Black women’s roles at NASA talk’s focus
Their dreams universal, author notes
Margot Lee Shetterly, the author of Hidden Figures, a book about black women mathematicians in America’s 20th- century space race, said Thursday that the women she chronicled fought to dismantle race and gender barriers.
But they also sought meaningful work, better futures for their families and success — the goals and desires that are common to all.
“I believe that this is a quintessentially American story, with all of the dreams and all of the dilemmas that come with it,” Shetterly told an audience of more than 1,000 at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock where she was a speaker in the Frank and Kula Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture series.
“I also believe these women and their stories provide something that we are all yearning for, that we have always yearned for and perhaps need now more than ever, and that is triumph of curiosity and imagination over fear,” she said.
Shetterly’s book — the full title of which is Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of The Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race — recounts the roles of gifted black women mathematicians, or “human computers,” in America’s race with the Soviet Union into outer space. The New York Times best- selling book became a movie and was an Oscar contender earlier this year.
The book focuses on the experiences of four women who previously taught math in racially segregated schools until they went to work at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Va., beginning when World War II created shortages in the jobs that had traditionally gone to white men.
While the stories of the four women are highlighted, Shetterly said she estimates that there were as many as 80 black women and possible as many as 1,000 female computers — that was their informal job title — and eventually female engineers working in the nation’s space program between between 1943 and 1980.
The contributions of the women she wrote about changed the course of American history, she said.
Shetterly’s speech in Little Rock comes at a time when Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is championing more science, technology, engineering and math ( STEM) education in Arkansas’ public schools to better prepare students for jobs in high technology fields.
Shetterly’s talk also coincided with the release this week of a report from Purdue University that focuses on the small and declining numbers of black women who earn engineering degrees and recommends strategies for reversing that trend.
The paper — titled Ignored Potential: A Collaborative Road Map for Increasing African- American Women in Engineering — was commissioned by the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers and the Women in Engineering ProActive Network.
It notes that black men and women received 4 percent of the engineering degrees awarded in 2015, down from 5 percent in 2006, according
to a study that cites data from the American Society for Engineering Education. Black women, in particular, achieved 937 engineering degrees in 2015, less than 1 percent of the total 106,658 awarded. Women overall were awarded 19.9 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in engineering in 2015. Black men earned 2,927 bachelor’s degrees in engineering.
Shetterly grew up in Hampton, Va., where her father worked at Langley. She and her siblings would visit his workplace in the 1970s but took no note of the races of the workers, in part because it was not unusual for the scientists and engineers in her neighborhood and church to look like her family in terms of race. They were in her blind spot, and she did not see them as they deserved to be seen, she said.
It took her father nonchalantly telling Shetterly’s husband in 2010 about Hampton and the accomplishments of its residents in calculating by hand the flight trajectories and launch windows for the astronauts to make Shetterly realize the significance of the Langley workforce.
“It sparked in me the realization that I knew the women, but I didn’t know their story,” she said.
The women mathematicians were unrecognized in part because much of the work they did was classified but also because they were segregated — by race and gender — into separate work areas, dining tables and restrooms. Additionally, the women computers were considered more lowly than the white male engineers and
earned less although they often did the same work.
“These women were aeronautical ground troops. They were as necessary to the development of aeronautics and to the space program as our computers are to virtually every aspect of our lives today,” she said. “And once the women were in these positions, the best of them … took every opportunity to exceed expectations.”
Shetterly researched the work of the women in the space program for about three years, ultimately focusing on particular women for the purpose of the narrative. She said Thursday that she regretted that she could not give more than a cameo mention to Dorothy Hoover, a native of Hope, who began work in the computing pool in 1943, leaving for academia, the U. S. Weather Bureau and then returning to NASA to work in the field of computational physics.
After much of her research, Shetterly prepared a 55- page book proposal. She hired an agent who found a publisher. In the process, the detailed proposal passed through several hands, eventually reaching Donna Gigliotti, the producer of the movies Shakespeare in Love and Silver Lining’s Playbook.
Shetterly said she had no idea who Gigliotti was when Gigliotti called her on her cellphone in a grocery store parking lot to say, “We’re going to make a movie!” As a result, the movie began production before the book was completed last year.
In its writing, the book’s title underwent almost a half- dozen changes, Shetterly recalled in
response to a question. From the Earth to the Stars, was one working title but Hidden Figures came to her at one point and she liked it because it was elegant and “said everything I wanted to say” about women who had been hidden and math that had been hidden. She learned later that Hidden Figures is also the name of a spatial aptitude exam given to pilots.
Hidden Figures was Shetterly’s first book and was “magical,” “fairy dust,” and an experience she doesen’t expect to be repeated. She is, however, “whittling down my very long list of books I want to write” and is especially interested in pursuing projects on mid- 20th century America and looking at entrepreneurship, finance, work, class and race filtered through protagonists who are black professionals.
“There are so many incredible stories out there and people who have lived remarkable lives. It gives you a chance to live another life when you learn the details of someone who has done something really remarkable,” she said.
Shetterly was the 25th speaker in the Frank and Kula Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture series, hosted by The Clinton Foundation and the Clinton School of Public Service.
Earlier Thursday, Shetterly participated in a free program for students. Screenings earlier this month of the Hidden Figures movie and Thursday’s student program with Shetterly were supported by Southwest Power Pool, Simmons Bank, Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the city.