HIDDEN FIGURES

INTRODUCTION

Currently, discrimination and against people of color is still valid since they have been ignored
for a long time the intelligence and capacity of these people and specially women, denying them
many opportunities to develop and show that they are very intelligent and capable of doing the
same as a white person.

For centuries people of color have been victims of racism and discrimination, enslavement and the
denial of many of their rights. People of African descent are part of many societies and their
contributions to them are uncountable; however they have suffered historical discrimination and
marginalization that have placed them in a situation of vulnerability and poverty.

In today’s world racism and discrimination manifest themselves in complex and disturbing ways.
These issues are increasingly becoming an essential element of some political and social problems.
In general racism and discrimination manifest themselves in all major aspects of daily life, such as
employment, education, housing and access to social services, in violations of rights.
DEVELOPMENT

The movie Hidden Figures takes place in the United States during the early sixties, historically
located in the space race between the United States and Russia, to achieve the feat of flying a
rocket into space, the brightest mind of the generation were recruited, for which women were
also requested to perform the function of supercomputers, verifying all the numbers.

The movie based on true events follows the trajectory of African-American women Katherine
Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and the engineer Mary Jackson and how they rose through the ranks
thanks to their intellectual abilities at NASA, a place dominated by white men, which represented
different social obstacles linked to their skin color and the gender stereotypes of the time.

Hidden Figures tells the story of these three women who played a very important role in the space
race against the USSR in times where discrimination based on race and sex was very strong, so
apart from being extremely capable in their respective areas, they were also important activists in
the fight for equal rights. The work of these three women helped, among other things, to calculate
the trajectory of the Friendship 7, capsule in which John Glenn became the first American to enter
orbit.

The United States was quite far behind in the space race; when they entered in competition in
1962, the USSR had already launched Sputnik I (1957), the first living being in orbit, the dog Laika
on Sputnik II (1957) and the first human in orbit, the soviet Yuri Gagarin (1961). In these context,
these three women appear who broke with every scheme and were totally rebellious to the
established system, coming to consider them “human computers” of NASA, achieving all this while
suffering all kinds of discrimination, such as walking several kilometers to use the colored
bathroom and drinking coffee from a coffee maker that people white didn’t want to use.

Katherine Johnson, physicist and mathematician, managed to make the exact calculation of the
Mercury project that put the first American into orbit, she also made calculations for the Apollo 11
mission and the space shuttle that put the first human on the moon in 1969 and was essential in
the Apollo 13 trip in 1970, which had the objective of landing a moon, but which finally had to
abort the mission, due to the explosion of an oxygen tank in the service module, after two days of
travel, thanks Katherine Johnson the crew members managed to return safely.
In 2016, NASA dedicated the Katherine Johnson Computational Building in honor of her
groundbreaking work in space travel. At the age 97, Katherine received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom and celebrated her 56th anniversary with Jim Johnson.

Mary Jackson a mathematician and aerospace engineer, was the first African-American NASA
engineer, achieving the highest position possible for an engineer in the NASA aerospace agency,
she dedicated her work to influencing both the hiring and promotion of women in the company. In
1979, she was named Manager of Langley's Women's Program, where she fought for the
advancement of women of all colors.

Also Dorothy Vaughan, mathematician and theoretical computer scientist, was a respected
mathematician who managed to be the first African-American person to occupy the position of
manager at NASA, as a Fortran specialist, on the frontier of electronic computing, she was
considered one of NASA's most brilliant minds. These three extraordinary women as the
chronology progresses, it is Katherine Johnson who take the leading role, she is reassigned to the
group which is in charge of putting John Glenn into orbit. A movie filled with a large numbers of
moments of racism and social injustice due to how strong racism was at that time in the American
nation. Which leads us to an indignation that can arouse almost any viewer by being part of each
scene where these women are part of an outrage by a society that was indolent for peolple who
are different, moments when Katherine Johnson was forced to travel miles on very trip to the
bathroom or when Mrs. Dorothy is expelled from the library just for trying to read books that
aren't suitable for her color.

Although the ending was a bit far from reality, it seemed as if after a couple of sequences this
problem was completely eliminated when even today it remains latent, something that was not
attacked much in all that material. The music and soundtrack help a lot to alleviate many moments
that borde on the tense, turning it into something more comical.

The achievements and importance of these three women went unnoticed until the premiere of
Hidden Talents, which was nominated for three Oscars, at the 2017 awards celebration.

In the movie you can see and understand the importance of hiring good workers in the company
without discriminating against their race, sex or color since with the help of all its collaborators a
company can rise to the top and it is essential to recognize the key role that the staff play in the
company and the completion of the tasks is necessary for its success.
The story of the movie is based on the abuse of power they had in the sixties, black people were
not well paid for their work, in addition to that they limited certain confidential information, but
the three African- American women were demonstrating their skill and talent in NASA to earn the
respect of their superiors and all their staff and thus demonstrate that a company can grow if all
its employees and bosses have respect and consideration for each other, because the more
capable the work team is, the tasks will be carried out in a better way and they will be able to
reach the stated objective.

KATHERINE JOHNSON BIOGRAPHY

Creola Katherine Johnson, née Coleman, (White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia; August 26, 1918 –
Newport News, Virginia; February 24, 2020) was an American physicist, space scientist and
mathematician, who contributed to United States aeronautics and its space programs. Her
calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were fundamental to the success of the first
and subsequent manned space flights in her country. During his 35-year career at NASA and her
predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), she earned a reputation
for mastering complex manual calculations and contributed to the pioneering use of computers to
perform tasks. The space agency highlighted her historic role as one of the first African-American
women to work as a NASA scientist. Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch
windows, and emergency return routes for Project Mercury space flights, including those of
astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in space.
orbit, and rendezvous routes for the Apollo lunar module and command module on flights to the
Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the start of the space shuttle program and she
worked on plans for a mission to Mars. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded her the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a year later, NASA astronaut Leland D. Melvin presented her
with the Snoopy Award and a NASA Group Achievement Award. Taraji P. Henson portrayed
Johnson's role as the main film character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, she received the
United States Congressional Gold Medal. In 2021 she was inducted into the National Women's Hall
of Fame.

DOROTHY VAUGHAN BIOGRAPHY

Dorothy Johnson Vaughan (Kansas City, Missouri, September 20, 1910 - November 10, 2008) was
an African-American mathematician who worked at the NACA (National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics), an agency that preceded NASA. At age 7 her parents, Leonard and Anne Johnson,
moved to Morgantown, West Virginia. Dorothy graduated from Beechurst High School in 1925,
and in 1929 received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Wilberforce University. Before
working at NASA's Langley Research Center in 1943 thanks to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
Executive Order 8802 that mandated non-discrimination on the basis of race or religion to defend
the industry, Vaughan was a mathematics teacher at Moton High School. School in Farmville
(Virginia). Once she joined the research center, she was convinced that it would be a temporary
job, only until the end of the war, but she continued and in 1949 Vaughan took over the
management of West Area Computers, a segregated work group composed exclusively of African
American women, specialists in mathematics. This group was originally required to use separate
facilities for lunch or bathrooms, so that they did not use the same one as the white women. Over
time these women mathematicians distinguished themselves both individually and as a group for
their contributions to almost all areas of research at Langley. Despite all this, Vaughan intervened
on behalf of various white women from other computing groups who she believed deserved
promotions or pay raises. Dorothy Vaughan headed the West Computing group for almost a
decade until, along with members of her group, she joined the new Division of Analysis and
Computing, which was already diverse in both races and sexes after the NACA transitioned in
1958. to NASA, segregated facilities, including the West Computing office, were abolished. She
specialized during the rest of her career in computing and FORTRAN programming. She worked in
the Analysis and Computing Division of the Langley Research Center, and also participated in the
tests of the Scout project (Solid Controlled Orbital Utility Test system) at the Wallops Flight Facility.
During her career, Vaughan was not only a respected mathematician, but she was also the first
African-American person to reach the position of manager at NACA and later at NASA. In her last
decade at NASA she worked extensively with Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson, who worked in
her group of African-American calculators before being transferred to other areas, to work on the
equations to launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit. She retired from NASA in 1971.

MARY JACKSON BIOGRAPHY

Mary Winston Jackson (April 9, 1921 – February 11, 2005) was an American mathematician and
aerospace engineer, who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA),
which later became NASA. She worked at Langley Research Center for most of her life, starting as a
calculator in the Western Area Computing division, and later becoming NASA's first black female
engineer. After 34 years at NASA, Jackson reached the highest position possible for engineers, and
realized he couldn't advance any higher without first becoming a supervisor.

At this point she decided to accept a demotion to become director of two programs at the same
time: the Federal Women's Program in the Equal Opportunity office, and the Affirmative Action
Program.

In these positions she worked to influence both the hiring and promotion of women at NASA, in
the fields of science, engineering and mathematics.