There was an African-American woman in the 1960s whose math skills not only outstripped all her male rocket-scientist colleagues at NASA, but also out-computed NASA’s gigantic, room-sized IBM computer. This is how we spell role model.
Her staggeringly accurate calculations were solely responsible for sending America’s most famous astronaut into orbit and saving his life, and for keeping America from embarrassing itself in front of its heretofore superior, Cold War space-competitor, the mighty Russians.
Actually, it’s a sneaky-good, word-play title: it encompasses the fact that 1) these women were able to figure out redacted numbers (figures that had been hidden from them), and 2) they were the figures responsible for putting a man into orbit, but were themselves hidden from the public eye and got no credit for their work.
Then there’s “The Imitation Game,” which also championed a math-wizard minority whose calculations saved millions of lives in World War II, and “Red Tails,” about the first African-American fighter pilots, whose aviation wizardry saved lives, also in WWII.
‘I Have No Idea Where Your Bathroom Is’
The United States was embarrassed by Russia’s space progress, and so NASA hired the highest-IQ rocket scientists (figurative and literal) it could get its hands on. As author Tom Wolfe famously related in his book “The Right Stuff,” America was collectively depressed about the situation, knowing as we did that “our rockets always blow up.”Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) started out calculating rocket trajectories for the Apollo-series moon-shots, and then later saved famous astronaut John Glenn’s hide. We first see her as a small girl, blowing the collective minds of assembled classrooms and teachers with her rarified, chalkboard math hieroglyphics. She graduated college, summa cum laude, at age 18.
Cream of the Crop
Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), who was Katherine’s supervisor, and their mutual friend Mary Jackson (R&B star Janelle Monáe) were also trailblazing female African-American engineers working at NASA in the capacity of “human computers,” or as they were labeled, “colored computers.” Segregation at NASA put the “colored computers” in a separate room, with lower pay and nonstop discrimination.
Katherine’s fight to stand up for herself and her prescient, dead-on, virtuoso calculations; Mary’s court petition to get accreditation from the previously forbidden-to-Negros Hampton High School; and Dorothy’s outsmarting of segregationist librarians to acquire books on advanced Fortran computer-programming (not available in the library’s colored section) so as to avoid becoming IBM-obsolete are the film’s three narrative threads. Throw in a smidgen of romance and family.
Wry Humor
At times overly saccharine, “Hidden Figures” has some fun humor. In a scene reminiscent of the one in “American Sniper” where a cop stops Navy SEAL Chris Kyle for speeding and ends up giving him a police escort to the Naval amphibious base at the outset of America’s response to the 9/11 attacks, here, after the women’s car breaks down (Dorothy rolls up her sleeves and fixes it herself), an initially racist policeman gives the ladies an escort to the office upon finding out they work for NASA.Says Mary, “We’re three Negro women chasing a white cop in 1961!” It’s highly likely “Hidden Figures” was released when it was, due to pressure on Hollywood to diversify its offerings.
Johnson, 97 years old when this film released, received a Presidential Medal of Freedom. She qualifies for having her picture in the dictionary next to the definition of “rocket scientist.”
