Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

 Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly-346 pages

This is the previously untold story of the women, specifically African-American women, who were computers for NACA (later NASA) at Langley in Hampton, Virginia. Dorothy Vaughan was one of the first to be offered and accept a position as a computer. Later, Mary Jackson and Katherine Goble (later Johnson) accepted a computer position at Langley. The women were part of West Computing which was the wing for the African-American women. They had to endure segregation and racism, especially in the early years of their employment. Mary Jackson would later become an engineer at Langley, leaving computing behind. All 3 of these women and many others would help send John Glenn into space in 1962. Katherine Goble Johnson also had a big hand in sending Apollo 11 to the moon and some of her calculations helped John Lovell and the other astronauts of Apollo 13 return home safely. This book is the inspiration for the 2017 film of the same name. I enjoyed reading this book, although it does lack a bit in the narrative department and gets bogged down in details occasionally. The epilogue is the best chapter, as far as narrative. It's almost as if she wrote it for those familiar with many of the people and the organizations and mathematics involved in these stories. I would rate it 3 out of 5 stars because of the importance of its story. It is an important history of many important, previously unseen contributions by African-American women at a time when segregation was the norm. This book does reinforce and extend my previous knowledge and studies of the Jim Crow era. The fact that African-Americans (and women) were not afforded the same rights and luxuries as their white (male, especially) counterparts time and time again until quite recently in the big picture is appalling. The fact that hotels and restaurants could and did deny service to someone based solely on their skin color is abhorrent. Separate but equal was never equal. It was really separate and unequal. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision set a horrible precedent for the following several decades of segregation. The women in this story overcame that segregation and constant reminders of its existence to make important contributions to United States history.