Hidden Figures

Shetterly begins the tale in 1943, in the middle of World War II, when the demand for military aircraft in the United States skyrocketed. The industry was the “largest industry in the world, the most productive, the most sophisticated, outproducing the Germans by more than three times and the Japanese by nearly five. The facts were clear to all belligerents: the final conquest would come from the sky” (3). Thus, the demand for employees, from engineers to factory workers, was intense.

New designs were constantly being pushed to get a leg up on the enemy, and the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory was where they were tested and reworked. Engineers were needed for this, and each engineer required support staff, including mathematicians to crunch the numbers. A computing group composed entirely of women was formed in 1938. Despite the protests of some of the men, the women turned out to be highly skilled—“better at computing, in fact, than many of the engineers, the men themselves grudgingly admitted” (5). They were made paraprofessionals, rather than full mathematicians, saving Langley money, so they were in great demand.

By 1943, skilled female mathematicians were scarce, as the war created close to full employment. Two years earlier, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which desegregated the defense industry. This led Langley to search for qualified African American women to work as mathematicians.

Chapter 2 introduces one of the main characters, Dorothy, explaining how she came to work in the laundry room at Camp Pickett in Virginia in the summer of 1943. She was born in Missouri but grew up mostly in West Virginia. She skipped two grades, graduating valedictorian of her high school class at only 15 years old. Her hard work and top grades earned her a full scholarship at Wilberforce University in Ohio, one of the nation’s best Black colleges. Though she was recommended for graduate study in mathematics, she felt she should start working to help her family. She earned her education degree and worked as a teacher. After a couple of years, Dorothy ended up in Farmville, Virginia, where she immersed herself in her job of educating and nurturing her students. There she met Howard Vaughan, a hotel bellman, and they married and started a family.

In the spring of 1943, she saw two job ads that caught her eye. One was laundry work at Camp Pickett, while the other was mathematical work having to do with airplanes. She applied for both and the first came through right away. She moved into the workers’ quarters at the camp for the summer and began working while she waited to hear about the second job. 

Dorothy finished her summer work and started a new school year in Farmville. That fall she got word that her application for the mathematics job came through, and she moved to Hampton to start work. The pay was more than double her teaching salary. It was a difficult decision, as her family remained behind in Farmville. Her husband worked at various luxury hotels in neighboring states, and her four children stayed with her husband’s parents, seeing Dorothy only on holidays.

This chapter introduces a second main character, Katherine. She and Dorothy had a fleeting connection one summer in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. That was the location of the famous resort called the Greenbrier, and the previous summer Dorothy and her children moved there while her husband worked at the hotel. Katherine’s father also worked there, and the two families became close. Like Dorothy, Katherine was a gifted math teacher who passed on graduate work to start a family (she completed one semester at West Virginia University before dropping out).