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1-Page Summary of Hidden Figures
Overall Summary
In 1943, during World War II, Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia seeks to hire hundreds of junior mathematicians and physicists to help with aeronautical research as part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). At that time, women were commonly called “computers” and they’re hired by NACA. However, Jim Crow laws are also still in place which means that Hampton is segregated. Some black female computers are placed at a separate office called West Area.
In 1942, a woman named Dorothy Vaughan is working as a math teacher and also in the laundry room of an Air Force base. She’s married with children and comes from a respected black family. One day she sees an advertisement for jobs at the NACA (National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics) and applies. They accept her into their program, even though it requires that she move away from her family to do so.
At the same time, Katherine Coleman is a math major at West Virginia. She’s so good that she was accepted into a master’s program in mathematics and completed the summer session of it. However, she dropped out to start a family.
Dorothy Vaughan starts working at the NACA. She is one of the few black computers and has to work in a segregated area called West Computing, while white computers have their own office on East Side. However, she still plays an important role in helping engineers improve fighter planes and develop better payloads for bombs.
Dorothy Vaughan, a mathematician and computer scientist for the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), was working at Langley in 1944 when she came to realize that her job would be over once the war ended. However, she is later made permanent employee of NACA after World War II. She continues to work hard and climb up the ranks until 1951, when she becomes head of West Computing division. That same year Mary Jackson joins West Computing as well.
Throughout the world, the Cold War between the United States and Russia becomes more intense. However, this is happening at a time when many black Americans are questioning why their own country is oppressing them.
The NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) offered many opportunities to black women. A man named Czarnecki, an engineer at the NACA, saw Mary Jackson’s intelligence and pushed her to become a scientist. Eventually, she became one of his research team members. The organization began integrating because it realized that there were many talented people who had been overlooked due to discrimination and bias in society. Although the organization was still biased against blacks and women, it was more open than others of its kind. Still, when John Becker accused Mary of making a mistake with her calculations, she stood up for herself by proving him wrong with facts and figures he couldn’t argue with. This inspired other black computers to stand up for themselves as well; they knew that if this woman could succeed despite being discriminated against on account of her race or gender then so could they!
Katherine Goble joins the Langley Research Center in 1953 after her husband, a pilot at Langley, tells her about an opening he knows about. She impresses everyone with her analytical geometry skills and is eventually promoted to work under Henry Pearson in the Flight Research Division. However, she still faces discrimination from some of the white men working there who are unwilling to accept a black woman as their superior. However, Katherine learns how to deal with these problems by ignoring them and being resilient enough not to let it affect her performance at work or prevent her from achieving success there.
