Three human computers who helped take man to the moon

Hidden Figures, a film that was nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars premiered in theatres countrywide last Friday.

The film, which, unfortunately, lost the coveted prize of Best Picture to Moonlight, tells the true story of three black women — Catherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan — who played a vital role during America’s early attempt to go to space in the 1960s.

The three women are played by Taraji P. Henson who plays Cookie Lyon in the series Empire, Academy award winning Octavia Spencer who first broke out in her role on the 2011 film The Help and Grammy nominated musician Janelle Monae.

The three women who the film is based on were not only pioneers in the field of space exploration but also faced insurmountable challenges at a time when all odds were stacked against them. The period of the films events are of historical importance to the world and to black people; the ‘50s and early ‘60s marked the Space Race between the Soviet Union and USA in which both countries were competing on who  would be first to launch an artificial satellite to orbit the earth as well as human space flight.

This period in American history was also the height of segregation. It meant that black people used different facilities from white people, were unfairly compensated in the workplace and were denied opportunities that would see them excel in fields like astronomy.

The three women, however, broke this barrier and were employed at the then NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) as what were then called human computers. The role of these women was to calculate by hand complex equations that allowed space flight. Despite their important role, the black female human computers were paid less than their male and white counterparts and were relegated to a segregated section of the space centre, where they had their own entrance, lunch room and toilets.

The film is adopted from a book by Margot Lee Shetterly Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race and delves into how the three were able to overcome the difficulties of being black and female and left a huge mark on history. 

In the film, the main protagonist is Catherine Johnson (Taraji Henson) who historically was hired by NACA in 1953 and became one of the leading human computers in her department. As such, she is assigned a role under John Glenn, the head of the program. While here, she quickly proves her worth doing quick computations and solving problems that the department was having. Despite this, she still struggles heavily with the issue of race as she has to use a different smaller coffee pot and walk all the way back to her previous building, sometimes in the rain, to use the washrooms designated for blacks.

She was able to overcome and was a great help in doing the computation for America’s first human space flight by Alan Shepard in 1961.

Her counterparts and friends Jackson and Vaughan were also great pioneers. Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) who was hired by NACA during World War Two went on to become the first black NACA supervisor and later when the organisation introduced IBM computers to do the calculations, she became one of the first programming experts .

Jackson (Janelle Monae) on her part graduated from university with two degrees in maths and physical science and was hired by NACA in 1951.  While working as a computer, she was assigned a task under engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki, who, impressed by her prowess, encouraged her to apply to become an engineer. However, to get this position she needed to go to school and complete some courses. The only problem was that these courses were only offered in an all white school. Not one to turn away from the challenge, she contested this in court and was allowed to attend the classes. She completed all her courses and in 1958 she became NASA’s first female African-American engineer.

Hidden Figures, which was directed by Theodore Melfi, cost Sh2.5 billion to make and has already generated over Sh18.2 billion in the box office. The film has received critical acclaim and has seen charities and groups that consider the story important buying out full theatres so that their intended audience was guaranteed to see the film. This happened even in Nairobi, where in the first week of the film’s release locally, all tickets were bought up at Century Cinemax Junction and Garden City for private screenings. You can catch Hidden Figures in cinemas countrywide. 

The writer is the executive producer of TV shows Young Rich, Get in the Kitchen, Our Perfect Wedding and Stori Yangu