These Black Women Were NASA’s Human Computers
‘Hidden Figures’ is a spunky little movie about science … and racism
by SEBASTIEN ROBLIN
Rocket science involves a lot of math — so it seems natural that NASA used computers to double check their formulas when designing spaceships in the 1950s and ’60s.
Human computers, that is. Electronic computers were still just being introduced at the time, so the job of double-checking equations that could mean life or death for America’s astronauts fell to a pool of mostly female mathematicians .
Many of them were African Americans — and part of a segregated “colored” female work unit known as the West Area Computers at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
The film Hidden Figures, based on a book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, follows three of the West Side Computers as they applied their mathematical skills to defy both racism and the power of gravity, helping NASA to send the first Americans into space.
This is The Right Stuff from the perspective of black woman science geeks working behind the scenes to make the spaceflight possible.
Katherine Johnson, played by Taraji Henson from Empire, is a cautious math nerd with a razor-sharp mind whose backbone grows considerably stiffer over the course of the film. She is also a widower with three daughters to care for. Katherine’s command of analytical geometry lands her a position assisting the director of the Space Task Group that was responsible for sending the first Americans into space.
Backing her up are Octavia Spencer’s Dorothy Vaughan, an older veteran of the program and de facto supervisor who has long been denied the rank and pay commensurate with the responsibility she holds, and Mary Jackson — played by a plucky Janelle Monae — who is determined to pursue a degree in engineering despite the racially-segregated education system in the state of Virginia.
None of these women see themselves as activists. They’re just extraordinarily intelligent individuals bumping into the strict limitations society imposes on their race and gender. Katherine doesn’t rise in the ranks because she appeals to the sense of fairness in her boss, a results-oriented technocrat played with bombast by Kevin Costner.
She does so by proving that she can do her job better than anyone else can — and insisting that she be given the access her work requires.
The plot also captures the fevered competition with the Soviet Union’s space program — which, incidentally, made extensive use of female scientists — and America’s own space effort. There’s even a touching tribute to the late space pioneer John Glenn, who in real life insisted that Katherine double check his flight calculations before he launched on Friendship 7.
Director Theodore Melfi has a light and joyful touch. Pharrel Williams’ score is equally upbeat. Don’t expect shocking plot twists or wrenching drama. Hidden Figures is about brilliant people overcoming extraordinary obstacles — and relishing the experience. The heroines dish out snappy comebacks, show up their doubters and overturn unjust social systems instead of letting themselves get crushed.
Nonetheless, the film hammers home how racism and sexism permeated every aspect of workplace culture. From segregated bathrooms and coffee pots to systematic job discrimination, scene after scene evokes how even comparatively well-off black women were subject to incessant petty humiliations and denied opportunities for career advancement.
When Katherine first steps into the previously all-white Space Task Group workspace, the palpable chill that greets her is cringe-inducing. That frostiness contrasts with the film’s warm colors and generous depth of field.
The script juggles a lot of story — the diverging paths of its three heroines, the space race against the Russians, engineering dilemmas, a romantic B-plot and the civil rights movement. Inevitably, Hidden Figures fails to develop all of these stories. But the film still offers a compelling snapshot of their intersection in history, even if the exposition can feel a bit stagey at times.
Hidden Figures also comments on a timely theme — the displacement of jobs, even highly-skilled jobs, as a result of automation. The West Side Computers are eventually rendered obsolete by the introduction of a single IBM computer. All of the main characters necessarily acquire new skills and positions to remain relevant and employable — most notably Vaughan, who teachers herself to program computers using FORTRAN and proceeds to retrain her underlings.
Today, widespread automation seems poised to cut deeply into the number of employable individuals — not just in America, but around the world.
Regarding the film’s accuracy, Hidden Figures generally portrays real historical events — but not in the order in which they actually occurred. Warning, spoilers ahead.
Many of the movie’s major story bears actually occurred in the 1950s, before the 1960s space missions the film depicts. Screenwriters Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi condensed these two narratives into the same time period for dramatic effect — and at the cost of some historical context.
For example, the West Side Computers originally worked for the U.S. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics during World War II, when there was both a critical need for their skills and a shortage of manpower. The segregated “colored” pool was finally dissolved in 1958 when NACA became NASA, the same year that Jackson began her studies in engineering, all before the film’s nominal start date in 1961.
Those looking for a more strictly historical account — and one that goes into greater technical detail — should seek out Shetterly’s 2016 book. Indeed, there is considerably more story to tell, as all of the main characters of the film went on to successful careers. Johnson worked on both the moon landing project and preliminary work on a Mars voyage. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 at the age of 97.
The film version of Hidden Figures remains a delightful and unabashed celebration of the black women scientists who confronted and ultimately overcame the racist and sexist norms of their era.
Despite being at heart a crowd-pleaser, Hidden Figures also reveals that racism doesn’t just manifest itself in Klan rallies and burning crosses, but also in the small ways ordinary work colleagues can passively accept and contribute to an unfair social order.
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