Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up... in a small town in West Virginia. She excelled in math at a young age, and she was given a scholarship in sixth grade to attend a school for black children that actually went beyond the eighth grade. She went on to become the first black female student at West Virginia University Graduate School.
Living... in Virginia with her three daughters and her mother.
Profession... working at NASA in the Langley Research Center. Employees are segregated by race and gender, so she works in the “colored group” with 19 women including her good friends Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson. They are considered human “computers,” responsible for calculating complex mathematical equations that are being used to prepare astronaut John Glenn for his mission to become the first American to orbit Earth. She analyzes the manometer levels for air displacement, friction, and velocity, and computes over ten thousand calculations by cosine, square root by hand.
Interests... spending the little free time she has with her friends and family. They go to church, have neighborhood barbecues, and play card games.
Relationship status... widowed. She misses her late husband more than anyone.
Challenge... bureaucracy, prejudice, and egos. Given that Katherine is an expert in analytic geometry, NASA has been recruited to join a team of white men to figure out the math for the planned orbital launch that is only a few weeks away. Although Katherine is starting to break race and gender barriers at NASA, she is constantly reminded of her lower status. She can’t pour coffee from the office’s communal coffee pot because no one wants her to touch it. She is mistaken for the janitor. She must walk for half a mile to the “colored” restroom. She is prohibited from attending Pentagon briefings. And her male coworkers can’t handle the fact that a woman is smarter than they are. Katherine knows it’s important to keep on fighting, but she wonders if it’s really going to make a difference. As she says, “It’s like shooting a sawed-off shotgun from a thousand feet and getting that one BB through a hole so tiny, you can’t even see it.”
Personality... intelligent, humble, and hardworking. Katherine is extremely modest even though she has a lot to be arrogant about.
Get to Know her in...
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The untold story of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, brilliant African-American women working at NASA and serving as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history. They are behind the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big.
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The #1 New York Times bestseller The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner. Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens. Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.
