No Longer ‘Hidden Figures'

The Untold Story of Three Prominent Black Women at Nasa Is Brought to the Forefront in a New Historical

- Marissa Charles

If you ask any school kid to name the first American to orbit Earth, he or she will say John Glenn, in February 1962. But how many can name the person whose precise calculations ensured the astronaut made it back safely?

How many children know the answer is Katherine Johnson, and not only is she African-American, but she was also one among many at NASA?

You wouldn’t blame them for having a hard time in believing that fact. After all, Glenn’s Mercury-Atlas 6 mission came before 1963’s March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Segregation still existed in the South, and the Civil Rights Act was two years away.

“I thought it was fiction.”

That’s what actress Octavia Spencer says about first hearing the story that is the focus of her new movie Hidden Figures. The biopic (which has a limited release on Christmas Day and a national opening on Jan. 6) tells the true story of the unseen African-American female mathematicians and NASA scientists who played pivotal roles in the 1950s and ’60s space race.