Hidden Figures

Inventions that changed lives

Context

In 1865, when the Civil War ended, slavery was abolished, and African American people gained the right to vote. But in the South, During the 1870s, the Jim Crow Laws were passed. They were laws designed to make it more difficult for African American people to vote. In 1896, America adopted the principle of "Seperate but Equal". It meant that black people and white people could be separated as long as they received the same quality of treatment. First, it was in public schools, then in public transports, public toilets, hospitals, prisons and even water fountains. They were not treated equaly. It was the beginning of segregation.

The film takes place between 1962 and 1969, a period known as the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. During this period, a lot of people acted in various ways for things to change : Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Park, Sarah Keys Evans, Alice Walker, … They protested, and in the end, they won : in 1964 and 1965, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act made it illegal to restrict people's citizenship and voting rights : it was the end of segregation.

The Trailer

Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician. It was very difficult for an African American woman to become a Mathematician at the time. From 1953 to 1958, she worked as a computer : her job was to analyze data. She was assigned to assist the Space Task Group. On the launch day of the Mercury 7 program, Katherine was asked to check the capsule's trajectory and landing coordinates. After an important technical issue (the capsule's heat shield was dysfunctional), she helped landing the capsule safely. After this, she went on to calculate the trajectories for the Apollo 11 and Space Shuttle missions. She was one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist. In 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, NASA dedicated the Langley Research Center's Katherine Johnson Computational Building in her honor.

Mary Jackson first worked as a computer, and then she entered the Space Task Group and was assigned to the space capsule heat shield team, where she immediately identified a design flaw. She then applied to a NASA engineer position. For this, she filed a petition for permission to attend Hampton High School, which was an all-white High School. To enter this school, she had to plead her case in court ! Finally, she managed to get the right to attend night classes. She obtained her engineering degree and became NASA's first female African American engineer ! Later, she worked to influence the hiring and promotion of women in NASA.

Dorothy Vaughan was an American mathematician and human computer. When she entered NASA, she learnt that they had installed a new electronic computer, the IBM 7090, which threatened to replace human computers. She managed to teach herself programming. She visited the computer room, and successfully started the machine (which was very hard on computers of this era). She was promoted to supervise the Programming Department, and she agreed to do it only if thirty of her co-workers were transferred with her. She taught programming to them to prepare them. In 2019, she received the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2020, a satellite named after her was launched into space.