Seeing as April is Black Women’s History Month, I jumped at the chance to talk about this amazing and powerful movie that was adapted from Margot Lee Shetterly’s book, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win The Space Race. This movie centers around these three black women who changed history with no credit to their contribution.
This movie showcases the incredible untold story of Katherine Jonson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae); these are the names of the three brilliant African-American women who were heavily involved with NASA. Specifically, these women worked as the brains behind astronaut John Glenn being launched into space.
This movie focuses intently on truthful history lessons that need to be heard. In the 60s when these women were actively working on rocket science, there was an abundance of racism. Johnson, Vaughan, and Jackson all worked together in the “colored only” section of Langley Field and were each subject to blatant acts of sexism and racism at work. These types of compromises that black individuals had to make in order to keep a job were shared experiences that black women underwent during the time of the Jim Crow Laws.
There were plenty of moments in this film that prove that the sacrifices made by these women were largely invisible to those outside of the programming jobs. In a single line, Janelle Monae as Mary Jackson notes with brilliance, “Every time we have the chance to get ahead, they move the finish line…every time.”
Watching this film should provoke us to really and thoroughly examine our education. This means questioning how valid our education is and what steps we should go through to verify what truly happened in American history that our textbooks don’t mention. Who are we missing now and how can we help uplift them while holding those accountable that work to hold those invisible and brilliant marginalized people back? These are the types of questions we should be asking ourselves every single day in every single one of our classes.