen in the newspaper
...
Virginia
parcels out assignments to Margerey and Blanche who then pass them down to the other computers, including
the West Area Computers
...
The
American aircraft industry has gone from the country’s forty-third largest industry in 1938 to the world’s
number one in 1943
...
He tells them
“the war is taking place in the laboratories as well as on the battlefields
...
In the cafeteria after this speech, West Computers
have to sit together at lunch
...

The black women have had to learn to accept things like this, in spite of the fact that equality in the workplace

has recently been mandated by Executive Order 8802
...

Miriam Mann steals the COLORED COMPUTERS sign and puts it in her purse
...
Mann steals it again
...
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is readying itself to take her case to the Supreme Court
...
S
...
And yet, her ride to West Area highlights the fact that the organization doesn’t yet think of her as
equal to her white peers
...
By highlighting the fact that Langley saved the city of Hampton, Shetterly is
emphasizing its centrality to the surrounding community, and its importance to the city’s financial well-being
...
Dorothy,
as an employee at Langley, will now have the chance to grow with it
...
Here was a place where the mathematical skill that set her apart would finally
be put to good use
...
Dorothy is just as qualified to be at Langley as her white counterparts
...
However, racial relations are not changing at the pace of scientific innovation
...

Frank Knox’s speech is momentous for all the NACA’s scientists, but his visit is all the more significant
because of the presence of black men and women in the audience
...

The Colored Computers sign is an important indicator of the second-class status black employees had at
Langley
...

Mann’s rebelliousness is not only a means of fighting for her dignity and that of the other black computers at
Langley
...

Chapter 6

Summary
Black readers follow the exploits of the Tuskegee Airmen in the press
...
Davis Jr
...
They fly Bell P-39 Airacobras, then Republic P47 Thunderbolts and then, by the summer of 1944, North American P-51 Mustangs
...
Langley is one of the United States’ most powerful secret
weapons
...
Famous people frequent the laboratory:

Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracey, and Myrna Loy
...
”
NACA scientists drive salesmen in department stores crazy by doing things like dismantling toasters to check
their quality
...
White
boys from MIT and Virginia Tech fight to enter the place where Dorothy has already won a spot
...
Two days a week after work, Dorothy and
the other new computers take immersion classes in the fundamental theory of aerodynamics
...
Dorothy goes from
being a teacher at the head of the classroom to a student
...

In the early days of flight, aeronautics evolved quickly
...
The wind tunnel offers an opportunity to research flight without the
danger of death
...
Other tools include the Variable-Density Tunnel, the Free-Flight Tunnel, the Two-Foot Smoke-Flow
Tunnel, the Eleven-Inch High-Speed Tunnel and the Sixteen-Foot High-Speed Tunnel
...

Dorothy learns that fighter planes are complicated tools that can be deployed in many different situations on
the battlefield
...
Sometimes, all Dorothy sees as a result of this
testing are columns of equations
...

Either way, Dorothy’s apprentice work as a mathematician is making a difference in the war effort
...
S
...

Analysis
The Tuskegee Airmen are black World War II soldiers
...
Ironically, they aren’t granted the rights of full citizens by their own government at home
...
Scientists there tend to be regarded askance by the locals, even as their
status grows on the national stage
...
This makes it all the more
extraordinary that Dorothy and other black computers have made a place for themselves there
...
She has to start over as a student and learn about new
concepts and ideas if she wants to succeed in her new role
...
Therefore, Langley symbolizes the frontier of American industry and intelligence
...

Just because Dorothy is smart enough to get a spot at Langley doesn’t mean her work will afford her the
respect she deserves: Dorothy’s progress at Langley is undermined both because she is African-American and
because she is a woman
...
Langley is famous, but Dorothy’s work there is not
glamorous and sometimes it can even be tedious and unrewarding
...
The air raids on Japan resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians and, at the same time,
helped to bring about an end to WWII
...
She plans to move her children in, suggesting that she will leave
Farmville for good and move to Newport News
...
The Newsome Park Community Center is directed by a
man named Eric Epps, an activist who was fired from his teaching job for fighting for equal pay
...
It’s Dorothy’s first apartment that is hers alone since she was a young teacher
...
They begin to grow apart
...
Much of the state’s woodland area
has been paved over to make room for military bases and their accoutrements
...
After that comes an uncertain period
...

Some employers who hired black workers during the war return to discriminatory hiring practices after it ends
...
Byrd thinks of segregation
as sacred, and he does everything he can to keep the poor of all races divided against one another
...
Newsome Park
is also under siege, as white neighbors attempt to dismantle the black community’s property
...
She goes to see Marian Anderson sings with her friend Miriam Mann
...
It’s one she decides to take—another example of courage helping her to overcome the obstacles
placed in the way of black, female workers at the time
...
This community will be as
important as Langley itself when it comes to giving Dorothy and her family some semblance of normalcy
...

The war has drastically changed the area around Langley, but as the fighting ends, the flourishing defense
economy it helped give rise to threatens to disappear
...
Opportunities granted because of the war can easily be taken away
...
Even the small progress African-Americans in the workforce have made suddenly seems as if it’s
going to disappear thanks to the machinations of cruel politicians and racist employers
...
She seeks solace in the work of great black artists, just as she once looked for inspiration to the
black computers who first integrated Langley
...
Because he can’t work, his school principal offers
his yearlong teaching contact Katherine instead
...
A year after she left, the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund filed suit against the state of Virginia for equal teacher pay
...
Norfolk went to the US
Supreme Court, which ordered Virginia to bring black teachers’ salaries up to the white teachers’ level
...

Katherine loves West Virginia and she always makes sure that people know that she is from there, rather than
Virginia
...
Though it was not a
bastion of equality (West Virginia was still segregated), West Virginia offered its black citizens slightly more
space and dignity than Virginia did
...

During the Depression, income from Katherine’s family’s farm fell
...
(It was here that Dorothy
Vaughan’s husband, Howard, and Joshua would later become friends
...
At one point, a French
countess Katherine was serving discovered that Katherine understood French and told the administration; after
that, Katherine worked in the kitchen with the resort’s Parisian chef
...
There she met the brother of President William Howard Taft
and taught him his Roman numerals
...
She worked under math professor William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor
...
Claytor himself wanted
to join the country’s top math departments, but found his options limited to a job at West Virginia State College
because he was black
...

Katherine meets her husband Jimmy while she is teaching
...
She
enrolls in the 1940 summer session and is accepted by the white student body, but she drops out at the end of
the summer session after she discovers she is pregnant
...
She wonders sometimes what would have
happened if she’d continued to pursue a career as a research mathematician, but she is happy to work as a
schoolteacher
...

Analysis
Katherine is able to obtain a teaching job because her husband is too sick to take on the work, but she also
doesn’t get paid what she should simply because of her timing
...
As was the case for many black women at the time, her fortune depends
on luck, timing and, often, unfortunately, the whims of white men in positions of power
...

Starting when Katherine was young, people with the power to help her tended to be charmed by her and to
recognize her intelligence and talents
...
Because she
was black and a woman, her brilliance and her knack for displaying it in front of the right people would turn
out to be a major advantage, helping her to overcome many of the obstacles racial prejudice and gender
discrimination put in her way
...
Because he wants to make sure Katherine
doesn’t meet the same fate he did, he does everything he can to ensure her progress, an example of how
members of the black scientific community propped one another up to make up for the lack of institutional
support
...
In this way, her gender holds her back from pursuing a career as much
as her race
...


Character Analysis
Margot Shetterly
Author of Hidden Figures and the daughter of a climate research scientist who worked at Langley Research
Center
...
Shetterly was inspired to
write Hidden Figures when she realized that the community of black professionals and intellectuals within
which she grew up was a result of a unique intersection of war, technology, civil rights, and the persistent
efforts of underrepresented scientists, particularly black women
...
Though
only a few of the pioneering black female mathematicians who work at Langley are still alive, Shetterly
manages to interview many people who knew them, and she spends years writing their story
...
Robert B
...
Robert B
...
He is a supportive father who maintains a close relationship with his daughter
...


Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson
Katherine Coleman (who took on the married names Goble and Johnson) is a passionate, outspoken black
mathematician who works in the Flight Research Division at the Langley Research Center
...
Upon joining the segregated NACA workforce in 1953, she refuses to use the colored bathrooms
or to allow prejudice to make her feel small
...
In one memorable event,
astronaut John Glenn—who doesn’t trust the calculations performed by NASA’s new IBM computers—asks
Johnson to double-check the numbers for his flight trajectory and landing, and she does so successfully
...
Johnson is one of the only living
computers Shetterly features in the book and one of the few Shetterly meets with in person
...
She is extremely pragmatic
and fiercely devoted to her church and her children
...
At the NACA, she climbs from computer to section head, supervising the
onboarding and placement of computers who go on to become leaders in their fields, like Katherine Johnson
and Mary Jackson
...
Over the course of the book, she evolves from an ambitious young woman to a vocal force
for equality at the NACA, where she fights to make sure women are paid fairly for their titles and duties
...
She is
extremely bright, and she finds herself frustrated when the intelligence that landed her a job at Langley
doesn’t shield her from discrimination at the hands of her white colleagues
...
Engineer Kazimierz
Czarnecki gives her a job working outside of the computer pool, in aerodynamics
...
Her persistence pays off, and she makes history, becoming
the Langley Research Center’s first black female engineer
...
She is dedicated to her community and to the concept of the double V, which
drives her to host open houses at the NACA and to do everything she can to draw young black students into
its gates
...
She is one of the four women at the center of Hidden Figures, and was once an
employee of Margot Shetterly’s father
...
She is from a
large family and is renowned for her strong work ethic and intellectual curiosity
...
She graduates from a master’s program
at Virginia State University with a plan to apply for professorships at Hampton Institute and Norfolk State,
but when she goes to the placement office, they steer her towards NASA instead
...
When,
after several years in the same position, Christine feels stuck in her job as a data analyst, she complains to
the head of her department, asking why men tend to be promoted while many women have been let go due
to budget cuts
...
She ultimately receives a PhD in engineering
...
Christine is younger than the other women
featured in Hidden Figures and she represents the generation of women after Katherine Johnson, Dorothy
Vaughan and Mary Jackson, who grow up in a time of more freedom and opportunity for black people
...
She treats the West Area women as equals
and even invites a few of them to work-related social affairs at her home, something that makes her a pariah
in the eyes of her white peers
...
Margerey eventually published scientific papers under her own
name, making her an early female pioneer at Langley
...
Confident, charismatic and wellprepared for his role, he represents the American dream of spaceflight and technological prowess
...


Philip Randolph
Philip Randolph is an African-American Civil Rights leader and labor organizer who fights for equal rights for
African-American workers
...
C when President Roosevelt refuses to outlaw segregation in
hiring
...


Henry Pearson
Henry Pearson is the head of the branch of the Flight Research Division where Katherine Johnson works
...


William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor
William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor is a black research mathematician who graduates from Howard
University in 1929 and earns a PhD in math from the University of Pennsylvania in 1933 (only the third black
person in the country to do so)
...


The Double V
“The Double V,” short for “The Double Victory,” is a term first mentioned in a letter sent to The Pittsburgh
Courier by an activist
...
For surely
those who perpetrate these ugly prejudices here are seeking to destroy our democratic form of government
just as surely as the Axis forces
...
The
Double V is a guiding principle for the black female computers at Langley who are uniquely identified with
this concept, since they dedicate themselves professionally to serving their country during wartime and
personally to proving their abilities in the face of discrimination, as well as uplifting other black Americans
...


“COLORED” Signs
Throughout the offices at Langley are signs indicating where black employees are and are not allowed to go
...
When, in 1940, Miriam Mann (a member of the first generation of black computers)
steals the “Colored Computers” sign and puts it in her purse, and then continues to steal it until the sign
stops reappearing, what she’s really doing is allowing the black women at the NACA to begin to regain some
of their dignity in the face of the prejudice and discrimination they encounter daily
...
Afterwards, the black computers continue to eat at
a separate table, but the removal of the sign marks the removal of a silent but constant reminder that the
they are considered inferior by their colleagues, not good enough to eat at the same table or share the same
bathrooms with white women
...
Later, chief officials at the NACA remove the “Colored” signs from the
bathrooms, marking the point when true integration at the NACA finally begins
...
In almost all cases, pieces of
literature will be centered a theme or a number of them
...
Jim Crow
laws mandated segregation between blacks and whites in the NACA’s home state of Virginia, and AfricanAmericans who lived there had to make do with “separate but equal” bathrooms, water fountains, parks,
restaurants and schools
...
Hidden Figures author Margot Lee Shetterly examines
the long-term impact of this segregation and racial discrimination at an international, national and

interpersonal scale
...

Shetterly shows the impact of racism at the international level by highlighting the racial implications of WWII
...
Hidden Figures takes place against the backdrop of World War II, with
Americans (black and white) following with horror the torture and deportation of Jewish people in Europe
...
S
...
For example, restaurants in Virginia readily served enemy prisoners-of-war, some of
whom were kept in detention facilities near Langley
...
S
...
Shetterly writes,
“the contradiction ripped Negroes asunder, individually and as a people, their American identities in all-out,
permanent war with their black souls
...
The NACA’s segregated workplace—like segregated workplaces nationwide—created cruel and taxing
obstacles that kept black employees from performing to the best of their abilities
...
White computers rode a special bus to the office while black computers had to walk, drive, or
take public transportation
...
Black computers were only allowed to use bathrooms
designated “colored“ (which were few and far between), while all other restrooms were off-limits
...
Because of the obstacles the NACA put in their way, black
computers had to fight hard to succeed in the very duties they’d been hired by the NACA to perform
...
Shetterly writes, ”It was no small irony that Woodrow Wilson,
the President who had authorized the creation of the NACA and who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his
promotion of humanitarianism through the League of Nations, was the very same one who was hell-bent on
making racial segregation in the Civil Service part of his enduring legacy
...

In the face of relentless racism and without much institutional support, the West Area computers succeeded
in their jobs and became crucial assets to the NACA
...
On Katherine Johnson’s first day as a computer for Langley’s Flight Research Division, a
white man stood up and walked away when she sat beside him
...
” Later in Katherine Johnson’s
career, astronaut John Glenn picked Johnson over everyone else on her team (male and female, white and
black) to double-check the computer’s calculations for his return trajectory from space
...
Likewise, after Mary Jackson
reported an incident of workplace racism to an engineer at the NACA, the engineer invited her to work for
him on the spot
...
In tracing Jackson’s life story, Shetterly shows that the NACA
only hurt itself by segregating its workplace and nearly denying Mary Jackson the ability to fulfill her potential
...
At an international, national and interpersonal level,
she shows how racism impacted not only the oppressed but the people in power who were doing the
oppressing, requiring the United States and the NACA to act in self-defeating ways that, illogically, worked
against their own prosperity and success
...
Extended family, the church, and civic organizations like the Girl Scouts all played
a part in their achievements
...
Finally, Shetterly shows how this community
effort allowed the West Area computers to lay the foundations for the success of the generations of black
professionals who came after them
...
These communities helped set the stage for each
of their professional achievements
...
She was mentored by “a gifted young math professor,” William Waldron Schieffelin
Claytor, one of the first black men to earn a PhD from Penn, “who created advanced math classes just for
her
...
Clearly, Katherine Johnson was wildly talented, but
she could never have made it to the NACA without mentors
...
When she won a place at an all black college in Ohio, a black community
church underwrote a scholarship for her and marked the occasion with an eight-page pamphlet that it
distributed to members
...
” This shows, again, that Vaughan did not achieve her goals
alone, but through a collective effort
...
Activists like A
...
“The social and organizational changes occurring at Langley were buoyed by the civil rights forces

gathering momentum in the country,” Shetterly writes
...

Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson’s time at the NACA coincided with the internal relaxation of some of its strict
segregationist codes
...
About the NACA, Shetterly writes, “True social contact across the races was well nigh
impossible, yet within the confines of their offices, relationships cultivated over intense days and long years
blossomed into respect, fondness and even friendship
...
” Shetterly emphasizes the importance of community at the NACA, showing how even its partial
integration helped spur the West Area computers on to greater success than they would have achieved
alone
...
Because of the relative freedom the Langley base offered, “The Negro employees
began attending center wide events such as the annual Christmas party… Dorothy Vaughan’s children
counted the days until the laboratory’s giant picnic, where they could romp and play with the other kids and
eat their fill of grilled hot dogs and hamburgers
...

The women who benefitted from community support, in turn, did everything they could to provide that same
support to other African-Americans in their neighborhoods and at the NACA, paving the way for black
engineers and mathematicians who would come after them
...
that folks came to expect to see her
broad smile and firm handshake wherever the professional set of the black community gathered
...

Mary Jackson, after reaching a senior technical position in her field, took a demotion at the age of 58 to join
the human resources department, where she could more easily fight for equal opportunity hiring
...
This was a direct
result of Jackson having benefited from community support early on in her career and making a commitment
to help smooth the way for black women who came after her
...

Although the women in Hidden Figures accomplished a great deal, none of them would have been able to
do so without the support of their communities, both at home and at the NACA
...


Luck, Persistent Action, and Hard Work
Pioneering black computers like Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson worked very hard
...
Shetterly argues that hard work and persistence set the stage for luck to make a
difference in a person’s life, and she uses the term “serendipity” to describe what happens when random
chance collides with preparedness
...

Black computers like Johnson and Vaughan demonstrated a unique grasp of what Shetterly calls the “longterm impact of persistent action
...
Katherine Johnson’s calculations wound up in significant scientific papers, but Johnson was forbidden
to sit in on the editorial meetings where these papers were reviewed and scrutinized
...
“Her requests were gentle,” Shetterly writes, “like the trickle of water that eventually forces its
way through rock…
...
”
Finally, she broke through
...
Who were they, they must have figured,
to stand in the way of someone so committed to making a contribution, so convinced of the quality of her
contribution that she was willing to stand up to the men whose success—or failure—might tip the balance
in the outcome of the Cold War?” Here, Shetterly shows how Johnson’s unique diligence set her apart and
helped her achieve her dreams
...
At 50, realizing she was going to be put out of a job
by the IBM computers that were rapidly replacing her team, she reinvented herself as a programmer,
teaching herself to code
...
Here, she shows
how Vaughan, like Johnson, demonstrated unflagging resilience so that she could achieve her goals
...
Shetterly writes that Katherine Johnson’s friends and colleagues tended to think of
her as “lucky,” explaining that it had always been her “great talent to be in the right place at the right time
...
Johnson applied for a position that same year
...
” Shetterly
writes, highlighting the role Johnson believed luck played in her career
...

She writes, “In 1974, an equal opportunity program gave Gloria [Champine] the chance to advance from a
clerical position in the Dynamic Loads Division into a faster-track administrative position in the Acoustics
Division
...
” Shetterly again shows
that luck—in this case related to timing—played a crucial role in the progress of women and people of color
made at the NACA in this era
...
Shetterly calls this combination of luck

and hard work “serendipity,” a term she applies to the life-changing opportunities that present themselves
when random chance collides with preparedness
...
Shetterly
writes, “Simple luck is the random birthright of the hapless
...
It comes from being in a position to seize
opportunity from the happy marriage of time, place, and chance
...
” Shetterly’s argument is that hard work, perseverance and luck all
combined to allow Johnson to build a lasting legacy
...
After winning a role in the
Acoustics Division, she competed for “an even higher position as the Technical Assistant to the Division Chief
of Space Systems, a job that had previously been held by men
...
A friend in HR later told her that they kept interviewing her because they didn’t want
to give the position to a woman, but ultimately they did hire her because she was the best candidate for the
job
...

Though it was often luck and good timing that landed them their jobs, while they were at NACA, the best
female computers had no choice but to work hard and persevere
...
These women fought for acceptance and for equal
opportunity by taking advantage of chance and meeting it with preparedness and persistence
...
Social and Political Progress
During World War II, military and computing technology advanced rapidly, a trend that continued through
the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first
...
” She contrasts the
high-speed evolution of defense and computing technology with the slow progress of the movement for
equality and civil rights, which moved haltingly in the face of persistent opposition
...
Shetterly also emphasizes the important advances made
in the field of electronic computers during this period, as they replaced human mathematicians in the NACA’s
mathematical research departments
...
”
Shetterly counterbalances the rapid evolution of computers and planes with the stunted progress of civil
rights legislation
...

“Social progress, on the other hand, did not always move in a straight line, as the descent from the hopeful
years after the Civil War into the despairing circumstances of the Jim Crow laws proved
...
Houston was wearing his military uniform, proof that he’d

served
...
Even as
the United States saw great advances at home and abroad, it found itself left behind by more progressive
nations when it came to human rights
...
S
...
Black Americans pointed to Russia’s willingness to educate all its
citizens—putting them ahead of the U
...
when it came to technological capability—while segregation meant
resources were often withheld from black students
...
The schools would stay closed for five
years, creating a group of children known as the “Lost Generation,” some of whom never made up for what
they lost in education
...

Shetterly also contrasts the NACA’s technological foresight with the backwards view of gender that plagued
the organization
...
After hiring Katherine Johnson to work for the Flight Research Division, for example,
Henry Pearson fought to avoid paying her what she was worth
...
His wife did not work; rumor had it that Mrs
...
” Shetterly implies here that men like Pearson were not
uncommon at places like the NACA, where women were not seen as equals by the people who hired them
...
By contrast, women “had to wield their
intellects like a scythe, hacking away against the stubborn underbrush of low expectations
...
“A woman
who had worked closely with an engineer on the content of a research report was rarely rewarded by seeing
her name alongside his on the final publication
...
They were women after all
...

Through the first half of the twentieth century, as aerospace and computing technology advanced more
quickly than ever, the United States lagged behind the rest of the world when it came to gender equality and
civil rights
...
About Katherine Johnson, Shetterly
writes, “The broader implication of her role as a black woman in a still-segregated country, helping to light
the fuse that would propel that country to achieve one of its greatest ambitions, was a topic that would
occupy her mind for the rest of her life
...


Context

Biography of the Author
Margot Lee Shetterly was raised in a middle class black community in Hampton, Virginia
...
She attended the University of Virginia, where she studied business, and then she moved to New
York, where she worked at several prestigious investment banking firms and media startups
...
To support her
writing, Shetterly has received fellowships from the Alfred P
...
Hidden Figures was released as both a book and an Oscar-nominated movie
in 2016
...

Context of the Book
Margot Lee Shetterly was raised in a middle class black community in Hampton, Virginia
...
She attended the University of Virginia, where she studied business, and then she moved to New
York, where she worked at several prestigious investment banking firms and media startups
...
To support her
writing, Shetterly has received fellowships from the Alfred P
...
Hidden Figures was released as both a book and an Oscar-nominated movie
in 2016
...




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