Yet the integration that has already occurred continues to make change, as Dorothy Vaughan fights to get Katherine the raise she has earned. But Pearson, while seemingly promoting Katherine, also fails to give her a raise. Similarly, it is a place where Katherine’s mathematical skill can get her moved from the computing pool into a group led by the head of the Flight Research Division, Henry Pearson. Two weeks later she and the white man become fast friends, after they discover they are both from West Virginia. She ignores his rudeness, knowing if she’s going to survive at Langley, she’ll have to be resilient. On her first day in her new office, a white man one desk over stands up and walks away when she greets him. Once again, the NACA proves to be a place where prejudice continues to exist, and yet also a place where it seemingly can be overcome. She joins the Flight Research Division, where she impresses the engineers in the group with her expertise in analytical geometry. Katherine starts work at Langley in 1953, after learning about the job from a relative at a wedding. Her willingness to stand up for herself inspires other black computers, and shows those in leadership positions that Mary has what it takes to succeed. But it is also a place where she can use her skills to prove to him that he’d actually made the mistake. It is a place where the chief officer, John Becker, thinks little of accusing Mary of making a mistake in her calculations. That doesn’t mean bias against women and blacks is absent from the organization. Slowly, but surely, the NACA begins to integrate. Impressed by Mary’s intelligence, he then pushes her to become an engineer. An NACA engineer named Kazimierz Czarnecki invites Mary Jackson to join his research team. Yet the NACA, perhaps, offers more opportunities than much of the rest of society. Yet as the United States dedicates itself to fighting the spread of Communist oppression around the globe, many black Americans, including many at the NACA wonder why at the same time the United States perpetuates the oppression of African-Americans on its own soil. Globally, the “Cold War” between the United States and the Soviet Union becomes more intense. That same year, Mary Jackson joins West Computing, working as a computer under Dorothy Vaughan. For a number of years she serves only as the “acting head” of the West Area computing division, but she performs so well that she becomes full head of the unit in 1951. Yet when the Head Computer Margery Hannah gets promoted and Margarery’s second, Blanche, unexpectedly falls ill and dies, Dorothy is asked to fill the role. Even so, she finds it hard to move up the ranks: there are few opportunities available to women, and even fewer for black women. The black computers, much to their consternation, are also made to sit together in the cafeteria at a table marked with a sign that reads “Colored Computers.” Nonetheless, the black computers play an important role in helping the engineers at Langley improve American fighter planes and develop ever more powerful bomb payloads.Īfter the war, Dorothy fears she will be let go by the NACA, but instead she is made a permanent employee in 1946. White computers, run by white Head Computers Margerey Hannah and Blanche Shopsin, work out of a different office on the East Side of Langley’s campus, called East Area. As a black computer, she must work in the segregated West Area Computing room. Meanwhile, Dorothy Vaughan begins work at the NACA. She completes the summer session of the master’s program, but then drops out of the program to start a family. She is such an excellent mathematician that she is invited to integrate a nearby university, where she has been accepted into a master’s program in mathematics. She accepts the job, even though it requires her to move quite a distance and be away from her family.Īt around the same time, Katherine Coleman is a math major at West Virginia. She applies, and is hired as a mathematician. One day she sees an advertisement for jobs at the NACA. Married with children, Dorothy comes from a middle class black family, well-respected and well-known by other black families in town. In the summer of 1942, Dorothy Vaughan, a math teacher, is also working in a miltary laundry room in order to earn extra money and to support the American war effort. Langley hires some black female computers, but places them in a segregated office called West Area. Further, Jim Crow laws are still in place in the South, which means that Hampton is a segregated place. At the time, mathematicians, who are commonly called “computers,” are almost all women. In 1943, in the midst of World War II, the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, VA seeks to hire hundreds of junior physicists and mathematicians to help in the war effort by supporting engineers in performing aeronautical research as part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the NACA).
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