The Space Race was a hotly fought battle in the 20th century, with the US and Russia going toe to toe to be the first to conquer what lies beyond our planet, with many people and animals losing their lives along the way.
The US is credited as the victors after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot onto the surface of the moon, but the work of those back on Earth is often overlooked as the astronauts take the plaudits.
This Black History Month we are celebrating Black excellence. Three Black women who were integral to the US space program exemplify why, despite being discriminated against based on the color of their skin and their gender, Black voices were and still remain an integral part of US history.
Despite being born into a system that was not equal, these women aided in the betterment of society by using their skills to progress the US scientifically - as well as showcasing that Black minds deserved to be at the same table as their White counterparts.
These three women were Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan.
Mary Jackson was born in 1921 in Hampton, Virginia. She displayed characteristics of having a great mind from an early age and would go on to graduate from high school with the highest honors, before further developing and challenging herself as a mathematician.
Mary would later graduate from Hampton Institute in 1942 with a dual degree in Math and Physical Sciences, and would first use her knowledge as a mathematician to educate younger generations. She took a job as a teacher at a school for Black students in Calvert County, Maryland where she remained for a year before returning to Hampton.
Katherine Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918. Much like Mary, Katherine would display that she was a cut above the rest from an early age as she skipped a few grades in school due to her natural brilliance with numbers. By the age of 13, she was attending high school on the campus of West Virginia State College.
When she turned 18, she enrolled in the college where she once again displayed her excellence and was taken under the wing of professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics.
West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939 where after two years of teaching, Katherine and two men were the first Black students to be enrolled at West Virginia University.
Dorothy Vaughan was born in 1910 in Kansas City, Missouri but moved to West Virginia with her family in 1917. Like the two women she was yet to meet, Dorothy had a way with numbers that meant she excelled as a bright young student.
In 1929 she graduated from Wilberforce University with a degree in mathematics. Parallel to Mary and Katherine, Dorothy took up a job as a teacher in Virginia.
The three women had similar paths in their early life, and their worlds colliding meant the rest of the country was about to prosper.
Segregation remained in place until the 1960s, so when the three women were looking for work, they were aware that - whatever their job - as Black women they would be paid less than their White male counterparts regardless of their skill level.
Dorothy Vaughan was the first to join The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which later became NASA. She joined the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1943 during the height of the Second World War. Due to the timing of her role, she believed that her position would be dissolved when the war came to a conclusion. She worked in the West Area Computing group, which was a team of Black female mathematicians, and in 1949, Dorothy became their lead.
Mary joined the team in 1951 where she spent two years in the computing pool. After proving her excellence, she received an offer from the engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki to work in the 4-foot by 4-foot Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. She was offered the opportunity to have hands-on experience as an engineer, but trainees were required to gain graduate maths and physics degrees in after-work classes.
Mary had to receive special permission to attend these classes from the City of Hampton as they do place in a segregated school. Not letting adversity get the best of her she completed the classes and, in 1958, became NASA’s first black female engineer.
Katherine started at Langley in 1953 after a relative informed her of an open position in the West Area Computing group.
Alongside her husband and three daughters, she relocated to the area to begin her work. A mere two weeks after joining the team, she was assigned to the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division where she analyzed data from flight tests alongside investigating plane crashes caused by turbulence.
In 1957 the space race took an exciting turn as the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik, and with this, the US needed to respond.
The three women, alongside a team of Black women who were also integral to winning the space race, were about to play their parts in putting a man in space. Katherine provided notes for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology. When NACA became NASA, Katherine did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard's 1961 mission, Freedom 7 which was America's first human spaceflight.
Katherine's most notable accolade came in 1962 during the orbital mission of John Glenn.
The astronauts were hesitant to put their lives in the hands of a computer, so Glenn famously said "get the girl," referring to Johnson, as her expertise was clearly well-known throughout NASA.
Katherine carried out the calculations, by hand, and the orbital mission was a great success and turned the tide of the space race between the US and the Soviet Union.
Mary would enjoy a long, prosperous engineering career that saw her publish a dozen reports which were vital in both commercial and space flights.
Unfortunately, discrimination was not a stranger to the three women, and Mary would become frustrated at the glass ceiling. She would dedicate her later career at the company to ensuring the employment and progression of women within NASA.
Dorothy became a FORTRAN (Formula Translation, computer programming language) expert, where she made computer programming more accessible. Her legacy is being the first Black supervisor at NACA, as well as being one of the only female supervisors and, without her, genius minds such as Katherine and Mary may never have thrived as well as they did.
Dorothy retired from NASA in 1971, Mary retired in 1985 and Katherine retired in 1986.
The three women, amongst a team of Black female human computers, turned the tide of the space race and their legacy is still felt today. Katherine received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama in 2015.
The 2016 movie Hidden Figures tells their story, starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe, and went on to be nominated for three Academy Awards.
Sources: Smithsonian, Space, Britannica, NASA, Univerisity Of Birmingham, Hollywood Reporter
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