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Hidden Figures

Margot lee shetterly.

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In 1943, the United States found itself embroiled in World War II, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the NACA) in Langley, VA needed mathematicians to crunch numbers for its engineers. Jim Crow laws mandated segregation between blacks and whites in the NACA’s home state of Virginia, and African-Americans who lived there had to make do with “separate but equal” bathrooms, water fountains, parks, restaurants and schools. The NACA recruited highly qualified female mathematicians (called “computers”) regardless of color, but the organization housed its black computers in a segregated workspace (called West Area) and made their career advancement difficult. Hidden Figures author Margot Lee Shetterly examines the long-term impact of this segregation and racial discrimination at an international, national and interpersonal scale. Ultimately, she shows how, at each level, the United States worked against its own self-interest to enforce racist laws.

Shetterly shows the impact of racism at the international level by highlighting the racial implications of WWII. While the United States fought for equality and freedom abroad, the country demonstrated its hypocrisy by enforcing segregation on its own soil. Hidden Figures takes place against the backdrop of World War II, with Americans (black and white) following with horror the torture and deportation of Jewish people in Europe. Black Americans couldn’t help but compare the plight of Jewish people abroad with that of people in their own communities, where blacks were beaten, tortured, and imprisoned for demanding the rights they were owed as U.S. citizens. For example, restaurants in Virginia readily served enemy prisoners-of-war, some of whom were kept in detention facilities near Langley. These same restaurants refused to wait on the West Area computers, even though they worked at the NACA in the service of the U.S. military. Shetterly writes, “the contradiction ripped Negroes asunder, individually and as a people, their American identities in all-out, permanent war with their black souls.”

Shetterly also shows the self-defeating consequences of racism at the national level through the lens of the NACA. The NACA’s segregated workplace—like segregated workplaces nationwide—created cruel and taxing obstacles that kept black employees from performing to the best of their abilities. Although the NACA badly needed the skills and expertise of its black computers, its segregationist policies devalued their contributions. White computers rode a special bus to the office while black computers had to walk, drive, or take public transportation. White female computers could live in a dormitory at Langley (the Air Force Base that hosted the NACA), but black Computers could not. Black computers were only allowed to use bathrooms designated “colored“ (which were few and far between), while all other restrooms were off-limits. “The women of West Computing were the only black professionals at the laboratory—not exactly excluded, but not quite included either,” Shetterly writes. Because of the obstacles the NACA put in their way, black computers had to fight hard to succeed in the very duties they’d been hired by the NACA to perform.

Segregation at the NACA was only one symptom of a larger national problem, one put in place and encouraged by the highest office in the land. Shetterly writes, ”It was no small irony that Woodrow Wilson , the President who had authorized the creation of the NACA and who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his promotion of humanitarianism through the League of Nations, was the very same one who was hell-bent on making racial segregation in the Civil Service part of his enduring legacy.” The NACA enforced racist federal laws at the expense of its employees’ own progress, and thus, at the expense of the nation’s WWII military effort.

In the face of relentless racism and without much institutional support, the West Area computers succeeded in their jobs and became crucial assets to the NACA. This begins to imply the collateral damage of racism: had these individuals been less courageous and persistent, their lives and career contributions might have been utterly stifled. On Katherine Johnson ’s first day as a computer for Langley’s Flight Research Division, a white man stood up and walked away when she sat beside him. Although it wasn’t the most blatant display of racism she had ever faced, moments like these created an “insecurity that plagued black people as they code-shifted through the unfamiliar language and customs of everyday life.” Later in Katherine Johnson’s career, astronaut John Glenn picked Johnson over everyone else on her team (male and female, white and black) to double-check the computer’s calculations for his return trajectory from space. This shows that, even in a hostile and unsupportive environment, some black computers managed to overcome Jim Crow and surpass their white peers—even while the NACA continued to enforce segregationist codes whose implication was that these women were genetically inferior to their colleagues. Likewise, after Mary Jackson reported an incident of workplace racism to an engineer at the NACA, the engineer invited her to work for him on the spot. Working outside of the segregated West Area computing office, Jackson excelled so fully in her duties that she became the NACA’s first black female engineer, and one of the first women to work her way up to the level of senior aerospace engineer. In tracing Jackson’s life story, Shetterly shows that the NACA only hurt itself by segregating its workplace and nearly denying Mary Jackson the ability to fulfill her potential.

Shetterly uses Hidden Figures to denounce the contradictions inherent in the Jim Crow laws that kept the NACA segregated in the years during and after WWII. At an international, national and interpersonal level, she shows how racism impacted not only the oppressed but the people in power who were doing the oppressing, requiring the United States and the NACA to act in self-defeating ways that, illogically, worked against their own prosperity and success.

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Racism and Inequality Quotes in Hidden Figures

Before a computer became an inanimate object, and before Mission Control landed in Houston; before Sputnik changed the course of history, and before the NACA became NASA; before the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka established that separate was in fact not equal, and before the poetry of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech rang out over the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Langley's West Computers were helping America dominate aeronautics, space research, and computer technology, carving out a place for themselves as female mathematicians who were also black, black mathematicians who were also female. For a group of bright and ambitious African American women, diligently prepared for a mathematical career and eager for a crack at the big leagues, Hampton, Virginia, must have felt like the center of the universe.

The black female mathematicians who walked into Langley in 1943 would find themselves at the intersection of…great transformations, their sharp minds and ambitions contributing to what the United States would consider one of its greatest victories. But in 1943, America existed in the urgent present. Responding to the needs of the here and now Butler took the next step, making a note to add another item to Sherwood’s seemingly endless requisition list: a metal bathroom sign bearing the words Colored Girls.

Dorothy worked as a math teacher…. As a college graduate and a teacher, she stood near the top of what most Negro women could hope to achieve. Teachers were considered the "upper level of training and intelligence in the race” a ground force of educators who would not just impart book learning but live in the Negro community and "direct its thoughts and head its social movements.” Her in-laws were mainstays of the town's Negro elite. They owned a barbershop, a pool hall, and a service station. The family's activities were regular fodder for the social column in the Farmville section of the Norfolk journal and Guide, the leading Negro newspaper in the southeastern United States. Dorothy, her husband, Howard, and their four young children lived in a large, rambling Victorian house on South Main Street with Howard's parents and grandparents.

…At the end of November 1943, at thirty-two years old, a second chance—one that might finally unleash her professional potential—found Dorothy Vaughan. It was disguised as a temporary furlough from her life as a teacher, a stint expected to end and deposit her back in the familiarity of Farmville when her country's long and bloody conflict was over. The Colemans' youngest daughter would eventually find the same second chance years in the future, following Dorothy Vaughan down the road to Newport News, turning the happenstance of a meeting during the Greenbrier summer into something that looked a lot more like destiny.

Negroes joined their countrymen in recoiling at the horrors Germany visited upon its Jewish citizens by restricting the type of jobs they were allowed to hold and the businesses they could start, imprisoning them wantonly and depriving them of due process and all citizenship rights, subjecting them to state-sanctioned humiliation and violence, segregating them into ghettos, and ultimately working them to death in slave camps and marking them for extermination. How could an American Negro observe the annihilation happening in Europe without identifying it with their own four-century struggle against deprivation, disenfranchisement, slavery, and violence?

In 1940, just 2 percent of all black women earned college degrees, and 60 percent of those women became teachers, mostly in public elementary and high schools. Exactly zero percent of those 1940 college graduates became engineers. And yet, in an era when just 10 percent of white women and not even a full third of white men had earned college degrees, the West Computers had found jobs and each other at the "single best and biggest aeronautical research complex in the world.”

At some point during the war, the colored computers sign disappeared into Miriam Mann’s purse and never came back. The separate office remained, as did the segregated bathrooms, but in the Battle of the West Area Cafeteria, the unseen hand had been forced to concede victory to its petite but relentless adversary… Miriam Mann's insistence on sending the humiliating sign to oblivion gave her and the other women of west computing just a little more room for dignity and the confidence that the laboratory might belong to them as well.

Readers of black newspapers around the country followed the exploits of the Tuskegee Airmen with an intensity that bordered on the obsessive. Who said a Negro couldn’t fly! Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Jr. and the 332nd Fighter Group took the war to the Axis powers from thirty thousand feet. The papers sent special correspondents to shadow the pilots as they served in the skies over Europe, each dispatch from the European front producing shivers of delight. Flyers Help Smash Nazis! Negro Pilots sink Nazi warship! 332nd Bags 25 Enemy planes, Breaks Record in weekend victories! No radio serial could compete with the real life exploits of the men who were the very embodiment of the Double V.

With victory over the enemies from without assured, Negroes took stock of their own battlefield. Almost immediately after V-J Day, some employers returned to their white, Gentile-only employment policies. The FEPC, however feeble it might have been in reality during the war, had nonetheless become a powerful symbol of employment progress for Negroes and other ethnic minorities. With labor markets loosening, the dream that many black leaders had of establishing a permanent FEPC slipped away with the war emergency, in spite of President Truman's support.

As if trying to redeem his own professional disappointment through the achievements of one of the few students whose ability matched his impossibly high standards, Claytor maintained an unshakable belief that Katherine could meet with a successful future in mathematical research, all odds to the contrary. The prospects for a Negro woman in the field could be viewed only as dismal. If Dorothy Vaughan had been able to accept Howard University's offer of graduate admission, she likely would have been Claytor's only female classmate, with virtually no postgraduate career options outside of teaching, even with a master's degree in hand. In the 1930s, just over a hundred women in the United States worked as professional mathematicians. Employers openly discriminated against Irish and Jewish women with math degrees; the odds of a black woman encountering work in the field hovered near zero.

Seasoned researchers took the male upstarts under their wings, initiating them into their guild over lunchtime conversations in the cafeteria and in after-hours men-only smokers….women, on the other hand, had to wield their intellects like a scythe, hacking away against the stubborn underbrush of low expectations. … Even a woman who had worked closely with an engineer on the content of a research report was rarely rewarded by seeing her name alongside his on the final publication. Why would the computers have the same desire for recognition that they did? many engineers figured. They were women, after all.

Compared to the white girls, she came to the lab with as much education, if not more. She dressed each day as if she were on her way to a meeting with the president. She trained the girls in her Girl Scout troop to believe that they could be anything, and she went to lengths to prevent negative stereotypes of their race from shaping their internal views of themselves and other Negroes. It was difficult enough to rise above the silent reminders of Colored signs on the bathroom doors and cafeteria tables. But to be confronted with the prejudice so blatantly, there in that temple to intellectual excellence and rational thought, by something so mundane, so ridiculous, so universal as having to go to the bathroom . . . In the moment when the white women laughed at her, Mary had been demoted from professional mathematician to a second-class human being.

Everything depended on Katherine's ability to hold her family together; she could not fall apart. Or perhaps she would not fall apart. There was, and always had been, about Katherine Goble a certain gravity, a preternatural self-possession … She seemed to absorb the short-term oscillations of life without being dislodged by them, as though she were actually standing back observing that both travail and elation were merely part of a much larger, much smoother curve.

Scientific progress in the twentieth century had been relatively linear; social progress, however, did not move in a straight line, as the descent from the hopeful years after the Civil War into the despairing circumstances of the Jim Crow laws proved. But since World War II, one brick after another had been pried from the walls of segregation. The Supreme Court victories opening graduate education to black students, the executive orders integrating the federal government and the military, the victory, both real and symbolic when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Negro baseball player Jackie Robinson, were all new landings reached, new corners turned, hopes that pushed Negroes to redouble their efforts to sever the link between separate and equal decisively and permanently.

"Eighty percent of the world's population is colored…In trying to provide leadership in world events, it is necessary for this country to indicate to the world that we practice equality for all within this country. Those countries where colored persons constitute a majority should not be able to point to a double standard existing within the United States."

"Why can’t I go to the editorial meetings?” she asked the engineers. A postgame recap of the analysis wasn’t nearly as thrilling as being there for the main event. How could she not want to be a part of the discussion? They were her numbers, after all.

Being part of a Black First was a powerful symbol, she knew just as well as anyone, and she embraced her son's achievement with delight. But she also knew that the best thing about breaking a barrier was that it would never have to be broken again.

Virginia, a state with one of the highest concentrations of scientific talent in the world, led the nation in denying education to its youth.

The resonances and dissonances of the images in the book were sharpest there at Langley, ten miles from the point where African feet first stepped ashore in English North America in 1619, less than that from the sprawling oak tree where Negroes of the Virginia Peninsula convened for the first Southern reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. In a place with deep and binding tethers to the past, Katherine Johnson, a black woman, was midwifing the future.

At the beginning of the decade, the Space Program and the civil rights movement had shared a similar optimism, a certain idealism about American democracy and the country's newfound drive to distribute the blessings of democracy to all its citizens. On the cusp of the 1970s, as the space program approached its zenith, the civil rights movement—or rather many of the goals it had set out to achieve—were beginning to feel as if they were in a state of suspended animation.

Katherine Johnson is the most recognized of all the NASA human computers, black or white. The power of her story is such that many accounts incorrectly credit her with being the first black woman to work as a mathematician at NASA, or the only black woman to have held the job. She is often mistakenly reported as having been sent to the "all-male" Flight Research Division, a group that included four other female mathematicians, one of whom was also black. One account implied that her calculations singlehandedly saved the Apollo 13 mission. That even Katherine Johnson's remarkable achievements can’t quite match some of the myths that have grown up around her is a sign of the strength of the vacuum caused by the long absence of African Americans from mainstream history.

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‘Hidden Figures’ highlights racial, gender equality

Andrew Shermoen February 1, 2017

Most biopics and historical dramas focus on stories that we are already familiar with. The most interesting pieces of history are the ones hidden from the mainstream. “Hidden Figures” goes out of its way to tell an interesting story and comes away being an amazing tale of three heroic women and the difficulties they faced.

Three women, Katherine Goble (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Moane) are talented mathematicians working for NASA in the early years of the space race. After the successful launch of Sputnik, the US races to launch a man into space before the Russians can. With tensions already running high at NASA, the three women fight for proper recognition of their talents and against workplace racism and segregation during the height of the Civil Right movement.

“Hidden Figures” is filled with incredible performances. Spencer does an amazing job as the eldest of the three leads. She is a motherly figure and is clearly familiar with the more egregious and unapologetic racism as opposed to her colleagues. It’s empowering to not only see her fight for the station and respect she deserves, but to protect and ensure the protection of her fellow women as well. One of the most moving points in the film comes from Dorothy securing the positions of her coworkers, leading them in a triumphant parade of victory to a building that they were once forbidden to enter due to the color of their skin. It’s a victorious declaration of changing times and it’s an incredible image.

Taraji P. Henson gives what is easily her best performance so far. She proves that she can handle dramatic material while also being the incredibly charismatic and lovable personality she has already proven herself to be in other projects, although, Henson’s work in this film is much more reserved than previous roles.

Goble is diminutive but also capable of running a room and on the off moments when she can no longer hold back her emotions, she is absolutely riveting to watch. She most certainly deserves an award nomination for her work.

There’s something so captivating about the story being told. Other historical dramas opt to approach familiar stories like tales of war, crime, and political races. “Hidden Figures” isn’t about a familiar story. It takes a stance on telling an incredible tale of three women who have been unceremoniously ripped from our history books. It reclaims history with a fervent upward hoisted fist and declares the real heroes for the whole world to see. The film unabashedly strikes down the hypocrisy of segregation and racism, instead opting to show a story of three amazing black women who rose up against a multitude of odds and changed the world forever. These are the stories we don’t hear, and yet these filmmakers wanted the world to know and for that, I tip my hat to them.

“Hidden Figures” is historical drama done right with amazing performances and talented writing that goes out of its way to make captivating points about history and the people who shaped it.

Rating: 4/5

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Review: ‘Hidden Figures’ Honors 3 Black Women Who Helped NASA Soar

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By A.O. Scott

• Dec. 22, 2016

“Hidden Figures” takes us back to 1961, when racial segregation and workplace sexism were widely accepted facts of life and the word “computer” referred to a person, not a machine. Though a gigantic IBM mainframe does appear in the movie — big enough to fill a room and probably less powerful than the phone in your pocket — the most important computers are three African-American women who work at NASA headquarters in Hampton, Va. Assigned to data entry jobs and denied recognition or promotion, they would go on to play crucial roles in the American space program.

Based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s nonfiction book of the same title, the film, directed by Theodore Melfi (who wrote the script with Allison Schroeder), turns the entwined careers of Katherine Goble (later Johnson), Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan into a rousing celebration of merit rewarded and perseverance repaid. Like many movies about the overcoming of racism, it offers belated acknowledgment of bravery and talent and an overdue reckoning with the sins of the past. And like most movies about real-world breakthroughs, “Hidden Figures” is content to stay within established conventions. The story may be new to most viewers, but the manner in which it’s told will be familiar to all but the youngest.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. There is something to be said for a well-told tale with a clear moral and a satisfying emotional payoff. Mr. Melfi, whose previous film was the heart-tugging, borderline-treacly Bill Murray vehicle “St. Vincent,” knows how to push our emotional buttons without too heavy a hand. He trusts his own skill, the intrinsic interest of the material and — above all — the talent and dedication of the cast. From one scene to the next, you may know more or less what is coming, but it is never less than delightful to watch these actors at work.

Start with the three principals, whose struggles at NASA take place as the agency is scrambling to send an astronaut into orbit. Katherine Goble is the central hidden figure, a mathematical prodigy played with perfect nerd charisma by Taraji P. Henson. Katherine is plucked from the computing room and assigned to a team that will calculate the launch coordinates and trajectory for an Atlas rocket. She receives a cold welcome — particularly from an engineer named Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) — and is not spared the indignities facing a black woman in a racially segregated, gender-stratified workplace. The only bathroom she is allowed to use is in a distant building, and she horrifies her new co-workers when she helps herself to a cup of coffee.

Dorothy (Octavia Spencer) and Mary (Janelle Monáe) also face discrimination. Dorothy, who is in charge of several dozen computers, is repeatedly denied promotion to supervisor and treated with condescension by her immediate boss (Kirsten Dunst). The Polish-born engineer (Olek Krupa) with whom Mary works is more enlightened, but Mary runs into the brick wall of Virginia’s Jim Crow laws when she tries to take graduate-level physics courses.

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• DOI: 10.20527/issj.v5i2.11191
• Corpus ID: 268480767

Analyzing the Movie "Hidden Figures" (2016): A Comprehensive Examination of Race and Gender Inequality

• Karina Rizky Amanda , Nisa Rahmayanti Purwanto , +2 authors Haniya Meisya Angraini
• Published in The Innovation of Social… 1 March 2024

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Racial and gender discrimination reflected in theodore melfi’s hidden figures, representation of black feminism in hidden figures, teaching and learning guide for: the persistent problem of colorism: skin tone, status, and inequality, the historical evolution of black feminist theory and praxis, education of social regulation through social institution materials in social studies, urgency of the 21st century skills and social capital in social studies, training in making learning media in the form of attractive photos for teachers to increase student learning motivation at smpn 7 banjarmasin, the urgency of local wisdom content in social studies learning: literature review, aisyiyah: peran dan dinamikanya dalam pengembangan pendidikan anak di banjarmasin hingga tahun 2014, related papers.

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Intersectional feminism triumphs in ‘Hidden Figures’

For me, one of the most powerful moments of Hidden Figures came near the end: the protagonist, Katherine Johnson (Taraji Henson), an incredible mathematician, has just checked through some vital calculations under immense pressure. Her accuracy is a matter of life or death for astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell), about to be blown into space. She runs to the control room from the segregated West Campus and, panting, relinquishes her work into the hands of a white man—and the door closes on her. Hidden Figures illustrates how equality benefits everyone, with NASA’s ambitious goals making the truth unavoidable: that equal opportunity is necessary to find the best person for the job, and that it increases productivity and innovation.

However, despite NASA’s need for the skills and intelligence of the three central characters—historical figures Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), all black women—we are shown again and again their work accepted and appropriated without reward or recognition. Mathematician Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) blocks Katherine from putting her name on their joint projects while, despite Dorothy’s supervisory work being vital to the efficiency of her team, she is denied the title or pay of a supervisor.

The film demands audiences to confront flaws in their own thinking, rather than feel detached. Racist and sexist characters abound, but are understandable rather than demonised, contextualised within an oppressive system. While we understand his ambition, systemic inequality facilitates Paul exploiting his privilege to obtain unfair career advantages: here, competition and inequality form a toxic combination.

Vitally for a film about the black female experience, it pulls no punches in demonstrating the importance of an intersectional approach to examining inequality. The white women are hyperaware of the fragility and novelty of their own place within NASA, and understandably but destructively neglect to use what privilege they have to raise up the black women around them. This is most clearly explored through the relationship between Dorothy and her manager Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst), with the latter clearly apathetic about Dorothy’s application for a supervisory role, and about black women at NASA in general, whose careers she callously admits will be ruined by the installation of a mechanical computer.

When Vivian tries to colour her wilful apathy as harmless, claiming, “I have nothing against y’all.” Dorothy’s response, “I know you believe that,” elegantly sums up the truth of the matter: by remaining neutral in a situation of injustice, Vivian has chosen the side of the oppressor, and it is only her racial biases that have enabled her to tolerate this blatant unfairness so comfortably. Her worldview is jarred by Dorothy’s insistence that she will only accept a promotion if she can protect the black women she supervises. We also watch the black men learn to raise up and support the women in their lives. Jim must respect Katherine as a mathematician and mother before she will accept his proposal, and Mary’s previously disparaging husband comes to support her career and education, presenting her with mechanical pencils before her first class at a white evening school.

The impact of apparently mundane discrimination plays out beautifully during sequences of Katherine running for half a mile in the obligatory heels to the nearest black women’s bathroom, often mixed into montages of her team hard at work. Linking these to Pharrell Williams’ song ‘Runnin,’ highlights the needless repetition to which she is subject and the ridiculous amount of time consumed by such a banal task. Crucially, it is because of her reduction in productivity and own impassioned arguments that the bathroom is de-segregated. It is comically satisfying when we see a white man sent running this same half mile to fetch Katherine, when her skills are needed. Watching them run back together, we hope at least this one man may question these unnecessary obstructions. But they reach the door, he goes through without her, and it slams in her face.

The three central characters are warm, strong and exceptionally hardworking, dancing, joking and laughing together despite terrible injustice. Mary is particularly entertaining, seizing the chance for a police escort to work and declaring, “Three negro women are chasing a white police officer down a highway in 1961. That is a God-ordained miracle.” We cannot help but admire them, but are kept constantly aware that how hard they have to work is disproportionate to what they are allowed to achieve. They can receive the education they need only by pursuing ground-breaking court rulings, or stealing books from the white library, children in tow. When a room full of white men, plus Katherine, are told they are going to be working overtime for no extra pay, we know that the burden will not fall evenly, nor is ordinary pay remotely the same for her as for them.

Hidden Figures allows us to root for these women’s struggle and rejoice in their triumphs, while never letting us forget how hard-won those were, or feel comfortably separate from the problems they face.

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/inside-hidden-figures

‘Hidden Figures’ and the journey to celebrate NASA’s black female pioneers

This analysis is spoiler-free.

If you’re a person of color in America right now, it may feel like you’re riding a carousel of darkness. Viral stories of black killings , once occasional events, morphed into déjà vu in 2016 — potentially triggering PTSD-like trauma . The rise of the alt-right, a white nationalist movement, echoes sentiments of public segregation once thought long gone. Meanwhile, Jim Crow-era restrictions on social, economic and political mobility have evolved new facades, namely gentrification and gerrymandering .

Hidden Figures offers a counter-narrative of hope and a prescient blueprint for unity against what feels like a vicious cycle of inequality. This bestselling biography -turned- Hollywood biopic reveals the untold story of Katherine G. Johnson , Dorothy Vaughan , Mary Jackson and hundreds of black female mathematicians who made crucial contributions to America’s space program.

But the narrative also charts how Hampton, Virginia emerged as a driving force for aeronautics innovation and racial integration — even as the state fought against the rise of civil rights.

Hampton Haven

Writer Margot Lee Shetterly decided to pursue Hidden Figures in 2010, while visiting her parents for Christmas. After church one day, she and her father began chatting about his days as a scientist at Hampton’s Langley Research Center — the first field facility for NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Eventually, the conversation drifted onto the black and white women who worked as mathematicians — so-called human computers — during the center’s early years.

“I knew the women. Many of them worked with my dad, and I’d seen them growing up,” Shetterly told NewsHour. “But I didn’t know much about their particular stories — how they had come to work at NASA, or why there were black women working there.”

Shetterly spent the next three years combing through historical documents. She checked local newspapers, especially ones for the black community, where she found her canvass for describing daily life in Hampton. One clipping went as far as reporting what Mary Jackson wore at her wedding, she said. Shetterly also sorted through heaps of archival material on NACA and NASA.

1,500 employees or so at NACA’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory on November 4, 1943. Photo by NASA

“So a Langley historian, this woman named Mary Gainer, is amazing. She and her staff put so many of the early documents online — photos, badges, artifacts,” Shetterly said. At one point, Shetterly figured out which women had desks in the same room, based on a collection of phone books and floor plans. Meanwhile, she interviewed Katherine Johnson, now in her late-90s, Johnson’s children, the surviving family members of Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughn as well as other people who worked with them.

The result is a time machine that marches, moment by moment, through the American aeronautics revolution and desegregation. NACA and the Langley Research Center were founded during World War I, as planes began to flex their muscles in warfare. As the aviation industry expanded over the next two decades and into World War II, so too did the need for aeronautics research — and human computers. As the pool of qualified male candidates fizzled, NACA departed from sexist norms, and Langley hired its first female computers in 1935.

After Franklin Roosevelt relaxed discriminatory employment practices for war projects, NACA trail-blazed once more in 1943 by considering applications from black women, as Shetterly catalogues in her book:

“No photo advised as to the applicant’s color — that requirement, instituted under the administration of Woodrow Wilson, was struck down as the Roosevelt administration tried to dismantle discrimination in hiring practices. But the applicants’ alma maters tipped their hand: West Virginia State University, Howard, Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal, Hampton Institute just across town — all Negro schools. Nothing in the applications indicated anything less than fitness for the job. If anything, they came with more experience than the white women applicants, with many years of teaching experience on top of math or science degrees.

The black female mathematicians who walked into Langley in 1943 would find themselves at the intersection of these great transformations, their sharp minds and ambitions contributing to what the United States would consider one of its greatest victories.”

The move transformed Hampton and Langley into a bastion of aeronautical supremacy, while also eroding racial divides over subsequent decades. Virginia was one of the last state’s to abandon Jim Crow policies such as segregated schools, even after federal cases like Brown vs Board of Education and other legislation called for change. Shetterly traces Hampton’s trail to integration, showing how America struggled with racial reforms through the lens of one progressive city and the nation’s space race with the Soviet Union.

A portrait of a young Dorothy Vaughan. Photo courtesy of Vaughan Family

Dorothy Vaughn joined NACA’s segregated West Area Computing Unit in December 1943 — a group she would run six years later thanks to her mathematical prowess and leadership tenacity. Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson landed at NACA in the early 1950s. All three were math whizzes at early ages, but Shetterly exposes how these women juggled their love for numbers with desires for family life and battles against segregation.

Each would ultimately make major contributions to aeronautics. Vaughn mastered computer programming and helped the agency transition from human to IBM computers. Jackson became NASA’s first black female engineer and a leader in research on supersonic flight. And Johnson made the crucial calculations that guided the late John Glenn and America’s first manned missions into suborbit, orbit and beyond. Shetterly plans to keep documenting these biographies as part of a series called The Human Computer Project .

Movie Trajectories

The Hidden Figures movie took shape in 2014, soon after HarperCollins agreed to publish Shetterly’s book. Film producer Donna Gigliotti (Silver Linings Playbook, Shakespeare in Love) caught wind of the story, auctioned the book proposal and recruited director Theodore Melfi to the project. He was fascinated by the story, but also shocked given the typical depictions of life in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

“You’ve never seen anything in film, or documentary, that tells you that women were involved in the space program at that time,” Melfi told NewsHour. “Everything you see is an image of a white male.”

Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), flanked by fellow mathematicians Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), meet the man they helped send into orbit, John Glenn (Glen Powell) in HIDDEN FIGURES. Photo by Hopper Stone

Gigliotti also recruited musician Pharrell Williams, who was raised in Hampton, to co-produce the film and soundtrack. Williams was drawn to the story given this untold story with three female African-American protagonists happened so close to his childhood home.

“You recognize these three beautiful stories are victims of the era and circumstance. It’s the 1960s, and the era is not one that necessarily celebrated, or highlighted a woman’s contribution to a narrative,” Williams said. He also enjoyed the premise due to a childhood fascination with space, NASA and rockets. (This influence percolates in his music as well. One of his earliest acts was called The Neptunes, while songs like Wonderful Place and Love Bomb carry space themes too.)

For Hidden Figures’ music, Williams and his co-composers — Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch — call upon 1960s-era styles. Doo Wop and rock melodies — performed by Williams, Hidden Figures actress Janelle Monáe and Mary J. Blige on the soundtrack — mirror the civil rights storylines from the movie.

Monáe said she leapt at the opportunity to play Mary Jackson when she first learned of the story. “It became a personal responsibility to me, to make sure that no young girl, no human being, no American went through life not knowing these true American heroes,” she said.

Monáe, Taraji P. Henson (Johnson) and Octavia Spencer (Vaughn) capture key elements of their characters, such as Vaughn’s leadership, Johnson’s knack with analytical geometry and Jackson’s barrier-breaking spirit. Spencer, whose performance is nominated for a Golden Globe, and the other members of the cast spent time with mathematicians to prep for their roles.

“For me, it was about knowing who she was as a woman, knowing who she was at work,” Spencer said. “She not only had the mind of an engineer, but she was mechanically inclined. I was proficient at math, but this is rocket science.”

Mary Jackson grew up in Hampton, Virginia and was a teacher in Maryland before joining Langley Research Center in 1951. She became NASA’s first black female engineer in 1958. Photo by NASA

Henson said she felt robbed by not knowing about these pioneers as a child: “Had I known these women existed, maybe I would have dreamed to be a rocket scientist? But growing up there was a universal understanding that math and science wasn’t for girls.”

Kevin Costner, who plays a forward-thinking NASA director, lamented that Katherine Johnson’s contributions remained outside the mainstream as America’s first rides into space were cemented into history. But he viewed Hidden Figures as a turning point.

“You’d like to think the best ideas are getting to the top. I think the beauty of our movie is that when you’re done watching it, you can realize that, well, the best idea got to the top,” Costner said.

Kevin Costner stars as Al Harrison, a fictional composite of NACA and NASA directors, in HIDDEN FIGURES. Photo by Hopper Stone

The film takes liberties with timelines and events — creating amalgams of their mathematical achievements and the racial discrimination experienced across their careers. For instance, Johnson’s landmark paper from 1960 — that described rocket trajectories for the Mercury missions — gets spread across multiple scenes with chalkboards…so many chalkboards. However, Johnson’s ability to innovate new math and much of the film’s climax involving her and Glenn are steeped in truth, according to Shetterly’s book.

NASA engineer Shelia Nash-Stevenson, who wasn’t involved with film’s production, felt the depiction landed on solid ground even with the fudging.

“It’s okay for them to take a few liberties, as long as they’re 90 percent accurate,” said Nash-Stevenson, who was the first African-American female in the state of Alabama to receive a PhD in physics. “Nobody wants to see you actually sit there for days on end calculating a formula or trajectory.”

Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae, left), Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) in Hidden Figures. Photo by Hopper Stone

Plus, Nash-Stevenson said Hidden Figures would encourage children, especially young girls, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math.

“Dorothy and the rest of the ladies, Katherine, and Mary were brilliant,” Nash-Stevenson said. “What these girls don’t realize these days is that they, too, are brilliant.”

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race is available through HarperCollins . The cinematic adaptation opens in select theaters on December 25, 2016. Stay tuned for NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown’s interview with the cast and crew, which will air before the wide release on January 6, 2017.

Nsikan Akpan is the digital science producer for PBS NewsHour and co-creator of the award-winning, NewsHour digital series ScienceScope .

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“Hidden Figures” highlights the ongoing legacy of women and minorities in STEM

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February 8, 2017

Movies about women in science and technology careers are rare, and rarer still are movies about science and technology that feature women of color. The award-winning film “Hidden Figures” tells the stories of African-American mathematicians Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan. These incredible women served as the human computers who calculated the launch and landing trajectories of astronaut John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. These women overcame institutional racism and sexism to become engineers, mathematicians, and computer programmers for NASA, and were recognized as American heroes for their brilliant service. Mary Jackson received an Apollo Group Achievement Award, and was Langley’s Volunteer of the Year in 1976. Katherine Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2015. Dorothy Vaughan was the first black supervisor at NASA.

Despite the inspiring stories of these women, women and minority populations still face barriers to studying science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) or enter a STEM career. Barriers can include implicit bias, negative stereotypes, negative self-assessment , and lack of networks, mentors, and advocates for women and minorities in STEM. To combat these barriers, there are a number of programs, associations, and organizations working to promote women and minorities in STEM.

With more women and minorities in STEM fields, there is more diversity of thought, collaboration, creativity, innovation, and even significant monetary benefits . Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan are just three examples of the incredible capabilities of women and minorities.

The list below is by no means exhaustive, but includes some of the organizations who are working to advance women and minorities in STEM:

American Association of University Women (AAUW) aims to empower women through educational advocacy as well as research and philanthropy

Association for Women in Science (AWIS) is an organization for women that focuses on creating equity for women in STEM occupations.

Black Girls Code is looking to increase the women of color in STEM fields by exposing young girls to science and technology.

EngineerGirl is an informative website dedicated to increasing female representation in the engineering field.

Girls Who Code is a national non-profit that teaches girls to code with the goal of closing the gender gap in computer sciences.

Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering publishes original research by people of color in multiple industries that focuses on educational methods for underrepresented groups in STEM fields.

Million Women Mentors (MWM) employs male and female STEM mentors to influence girls to succeed in STEM pathways and careers.

National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) wants to create opportunities for minorities in STEM fields through scholarship programs.

National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) is a collaboration between corporations, academic institutions, and government agencies that aims to increase girl’s participation in technology and computing.

National Gem Consortium (GEM) is an institution that aims to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in graduate programs through outreach and scholarship.

National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) trains teachers for grades 3-12 in math and sciences with the goal of regaining America’s competitive edge in STEM fields

National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) is a non-profit organization that focuses on increasing African-American career opportunities in engineering.

Scientista connects women in STEM fields on college campuses.

Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) is a professional organization that connects Hispanic engineers and students worldwide.

Women in Engineering Proactive Network (WEPAN) wants to advance women of diverse communities through higher education.

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“Hidden Figures” Is a Subtle and Powerful Work of Counter-History

The basic virtue of “Hidden Figures” (which opens on December 25th), and it’s a formidable one, is to proclaim with a clarion vibrancy that, were it not for the devoted, unique, and indispensable efforts of three black women scientists, the United States might not have successfully sent people into space or to the moon and back. The movie is set mainly in 1961 and 1962, in Virginia, where a key NASA research center was (and is) based, and the movie is aptly and thoroughly derisive toward the discriminatory laws and practices that prevailed at the time.

The insults and indignities that black residents of Virginia, and black employees of NASA , unremittingly endured are integral to the drama. Those segregationist rules and norms—and the personal attitudes and actions that sustained them—are unfolded with a clear, forceful, analytical, and unstinting specificity. The efforts of black Virginians to cope with relentless ambient racism and, where possible, to point it out, resist it, overcome it, and even defeat it are the focus of the drama. “Hidden Figures” is a film of calm and bright rage at the way things were—an exemplary reproach to the very notion of political nostalgia. It depicts repugnant attitudes and practices of white supremacy that poisoned earlier generations’ achievements and that are inseparable from those achievements.

“Hidden Figures” is a subtle and powerful work of counter-history, or, rather, of a finally and long-deferred accurate history, that fills in the general outlines of these women’s roles in the space program. Its redress of the record begins in West Virginia in 1926, where the sixth-grade math prodigy Katherine Coleman is given a scholarship to a school that one of her teachers refers to as the only one in the region for black children that goes beyond the eighth grade. She quickly displays her genius there—but the school’s narrow horizons suggests the sharply limited opportunities for black people over all.

The nature of those limits is indicated in the very next scene, which cuts ahead to a lonely road in Virginia in 1961. There, a car is stalled, its hood open. Katherine is there with her two other African-American friends and colleagues. She’s sitting pensively in the passenger seat; Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) is beneath the engine, trying to fix it; and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) is standing impatiently beside the car. A police cruiser approaches. They tense up; Dorothy says, “No crime in a broken-down car,” and Mary responds, “No crime being Negro, neither.” Their fearful interaction with the officer—a white man, of course, with a billy club in hand and a condescending bearing—is resolved with a comedic moment brought about by the women’s deferential irony. What emerges, however, is nothing less than an instance in a reign of terror.

Dorothy is the manager and de-facto supervisor of a group of “computers”—about thirty black women, all skilled mathematicians—that includes Katherine and Mary. Dorothy is awaiting a formal promotion to supervisor, but a talk with a senior administrator makes clear that it’s not to be; the clear but unspoken reason is her race. (Tellingly, Dorothy addresses that official, played by Kirsten Dunst, as “Mrs. Mitchell,” who, in turn, calls her by her first name.) Mary, endowed with engineering skill, is summoned to a team led by an engineer named Zielinski (Olek Krupa), a Polish-Jewish émigré who escaped the Holocaust and who encourages her to seek formal certification as an engineer. To do so, Mary will have to take additional classes—but the only school that offers them is a segregated one, whites-only, from which she’s barred.

When NASA astronauts ceremoniously arrive at the research center, the black women “computers” are forced to stand together as a separate group, conspicuously divided from the other scientists. (Only John Glenn, played by Glen Powell, greets them, and does so warmly, shaking their hands and lingering to chat with them about their work.)

As for Katherine—now Katherine Goble, the widowed mother of three young girls—she’s plucked from the pool of mathematicians to join the main research group, headed by Al Harrison (Kevin Costner). There, she’s the only black person and the only woman (other than the secretary, played by Kimberly Quinn). She once again rapidly displays her mathematical genius, but not before being taken for the department custodian; forced to drink from a coffeepot labelled “colored”; treated dismissively by the lead researcher, Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons); and compelled to walk a half-mile to her former office in order to use the “colored ladies’ room.” (Moreover, the contrast between that depleted and dilapidated facility and the well-appointed and welcoming white-women’s bathroom proves the meaning of “separate but unequal.”)

Each of the three women has a particular conflict to confront, a particular focus in the struggle for equality. Mary’s struggle takes place in a public forum: she petitions a Virginia state court for permission to take the needed night classes in a segregated school. She’s not represented by a lawyer, and speaks on her own behalf; but, rather than making her case in open court, she makes a personal plea to the judge that’s as much about him and his outlook as it is about her, and her work and its usefulness. What her plea isn’t about is law, rights, or justice.

The omission is no accident; it’s set up by dramatic contrast with the angry insistence of Mary’s husband, Levi (Aldis Hodge), a civil-rights activist, that she not bother pursuing a job as an engineer: “You can’t apply for freedom. . . . It’s got to be demanded, taken.” Mary says that there’s “more than one way” to get opportunities, but the deck of this debate is stacked by the terms in which Levi couches it, saying that there’s no such thing as a woman engineer—at least, not a black one—and blaming her for not being home often enough to take proper care of their children.

Dorothy’s pursuit of a formal promotion to supervisor also takes place against the backdrop of the civil-rights movement. She learns that her entire department of human “computers” will soon be replaced by an electronic computer—an enormous I.B.M. mainframe that’s being installed. A gifted technician, Dorothy seeks out a book from the local library (a segregated library from which she’s thrown out), in which she’ll learn the programming language Fortran; she soon becomes NASA ’s resident expert. On that trip to the library, in the company of her two sons on the cusp of adolescence, they witness a protest by civil-rights activists chanting “segregation must go” and see police officers, with police dogs, approaching the protesters. Dorothy and her sons pause and look, until she tells them to “pay attention that we’re not part of that trouble.” But, sitting in the back of the bus with them, she emphasizes that “separate and equal aren’t the same thing,” and adds, “If you act right, you are right.”

Katherine, too, fights for her dignity and for opportunities at work. Her calculations very soon prove indispensable to the effort to put the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, into outer space. (The scene in which she displays her calculations to the entire office of scientists features a small but brilliant stroke of film editing, which suggests that she envisioned the effect of that bold step before she took it.) She’s fighting prejudice against blacks, against women (none has ever been admitted to a Pentagon briefing, where she can get the information she needs for her analyses), and against bureaucracy itself. Paul, who has been the department’s resident genius, and to whom she reports, is resentful of his subordinate—a black woman, for good measure—outshining him in mathematical talent and analytical insight.

Eventually, upbraided by the head of the department, Al, in the presence of the entire staff, Katherine explodes with rage, setting forth the full litany of indignities to which she’s subjected because of her skin color, before storming out. But this sublimely righteous outburst is posed on a solid meritocratic basis. Katherine isn’t the only black woman to have worked in the main research department under Al; there has been a veritable parade of black women “computers” stationed in that department, and each has been found wanting and has been sent back to the pool. As a result, none has effected any change in the status of black employees or of women at NASA . Katherine’s outburst is effective because Katherine, unlike her predecessors, is indispensable. Taking her claims to heart, Al plays a heroic role, championing Katherine’s work and treating her with due respect—but his heroism is a conditional and practical one, spurred by his single-minded devotion to the space program.

In “Hidden Figures,” the civil-rights movement isn’t just a barely sketched backdrop; it’s in virtual competition with the efforts in personal advancement and achievement heroically made by the three women at the center of the film. In the movie, the three women never speak directly of civil rights. In the warmhearted romance at the center of the movie—Katherine’s relationship with Col. Jim Johnson (Mahershala Ali)—the subject never comes up. (Katherine Johnson is now ninety-eight; a title card at the end of the film declares that she and Johnson recently celebrated their fifty-sixth wedding anniversary.) The movie presents three women whose life experiences have been extraordinary; their work, their personal lives, and their struggle for justice are uncompromisingly heroic. What the movie is missing, above all, is their voices.

These women are not in any way submissive or passive. On the contrary, each one speaks up and takes action at great personal risk. (For instance, Dorothy steals a book that the library won't let her borrow and then speaks sharply to the guard who hustles her and her sons out.) The movie's emphasis on individual action and achievement in the face of vast obstacles is both beautiful and salutary, but its near-effacement of collective organization and political activity at a time when they were at their historical apogee—for that matter, its elision of politics as such—narrows the drama and, all the more grievously, the characters at its center.

What the women at the center of “Hidden Figures” lived through in their youth, in the deep age of Jim Crow, and, later, at a time of protest and of legal change, remains unspoken; their wisdom and insight remain unexpressed. For all the emotional power and historical redress of the movie—above all, in the simple recognition of the centrality of its three protagonists to the modern world—it pushes to the fore a moderation, based solely on personal accomplishment, in pursuit of justice. This is different from the civil-rights goal of a universal equality based on humanity alone, extended to the ordinary as well as to the exceptional. This is, by no means, a complaint about the real-life people on whom the movie is based; it’s purely a matter of aesthetics, a result of decisions by the director and screenwriter, Theodore Melfi, and his co-writer, Allison Schroeder, about how they imagined and developed the characters. (I found myself thinking, by contrast, of recently published stories by the late filmmaker Kathleen Collins , with their incisive observations regarding participants and observers of civil-rights activism.)

Melfi and Schroeder are white; perhaps they conceived the film to be as nonthreatening to white viewers as possible, or perhaps they anticipated that it would be released at a time of promised progress. Instead, it’s being released in a time of resurgent, unabashed racism. The time for protest has returned; for all the inspired celebration of hitherto unrecognized black heroes that “Hidden Figures” offers, and all the retrospective outrage that “Hidden Figures” sparks, I can only imagine the movie as it might have been made, much more amply, imaginatively, and resonantly, linking history and the present tense, by Ava DuVernay or Spike Lee, Julie Dash or Charles Burnett.

Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Hidden Figures — The Power of Hidden Figures: Feminist and Antiracist Values in American History

The Power of Hidden Figures: Feminist and Antiracist Values in American History

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The Hidden Figures Film Analysis Essay

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Hidden Figures is a 2016 American drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder based on the science-fiction book of the same name by author Margot Lee Shetterly. The film was named one of the best ten films of 2016 and garnered several honors and nominations, including three Academy Award nominations (Cramblet Alvarez et al. 85). Starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monet in the lead roles. The film was inspiring and gave me hope and faith that anything is possible if a person wants it and tries a little bit.

This film takes the viewer into NASA’s mysterious and fascinating Cold War universe. The story is told through the eyes of three black women working at the Langley Research Center (Cramblet Alvarez et al. 85). In this film, the viewer learns about all the difficulties Americans face in sending their astronauts into space and the black people who face the racism that prevails in the company. Since they live in the shadow of their male counterparts and a society rife with inequity, these girls’ experiences go undetected for a long time, but everything changes.

The picture is based on real people and events, the cast of the play is perfectly matched, and the high-class performance of the actors transports the viewer to another century in difficult times for America. Taraji P. Henson met with Catherine Johnson, who was 98 then, after signing a contract for the lead part to explore the character she would play (Cramblet Alvarez et al. 84). Each character in this motion picture has a different destiny. However, they are all bound together by a desire to change their country’s history, and connoisseurs follow their case with interest and admiration.

Pharrell Williams wrote the songs for this Theodore Melfi biographical film, and Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer wrote additional music. These soundtracks help to be transported and fully immersed in the atmosphere of the times during which the events unfold. The attempts to beg for a promotion and to change the working conditions of the heroines show how much the problem of inequality was. Women could not even buy a string of pearls with their salaries, which all female employees of NASA wore, which means that their profits were very different from those of the other races. The costumes are perfectly matched, immersing us in the atmosphere of those events.

All white characters, except for Al Harrison, are portrayed as helpless in science and hardened in disgusting racism, which is implausible. The movie itself is shot and acted rather academically. In places, though, it can create tension and empathy and provoke angry emotions toward Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons’ characters. However, even though the movie is written from real biographies and events, one gets the impression that everything is relatively easy for the heroines. If the film had been made now, the main characters’ story would have been more confusing and complicated. The movie flowed well from scene to scene; all the moments made sense to me. The director could have portrayed more of the hardships of the black women’s journey, which would have helped to bring it closer to the real story.

Thus, the film is dedicated to real women, their work successes, and their contributions to space exploration. The documentary proves that anyone can achieve anything if they work on themselves. The strong point is that the actors played well, transporting the viewer into the atmosphere of a time filled with inequality. The movie is surprisingly balanced: it has room for human relationships, families, children, love, friendship, and camaraderie, which are present in one way or another in everyone’s life. The film symbolizes that people should learn, develop, achieve, seek different ways to solve problems, and not be afraid to stand up for themselves. However, the downside may be the implausibility of some details in the film, namely the quick success of women and the incompetence of white employees. That is why my rating for this movie is nine points.

Cramblet Alvarez, Leslie D., et al. “ Psychology’s Hidden Figures: Undergraduate Psychology Majors’ (in)Ability to Recognize Our Diverse Pioneers .” Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research , vol. 24, no. 2, 2019, pp. 84–96., Web.

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St. John's Law Review

Home > Journals > St. John's Law Review > Vol. 95 > No. 3

Hidden Figures: Wage Inequity and Economic Insecurity for Black Women and Other Women of Color

Cassandra Jones Havard

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One hundred years after women secured the right to vote, wage inequality remains prevalent in the United States. The gender wage gap, or pay inequity based solely on sex, arguably, is a measure of the current failure of full and equal participation by women in American society. The gender wage gap exists despite federal legislation designed to further wage equality. In fact, a difference as small as two cents over a lifetime costs a woman approximately $80,000. Currently, it is predicted that for a majority of white women, the pay parity will be attained between 2059–2069. However, Black women and other women of color will not reach pay equity before 2369.

Most of society is oblivious to the fact that wage inequality is pervasive for Black women. The intersectionality framework recognized the failure of the law to account for how race and gender combine to marginalize Black women. When combined, racial and gender discrimination lead to economic, social, and political ramifications, any and all of which impact Black women differently.

As presently enacted, neither of the two federal statutes that prohibit gender pay inequities—the Equal Pay Act (“EPA”) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”)—adequately address the racialized wage gender gap. Nor do they differentiate the extent of the discrimination that Black women and other women of color experience based on their multiple identities of gender and race. Most importantly, neither corrects the market imperfections that sustain racialized gender inequality. Law has failed to expose and sufficiently regulate the structural and systemic bias that sustains racialized gendered marginalization and socio-economic inequalities. The central question is: what allows this systemic inequity to self-perpetuate?

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