Hidden figures.
Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden were all good at math. Really good.
In 1943, the United States was at war, World War II. Dorothy Vaughan wanted to serve her country by working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the government agency that designed airplanes. Having the best airplanes would help America win the war. Making airplanes fly faster and higher and safer meant doing lots of tests at the agency's Langley laboratory in Hampton, Virginia. Tests meant numbers. Numbers meant math. And math meant computers.
Today, we think of computers as machines, but in the 1940s, computers were actual people like Dorothy, Mary, Katherine, and Christine. Their job was to do math.
Because Dorothy was black and a woman, some people thought it would be impossible for her to get a job as a computer. She lived in Virginia, a southern state where laws segregated or kept people apart, black people and white people.
They could not eat in the same restaurants.
They could not drink from the same water fountains.
They could not use the same restrooms.
They could not attend the same schools.
They could not play on the same sports teams.
They could not sit near each other in movie theaters.
They could not marry someone of a different race.
But Dorothy didn't think it was impossible. She was good at math. Really good. She knew she was the right person for the job. She applied, and the laboratory offered her a position as a computer.p
| Chalk