Hidden Figures

Shetterly begins by describing the complexities involved in sending a man into orbit in space and then returning him safely to Earth, as well as the precautions NASA took that extended the timeline. Katherine was directly involved in this by again calculating the flight trajectory. John Glenn was the astronaut selected for this mission, and he was meticulous about getting everything right. Numbers had to be checked and double-checked. Because he was a bit “old school,” he didn’t totally trust the work of the new electronic computers. He asked that the human computer—Katherine—check the numbers, Shetterly writes: “If she says the numbers are good, he told them, I’m ready to go” (217). She got to work and her calculations matched the computer’s.

All the while this was happening, NASA was filming the mission for a documentary. As Shetterly notes, the TV age was coming into its own just as NASA was. The images from behind the scenes, however, did not fully reflect the reality; there were lots of shots of “white guys in white shirts and skinny black ties” but largely hidden from view were the women—both Black and white—who were integral to Langley’s work (217). Finally, on February 20, 1963, a huge television audience watched as Glenn’s spacecraft blasted off, orbited the Earth three times, and reentered the atmosphere—a total success.

The year 1963 was a watershed moment for the civil rights movement, with the famous March on Washington in 1963. Though it is often remembered for Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, Shetterly notes that one of the main organizers was A. Philip Randolph, whose threatened march 20 years earlier led President Roosevelt to issue an executive order that desegregated the federal workforce. One beneficiary of that order, Dorothy, celebrated 20 years at Langley in 1963. Still, Langley needed to do more to integrate its ranks, and in this new era the federal government pushed for more equal opportunity for African Americans. With the space race in full swing, Langley renewed its commitment to recruiting qualified candidates.

Christine was one of those who answered the call. After graduating from Hampton Institute, she earned a master’s degree from Virginia State University. Once she was hired at NASA, she met Katherine at church, and though they never worked together at Langley, they became good friends. Katherine’s work on the trajectory of flight was still front and center, as NASA prepared for the Moon landing at the end of the decade. The new challenge she was involved in was for a landing vehicle to decouple from the vehicle orbiting the Moon and later return to it. Katherine threw herself into the work with her usual zeal.

The last chapter culminates with the Moon landing in the summer of 1969. When that took place, Katherine was in Pennsylvania, on a weekend retreat for her old sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, in which she was still active. Following the news of the lunar orbit in between meetings with her sorority sisters, she was part of a select group of people who worked to make the mission possible. Shetterly reviews Katherine’s life and the many people who made it possible for her to rise to the position she did at NASA and in society. Katherine in turn long worked hard with her colleagues to interest the next generation of young Black women in a career in science and to mentor them in their early professional years. A Black woman involved in space flight, Shetterly notes, even became part of popular culture through the character of Lieutenant Uhura on the TV program Star Trek. Katherine took in the full meaning of the moment, but she knew once the mission was over, work would start on the next goal—Mars and perhaps other planets. Shetterly writes, “One thing built on the next. Katherine Johnson knew: once you took the first step, anything was possible” (246).

The Epilogue is kind of an appendix that allows Shetterly to tell readers what happened to each main character after the story ends in 1969. The highlight of Katherine’s career was her contribution to the space flights and Moon landing of the 1960s, but she continued working on other projects at Langley, including the space shuttle program. Mary continued her work on aerodynamics and took FORTRAN classes until the end of the 1970s. Then, realizing her work probably plateaued, she made a change to the Human Resources Department, becoming the Federal Women’s Program Manager for Langley. It was a way to give back after a long career and continue her work in making sure that women had equal opportunities in science. Christine eventually got placed in an engineering group, where she wrote a FORTRAN program for the standard used to minimize sonic boom based on an aircraft’s specifications. She went on to get a PhD in mechanical engineering. Dorothy retired in 1971, after almost three decades at Langley.