Margot Lee Shetterly is an American nonfiction writer best known for her debut novel “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.” It chronicles the true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped give rise to America’s greatest achievements in space. The movie adaptation is now in theaters and it stars Taraji P Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst and Kevin Costner.
According to Amazon, “Hidden Figures” is the story of female mathematicians known was “human computers” who used pencils, slide rulers and adding machines to calculate the numbers necessary to launch rockets and astronauts into space. Among these were a group of exceptionally talented African American women who originally taught math in the South’s segregated public schools. That was before they were called into service to work in America’s aeronautics industry during the labor shortages of World War II. They moved to Hampton, Virginia during the Jim Crow law years when the law required them to be segregated from their white counterparts. They became known as the women of Langley’s all black ‘West Computing” group and helped America defeat the Soviet Union in the space race. Specifically it follows the lives of Dorothy Vaughn, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden starting from World War II, through the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement and shows how their superior intellect changed their personal lives and their country’s future.
SA Examiner 