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. The integrated community cultivated at Langley made the NACA more welcoming for black women and their families, helping the West Area computers carve out places for themselves and build long-term careers. Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson’s time at the NACA coincided with the internal relaxation of some of its strict segregationist codes. ![]() Here, Shetterly shows the passing of the torch from those active in the Civil Rights Movement to women like the West Area computers. “The social and organizational changes occurring at Langley were buoyed by the civil rights forces gathering momentum in the country,” Shetterly writes. Phillip Randolph and Charles Hamilton Houston helped end segregation in the schools and forced the government to open wartime jobs up to black people, setting the groundwork for the West Area computers to achieve their dreams. Hidden Figures takes place in the context of the Civil Rights movement. When Vaughan was looking for work as a teacher, she found a job through a network in which “black colleges received calls from schools around the country requesting teachers, then dispatched their alumni to fill open positions.” This shows, again, that Vaughan did not achieve her goals alone, but through a collective effort. 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. Clearly, Katherine Johnson was wildly talented, but she could never have made it to the NACA without mentors.ĭorothy Vaughan has a similar story. 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.” Later, the president of West Virginia State College (Katherine’s alma mater) chose her to be one of the first black master’s students at West Virginia University. In college, Katherine Johnson was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the first sorority established for and by black women. These communities helped set the stage for each of their professional 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.ĭorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson all came from close-knit black neighborhoods where civic action formed an important part of their daily lives. Shetterly offers a portrait of the bonds between members of the black middle class in the Jim Crow South, then demonstrates the ways in which the NACA’s black employees also benefitted from the integrated community that slowly developed at work. ![]() ![]() Extended family, the church, and civic organizations like the Girl Scouts all played a part in their achievements. Black computers like Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, and Mary Jackson depended on their families and communities to thrive.
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