Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You. From House top
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Kristen and I'm Caroline and listeners. This episode has it all.
Speaker 1: It's got space, it's got science, it has amazing women
Speaker 1: you've never heard of, and it also has the rage
Speaker 1: factor of the fact that you've never heard of them
Speaker 1: and the double rage factor of some racist working conditions.
Speaker 1: There are literal highs. I'm talking like into space, space,
Speaker 1: into space, eyes and lows i e. Racism and segregation. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: um uh. This episode is is I hope, as fascinating
Speaker 1: to listen to as it was for us to research.
Speaker 1: It really continues the theme that we started in our
Speaker 1: episode on Polly Murray last time, of women who have
Speaker 1: sort of been buried by history, women who played a
Speaker 1: huge part in our country's history. In this case science
Speaker 1: history with Paully Murray was legal history and racism and segregation.
Speaker 1: But the thing is in all of these amazing women's stories,
Speaker 1: for so many of them, there's still so little known.
Speaker 1: We have names, but it's taking a woman like Margot
Speaker 1: Lee Shutterley, who is publishing this year the book Hidden Figures,
Speaker 1: the untold story of the African American women who helped
Speaker 1: the United States when the Space race. It's taking Shutterley
Speaker 1: publishing a book and then attracting movie attention because it
Speaker 1: will be made into a movie next year to get
Speaker 1: these women some more attention. Yeah, and we've talked before
Speaker 1: on stuff Mo'm never told you about the history of
Speaker 1: computing and how women or the first quote unquote computers
Speaker 1: doing the computer work, which was consider or like low
Speaker 1: level clerical work. Um. But even in that knowledge, it's
Speaker 1: only just now becoming more commonly known. At first, the
Speaker 1: image was just of white women doing all of this computing.
Speaker 1: And now thanks to Shutterly and um, a couple of
Speaker 1: other researchers that she's collaborated with, we are learning about
Speaker 1: these women of color who are also doing computing work
Speaker 1: but might have been segregated in separate working areas, and
Speaker 1: who were critical in the case of what we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today, to the space race, to us
Speaker 1: even landing on the Moon. Maybe space race should be
Speaker 1: the penny name of this episode, space Race, Race space. Um.
Speaker 1: But I mean it's not like these women's stories were
Speaker 1: secret or unknown by any means. I mean, what's so
Speaker 1: fascinating and like mind boggling is that you'll see obituaries
Speaker 1: of some of these women and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: so and so passed away and she was a family
Speaker 1: woman and she like did some stuff for NASA and
Speaker 1: then she died and you're like what wait? And so,
Speaker 1: I mean these women's lives and stories were no secret.
Speaker 1: I mean Katherine Johnson, one woman who will talk about,
Speaker 1: was just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.
Speaker 1: So their their work is definitely being recognized. But we
Speaker 1: want to do our part as Sminty, to dig into
Speaker 1: this history a little bit more and enlighten you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so before we get into NASA, we've got to talk
Speaker 1: about NAKA because the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was
Speaker 1: the predecessor to NASA, and it was formed in nineteen fifteen, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, was only a little more than a
Speaker 1: decade after the airplane was invented. Yeah, they got right
Speaker 1: on that. They're like, I feel like this is important,
Speaker 1: we would probably do something with this. So they were
Speaker 1: formed with the goal of furthering aeronautical research, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight would become NASA. But first in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty NAKA sets up the Langley Memorial Research Center in Hampton,
Speaker 1: Virginia to study aircraft and eventually space flights. Now geographical
Speaker 1: note that is important to well note Hampton, Virginia is
Speaker 1: also home to what was then called Hampton Institute, which
Speaker 1: is a historically black college that had started around about
Speaker 1: the Civil War to educate former slaves, and it grew
Speaker 1: into a university which is still a historically black institution,
Speaker 1: and many people in that college. In this case, lady
Speaker 1: people funneled right from Hampton to NACA and Langley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the geographical location almost feels like destiny. And
Speaker 1: this was something that Margot Lee Shutterley, who author while
Speaker 1: is writing right now Hidden Figures um notes because she
Speaker 1: grew up in Hampton, I believe, and talks about how
Speaker 1: there were a lot of African American families who were
Speaker 1: in STEM careers all around her. It was very normalized. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: her dad was also in science and she she talks
Speaker 1: about how, yes, I knew black people who had any
Speaker 1: job anything from like a shoeshine or to a teacher,
Speaker 1: to a lawyer to a doctor. But so many of
Speaker 1: the African Americans in our community around us were in
Speaker 1: science and technology, and she said, I just I thought
Speaker 1: it was what black people did. I thought you just
Speaker 1: went into science. And and I love that tidbit because
Speaker 1: I feel like Kristen, anytime you and I talked about
Speaker 1: stem topics, we always are very careful to point out
Speaker 1: how women entered the field in the first place, because
Speaker 1: things like men worship people who inspire you as a
Speaker 1: young person to get involved in science. They're they're critical.
Speaker 1: That's a critical role to inspire young people and to
Speaker 1: normalize a life spent pursuing science. And so I love
Speaker 1: that shutter Lely has this normalization of science around her,
Speaker 1: as do some of the women will talk about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it traces all the way back to the Hampton Institute,
Speaker 1: which by the way, was Booker T. Washington's alma mater.
Speaker 1: And Hampton Institute was preceded by the efforts of an
Speaker 1: African American woman of means to educate freed slaves because
Speaker 1: originally in Virginia, there was a law passive believe pre
Speaker 1: Civil War um forbidding black people from getting educated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so at great risk, this woman, I believe her name
Speaker 1: is Margaret Peak started educating people and the institution even
Speaker 1: educated a group of Native America ends who had been
Speaker 1: prisoner elsewhere in the country and sent to Hampton. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't we don't know what to do with these people,
Speaker 1: so please educate them. So Hampton has an amazing and
Speaker 1: very rich history of educating people in this country. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it was a perfect place for NAKA
Speaker 1: to set up shop with the Langley Memorial Research Center
Speaker 1: in Langley hires its first woman, Pearl Young, who becomes
Speaker 1: an engineer and a technical editor at NAKA. So she
Speaker 1: broke the gender becker there. Pearl. Yeah, Pearl was the
Speaker 1: first lady person. But as NAKA is picking up steam,
Speaker 1: they need more people. What do we do, well, I
Speaker 1: guess we get cheap women with their tiny little hands
Speaker 1: who can use the slide rules. So they began hiring
Speaker 1: women computers in the nineteen thirties in earnest But it's
Speaker 1: industry to think about that. They called it a computer
Speaker 1: pool in the same way that at a big office,
Speaker 1: for instance, you might have a stenography pool. These women
Speaker 1: could provide a lot of labor to a lot of
Speaker 1: calculations for relatively cheap and their primary task was to
Speaker 1: do all the calculating and computation the engineers had been
Speaker 1: doing for aircraft and later space missions in order to
Speaker 1: free them up for other aspects of research. And the
Speaker 1: engineers of this time were exclusively men. So the calculating
Speaker 1: and computation including things such as reading film of monometer boards,
Speaker 1: which that just makes me think of the muppets. Phenomena
Speaker 1: do do do do? So the Phenomena boards measured pressure
Speaker 1: changes during wind tunnel resistance tests and recorded that data
Speaker 1: on spreadsheets, and honestly, this was a part of the
Speaker 1: research that took me right back to my high school
Speaker 1: physics class and thankst washed over me. Well. Um, I
Speaker 1: watched an interview with Christine Darden, who is another woman
Speaker 1: we will talk about later in the podcast. But as
Speaker 1: she's talking about spreadsheets, she's literally using hand motions of
Speaker 1: like indicating how big these spreadsheets were, and that women
Speaker 1: just for hours and hours, day in and day out,
Speaker 1: twenty four hours round the clock, we're entering data and spreadsheets,
Speaker 1: and that just made my mind melt a little. Oh God,
Speaker 1: it's like excel I R. L By and so in
Speaker 1: addition to reading the Phenomena boards, which it is, manometer listeners,
Speaker 1: but I prefer mahenomena. I prefer phenomena as well. They
Speaker 1: also calculated rocket trajectories and safe reentry angles, and in
Speaker 1: analyzing the data, they would plot the results on graph
Speaker 1: paper in those giant spreadsheet booklets, and all this was
Speaker 1: done by hand, not with their t I at three passes.
Speaker 1: I had a tight five with Frogger on it, a
Speaker 1: T E D five. Yeah, you know, I'm ritzy. It's
Speaker 1: the one time in my life when I was ritzy. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they would. They would use tools like slide rules,
Speaker 1: magnifying glasses, and and really basic calculating machines to get
Speaker 1: all of this done. But you know, lest you think
Speaker 1: that all they were doing is writing stuff on spreadsheets,
Speaker 1: I mean, these women had to have a very specialized
Speaker 1: knowledge to do this. They ended up a lot of
Speaker 1: these women ended up devising aeronautics and aerospace specific computing methods,
Speaker 1: and many went on to write papers and books of
Speaker 1: their own. So it's not like they're just sitting there
Speaker 1: day in and day out mindlessly calculating. These are brilliant
Speaker 1: people and they were effective. They were collectively praised for
Speaker 1: calculating data more rapidly and accurately doing more in a
Speaker 1: morning than an engineer alone could finish in a day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, Lady brain's powerful. Well, when World War two hits,
Speaker 1: NAKA needs more people to work to do these calculations.
Speaker 1: But the men folk are leaving. So what happens there's
Speaker 1: a computer boom. They begin actively recruiting more women workers.
Speaker 1: They were advertising in trade journals and in pamphlets, they
Speaker 1: sent to colleges, and they sent recruiters out to college campuses,
Speaker 1: and some of those early women computers were even in
Speaker 1: the group who went to college campuses to try to
Speaker 1: be like sea ladies, you can do maths just like
Speaker 1: I can professionally. And they had a hand during this
Speaker 1: time in a lot of critical projects, ranging up from
Speaker 1: everything from World War two aircraft testing to transnic and
Speaker 1: supersonic flight research. And because this was happening during World
Speaker 1: War two, NAKA was running twenty four seven, meaning that
Speaker 1: the computers these women would work in eight hour shifts
Speaker 1: around the clock. So this is disrupting the typical domestic
Speaker 1: setting for women at the time. But here's a thing.
Speaker 1: Not surprisingly, just because these computers worked harder and faster,
Speaker 1: and we're also desperately needed, they weren't making equal wages
Speaker 1: as the fellas, but it was still gainful employment for
Speaker 1: women at the time. And this is echoing our podcast
Speaker 1: way back when now about secretaries, where it was like
Speaker 1: female secretaries would get paid so much less than male secretaries,
Speaker 1: but what the women made was still so much more
Speaker 1: than they could have made elsewhere. So similarly, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, women computers were classified as sub professionals and
Speaker 1: could earn between a whopping one thousand, four d forty
Speaker 1: dollars and thirty dollars per year. Meanwhile, dudes were usually
Speaker 1: hired as junior engineers, passified as professionals and started out
Speaker 1: with dollars. And I keep in mind, though, that these
Speaker 1: quote unquote sub professional women still had to have at
Speaker 1: least a bachelor's degree, and many of them had already
Speaker 1: served as high school teachers for years and years before
Speaker 1: they entered this work. Many of them too, as we'll
Speaker 1: talk about, were very unsatisfied with their teaching careers. But basically,
Speaker 1: like teaching and nursing were the avenues that were open, uh,
Speaker 1: particularly to women of color, as we'll get into in
Speaker 1: a bit, but this science work offered them an entirely
Speaker 1: new path and a path into aeronautics. Yeah, and quickly
Speaker 1: about the money to a teacher would be making around
Speaker 1: five fifty dollars a year, So in that context this
Speaker 1: is good money, even though it's not equitable money. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that there weren't progressive policies in place
Speaker 1: at Naka. Yeah. So we've talked a lot in previous
Speaker 1: episodes about UH, particularly teaching, but also other fields where
Speaker 1: at the time UH, if you got married and or
Speaker 1: started a family, you were expected to leave. There were
Speaker 1: policies against hiring married women, especially pregnant women, UM because
Speaker 1: it was expected like the home is where you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be, you're a woman. But Naka was like, we
Speaker 1: need you. You're so smart, please stay. So very importantly,
Speaker 1: marriage and family based discrimination was not a thing at Naka.
Speaker 1: They didn't have any of the whole like get rid
Speaker 1: of women when they get married. And in fact, after
Speaker 1: World War Two, when so many women were forced out
Speaker 1: of the workplace once the men came home, Naka was like,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, can you please stay. You're so smart?
Speaker 1: Can you please keep doing the math? Please do the
Speaker 1: math well? And several of those computers were also married
Speaker 1: to NACA engineers. So this, like you said, provided women
Speaker 1: entry into aeronautics and provided an alternative and an exciting
Speaker 1: alternative if you were into science and math. And this
Speaker 1: wasn't just a job for white ladies. African American women
Speaker 1: computers were part of naka's hiring push, and we will
Speaker 1: introduce you to these women when we come right back
Speaker 1: from a quick break. Now. Unfortunately, it did take a
Speaker 1: presidential executive order for African American women to officially be
Speaker 1: part of naka's hiring push. Um because back in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one, a Philip Randolph, who was a tremendous labor
Speaker 1: and civil rights leader, pressured FDR into issuing executive order
Speaker 1: a D eight O two Yeah, which says there shall
Speaker 1: be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense
Speaker 1: industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin.
Speaker 1: So that just opens the hiring floodgates. And again NAK
Speaker 1: is placing ads and papers, sending recruiters out, but this
Speaker 1: time they're putting ads in black communities newspapers, and they
Speaker 1: were putting out ads for everyone from janitors to laborers
Speaker 1: to women with math and chemistry degrees. So this means
Speaker 1: that they're hiring smart African American women. But this is
Speaker 1: also the era of segregation. So black women at Langley
Speaker 1: worked eight and even use the restroom in separate facilities
Speaker 1: in what was called the West Area, and they were
Speaker 1: referred to as the West Area computers, and their facilities
Speaker 1: were so far removed from where the white computers worked.
Speaker 1: A lot of those women, the white women didn't even
Speaker 1: know that the West Computers existed. Yeah, and I mean,
Speaker 1: so well, it's wonderful that all of these women of
Speaker 1: color were hired. I mean, it wasn't without its problems.
Speaker 1: For instance, if you were a single white woman, you
Speaker 1: got to live in really nice dorms at the facility,
Speaker 1: but if you were an unmarried black woman, you had
Speaker 1: to have the extra expense of finding a place to
Speaker 1: stay in town. And also the lab was built on
Speaker 1: the side of a plantation. Yeah, yeah, that's that's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: But I mean, what else are you going to do
Speaker 1: with all that land in Virginia, I guess, but build
Speaker 1: amazing science facilities on it. But build rocket ships? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: just blast right on out of that past. But even
Speaker 1: within NACA, once they got in the door, obviously they
Speaker 1: were facing these uh the segregation, and they also faced
Speaker 1: barriers to advancement compared to their white counterparts. Um For instance,
Speaker 1: one woman hired to work in a chemistry division ended
Speaker 1: up being transferred to the all black computer division because
Speaker 1: black women weren't hired for that original chemistry spots. And
Speaker 1: this is ironic since African American computers had to take
Speaker 1: a chemistry course at nearby Hampton Institute before starting their jobs,
Speaker 1: so they even had a higher bar that they had
Speaker 1: to cross to get in the door. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: how did some of them end up moving up the
Speaker 1: ranks if they were segregated off an entirely separate facilities
Speaker 1: as well? It was the black computers, those West Area
Speaker 1: computers who would be regularly quote unquote loaned two different
Speaker 1: branches of NAKA when help was needed doing calculations or
Speaker 1: data processing. And eventually the computing divisions did become less segregated,
Speaker 1: and when NACA became NASA Night, these segregated facilities were
Speaker 1: completely done away with. And we've been talking about the
Speaker 1: West Area computers of one kind of personal group. But
Speaker 1: now comes the fun part of the podcast where we
Speaker 1: get to highlight these individual women who were doing all
Speaker 1: sorts of incredible trailblazing work. And one of the first
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about is Miriam Daniel Man. And
Speaker 1: she was born in nineteen o seven in Georgia. She
Speaker 1: was a valectorian of her prep school, and then she
Speaker 1: graduated from Talladega College with a chemistry major and math minor.
Speaker 1: What up stem And she worked as a teacher for
Speaker 1: a few years. Then she and her husband moved to Virginia,
Speaker 1: where he gets a job at Hampton Institute Destiny, Uh
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty three, the same year that NACA puts
Speaker 1: out the call for workers of color. She hears about
Speaker 1: the job opening and Land's job. Of course, she and
Speaker 1: the other colored computers as they were called did have
Speaker 1: to take that chemistry class at Hampton, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a joke considering how qualified these women already were.
Speaker 1: I mean, she fell a Victorian chemistry major, math minor.
Speaker 1: This is no dummy, um, and the women were coming
Speaker 1: in Tanaka with just as many qualifications as the men
Speaker 1: and still being paid less and how to take a
Speaker 1: course blah. Anyway, I love the hints of Man's humor
Speaker 1: that we get from an account that her daughter wrote.
Speaker 1: Her daughter remembers Miriam bringing home the cafeteria sign that
Speaker 1: said colored, which of course then was replaced. But I
Speaker 1: love that she was like, nope, swiping this, taking this away. Now,
Speaker 1: I I hate segregation. Um. And once NAKA became NASA,
Speaker 1: she was one of the computers who worked on that
Speaker 1: Mercury program, making calculations for John Glenn's and Alan Shepherd's flights.
Speaker 1: And next up, we've got to talk about Dorothy Vaughan.
Speaker 1: Because Dorothy Vaughan was not gonna let white women as
Speaker 1: managers stop her. So she was a prodigy hands down.
Speaker 1: She was born in Kansas City in nineteen She graduated
Speaker 1: from Wilbur Forest University in nineteen nine, and after working
Speaker 1: as a math teacher. Yet again we have the teaching coming. First,
Speaker 1: she's hired by Langley In on the West Computers team,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen forty nine she became the first black
Speaker 1: manager of the West Computers and she was called the
Speaker 1: head Computer, which is it's the coolest job title computer. Um.
Speaker 1: She was the first black manager though, of the West
Speaker 1: Computers at that time, because before then even the West
Speaker 1: Computers managers had all been white women according to policy,
Speaker 1: right exactly. And so this makes her the first black
Speaker 1: manager at NACA period, and this granted her a much
Speaker 1: greater visibility and a lot more opportunities for collaboration. She
Speaker 1: worked with other computers on a handbook for al to
Speaker 1: break methods and calculating machines. And I know that you know,
Speaker 1: when you get to talking about managers, sometimes they can
Speaker 1: be jerks, but she was not one of them. This
Speaker 1: was a beloved both mathematician and manager because she advocated
Speaker 1: for the West computers, but she also intervened on behalf
Speaker 1: of women workers in general when they deserved promotions. Are
Speaker 1: raises white or black. If you worked hard and deserved
Speaker 1: to raise, Vaughan was going to go to the map
Speaker 1: for you. And the engineers valued her too. They took
Speaker 1: her personnel recommendations seriously, but they often wanted her to
Speaker 1: be the one to work on the more challenging work
Speaker 1: and calculations when they had stuff to get done. They
Speaker 1: were like, oh, we really appreciate who you're recommending, Like,
Speaker 1: we we trust you and we'll hire that person for
Speaker 1: this division, but could you do it? Thanks Dorothy uh
Speaker 1: In Naka transitions to NASA, as we've mentioned, and the
Speaker 1: segregated facilities are shuttered, and this is when Vaughan and
Speaker 1: many of the former West computers are moved to electronic
Speaker 1: computing in the new Analysis and Computation Division. When NASA
Speaker 1: gets the machine computeurs and Vaughan continues her education, she
Speaker 1: becomes an expert in for Tran, which is a computer
Speaker 1: programming language still in use today for scientific computing. Oh
Speaker 1: and meanwhile she's also raising a family and one of
Speaker 1: her children group to work for NASA. Talk about awesome
Speaker 1: mom role model. I know, I love it. I love
Speaker 1: that there's like a NASA legacy in a family. It's
Speaker 1: just the family business, you know, NASA UM. And then
Speaker 1: the next one we want to talk about is the
Speaker 1: amazing Catherine Johnson. She's the physicist and mathematician who worked
Speaker 1: with both Man and Vaughan and who was recently awarded
Speaker 1: the Presidential Medal of Freedom UM. But she she was
Speaker 1: drawn to math from an early age. She would write later, Matt,
Speaker 1: it's just there. You're either right or you're wrong, and
Speaker 1: that's what I like about it. And she also has
Speaker 1: told numerous interviewers that I counted everything, the steps, the dishes,
Speaker 1: the stars in the sky, and her family growing up
Speaker 1: was pretty poor, but they were so invested in Catherine
Speaker 1: and her siblings education and very encouraging of them. Um.
Speaker 1: And in school, she was a math prodigy and she
Speaker 1: was inspired by her geometry teacher, Miss Turner. Shout out
Speaker 1: to teachers and again more mentorship. Um. And she graduated
Speaker 1: from high school at fourteen. But listen, her parents were
Speaker 1: so invested in Katherine and her schooling that because there
Speaker 1: was no high school for black children in her original hometown,
Speaker 1: her parents sent her in her siblings to a lab
Speaker 1: school on the all black West Virginia State Institute campus. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I mean no small feat that this woman graduated
Speaker 1: from high school at fourteen. Yeah. And then she graduated
Speaker 1: from college with degrees in math and French at eighteen.
Speaker 1: In French, the brain is an amazing thing, especially when
Speaker 1: it belongs to Katherine Johnson. Well, and she even had
Speaker 1: more mentorship in college. She was taught by Dr William W.
Speaker 1: Chefflin Claytor, who spotted her potential as a research mathematician,
Speaker 1: and he would go on to to achieve a degree
Speaker 1: of fame for his own research. And so, I mean
Speaker 1: that reflects so amazingly on Catherine that she has this
Speaker 1: person helping guide her through her research. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine she was actually one of three black students
Speaker 1: selected to integrate West Virginia University's grad program. And she
Speaker 1: stayed just a year before getting married and starting a family.
Speaker 1: And there's a while here where she is raising her kids,
Speaker 1: she's teaching. Then in nineteen fifty three, she ends up
Speaker 1: taking a computer job at Langley because the year before
Speaker 1: her husband had fallen ill and she needed to get
Speaker 1: back to work. She had taken time off from teaching math,
Speaker 1: French and music. So she gets in at Langley because
Speaker 1: of naka's recruitment efforts for its Guidance and Navigation department.
Speaker 1: And the first year though that she applied, they had
Speaker 1: already filled their quota, so she reapplied the next year
Speaker 1: and got in. So lesson learned. If at first you
Speaker 1: do not get the job, you can always reapply. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you get to work under Dorothy von like
Speaker 1: she did. Yeah, And we are so lucky that Katherine
Speaker 1: Johnson reapplied, because I mean, just weeks after she started
Speaker 1: in the computer pool, she starts to just start asking
Speaker 1: questions about but why are all of the people on
Speaker 1: the research team guys wait, why aren't any of the
Speaker 1: women computers invited to these meetings? Is there a policy
Speaker 1: or law against me not being allowed to be here? No, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be here. I can ask a lot
Speaker 1: of questions. Yeah, it's amazing. She She credits this habit
Speaker 1: of incessantly asking questions with being asked to fill in
Speaker 1: on the all Dude flight research team. She got to
Speaker 1: research airplane gust alleviation and wake turbulence. And in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight she moves from the flight mechanics branch to
Speaker 1: the spacecraft Controls branch, whose job it was to get
Speaker 1: men into space like a SAP. And it's in that
Speaker 1: space research division where she seriously makes her mark and
Speaker 1: she doesn't waste any time. In nineteen sixty she becomes
Speaker 1: the Flight Research Division's first credited female author when she
Speaker 1: co authors a report with equations that describe the trajectories
Speaker 1: for placing the manned Mercury capsule into low Earth orbit
Speaker 1: and bringing it back safely. And then in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: she calculated the trajectory that put the first American Alan
Speaker 1: Shepherd into space. How am I thirty one and just
Speaker 1: learning this incredible women's history fact Caroline Well, and I
Speaker 1: love that she has no lack of confidence when she's
Speaker 1: looking back on this. In two thousand eight, she tells
Speaker 1: an interviewer the early trajectory was a parabola, and it
Speaker 1: was easy to predict where it would be at any point.
Speaker 1: Early on, when they said they wanted the capsule to
Speaker 1: come down at a certain place, they were trying to
Speaker 1: compute when it should start, I said, letting me do it.
Speaker 1: I just like to imagine that was her being like, Oh,
Speaker 1: for God's sake, she says, you tell me when you
Speaker 1: want it and where you want it to land, and
Speaker 1: I'll do it backwards and I'll tell you when to
Speaker 1: take off. That was my forte. What a smooth operator.
Speaker 1: Just be confident like Catherine, so confident in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that actual computer machines by this point
Speaker 1: we're being used to perform calculations. When it was John
Speaker 1: Glenn's turn to go into space and orbit the Earth
Speaker 1: in m A six, he specifically asked Johnson to run
Speaker 1: the numbers against what the computer had come up with,
Speaker 1: so in his pre flight checklist he had quote have
Speaker 1: the girl double check the numbers yeah, and she said
Speaker 1: that she was very nervous, but I knew that my
Speaker 1: calculations were correct and they were so over an ounce
Speaker 1: of Catherine's confidence. Uh. And in the mid sixties she
Speaker 1: worked on trajectories for the Lunar Orbiter program, which map
Speaker 1: the Moon's surface before the nineteen sixty nine moon landing,
Speaker 1: speaking of which, in nineteen sixty nine she calculated the
Speaker 1: trajectory for the Apollo eleven flight to the Moon. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't stop there. In seventy she collaborated on the
Speaker 1: backup calculation that brought Apollo thirteen astronauts home safely. So
Speaker 1: it is little wonder then that she was awarded the
Speaker 1: highest civilian honor with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and
Speaker 1: November and there's so many other women at NAKA slash
Speaker 1: NASA flash Langley to mention, but so little has been
Speaker 1: known about them all these years, and that's actually something
Speaker 1: that hidden figures. Author Margot Lee Shutterley is working to rectify.
Speaker 1: She has teamed up with McAlister College researchers, Duchess Harris,
Speaker 1: who is the granddaughter of Miriam Daniel Man, one of
Speaker 1: the first computers, and Lucy Short on what's called the
Speaker 1: Human Computer Project, which is their digital effort to document
Speaker 1: the lives and work of women who worked as computers
Speaker 1: at Langley. And so there, I mean, there are names
Speaker 1: that we know that I just wasn't able to find
Speaker 1: enough information about. Women like Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith, and
Speaker 1: the very prolific writer and researcher Barba Holly. All I
Speaker 1: know is her name, and I know that she researched
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that my brain can barely comprehend, um,
Speaker 1: but I just don't have that much background. One of
Speaker 1: those women also is Katherine Pedrew, who graduated from Store
Speaker 1: College in nineteen forty three with a chemistry degree and
Speaker 1: went to work for NAKA immediately. She retired in nineteen
Speaker 1: six and she was involved in research on balance in
Speaker 1: the Instrument Research Division. And that's about as much as
Speaker 1: I could find on Catherine. Well, and we have more
Speaker 1: information on women who worked at NASA in more recent years. Relatively,
Speaker 1: there's Melbo Roy Mountain, who was Howard University alum. She
Speaker 1: earned a master's in math, who became assistant chief of
Speaker 1: Research Programs at NASA's Trajectory and Geodynamics Division in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and she I mean at this point to
Speaker 1: consider how revolutionary it is that she's the head of
Speaker 1: a team, and not so long ago you have Miriam
Speaker 1: Daniel Mann taking down the colored sign from the cafeteria
Speaker 1: spunk like. So, Mountain leads a team of mathematicians who
Speaker 1: did the intense computational work of launching and tracking echo
Speaker 1: satellites in Earth's orbit, and Mountain held a lot of
Speaker 1: impressive jobs during her time at NASA. In she was
Speaker 1: promoted to head programmer in charge of the team that
Speaker 1: determined aircraft orbits in space. She actually designed computer programs
Speaker 1: to predict trajectories and aircraft locations before transitioning into the
Speaker 1: job that Christia was talking about, that assistant Chief of
Speaker 1: Research Programs. And finally, we're going to circle back to
Speaker 1: a name that you mentioned early in the episode, Caroline
Speaker 1: Christine man Darden, who was the first black woman at
Speaker 1: NASA Langley to be promoted into senior executive service. And
Speaker 1: her bio is fantastic as well, because going back to childhood,
Speaker 1: her interests in math was sparked exploring how bikes and
Speaker 1: cars worked with her dad, rad Dad alert And here's
Speaker 1: another case of a kid whose parents really valued her education.
Speaker 1: They ended up sending her to a boarding school in Asheville,
Speaker 1: where a geometry teacher helped her fall in love with
Speaker 1: the subject, just like Miss Turner, Katherine Johnson's geometry teacher. Yes,
Speaker 1: so important. I like geometry too. I hope there are
Speaker 1: geometry teachers listening who feel very special right now. I
Speaker 1: also loved geometry. That was my favorite. Math in high
Speaker 1: school I liked now. Granted, I literally was tutored in
Speaker 1: math from the time I was in sixth grade to
Speaker 1: twelfth grade because I am a word person. That's just
Speaker 1: how it shook out. Um. But I really liked algebraan geometry,
Speaker 1: Physics not so much, and chemistry I barely passed. So
Speaker 1: I am impressed with all these women, to say the least. Um.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen sixty two, Christine graduates from Hampden Institute
Speaker 1: with a bachelor's in Math education in a minor in
Speaker 1: physics at just twenty, and she starts teaching because the
Speaker 1: whole thing, uh that she talks about in that interview
Speaker 1: I watched, which I encourage you to google, is that
Speaker 1: her father was so concerned about his daughter not having
Speaker 1: a job, and so he did what a lot of
Speaker 1: parents do, and he's like, UM, I know you have
Speaker 1: this one interest which is cool, and that's math, and
Speaker 1: that's awesome. However, can you please major in something that
Speaker 1: will actually let you get hired after college. So he strongly, strongly,
Speaker 1: strongly encouraged his daughter to major in education because, as
Speaker 1: she points out in the interview, like you know, they're
Speaker 1: just there. Still weren't a ton of jobs open, like
Speaker 1: high paying jobs and secure jobs open to women at
Speaker 1: the time. So she's like, I, as much as I
Speaker 1: loved math, I had to be prepared to do whatever
Speaker 1: I could to make a living and helps for my family.
Speaker 1: And so she does teach for a while. But in
Speaker 1: the meantime, as she's teaching and still going to school,
Speaker 1: she's participating in lunch counter sit in so she's participating
Speaker 1: in the civil rights movement at the same time that
Speaker 1: she's you know, pursuing math and eventually going to shoot
Speaker 1: to NASA like a rocket ship pocket ship of awesome.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seven, after studying physics and math at
Speaker 1: Virginia State College, she earns her masters and math and
Speaker 1: she's hired for the Langley Computer Pool. But she is
Speaker 1: not going to remain in that pool she needs to
Speaker 1: cannonball into the deep end. So in the seventies, as
Speaker 1: computers like machine computers like we think of today or
Speaker 1: starting to become a thing, Darden was one of the
Speaker 1: first to work on developing computer programs because she'd studied
Speaker 1: programming in her masters, so she began researching also sonic
Speaker 1: boom minimization, and after five years in computing and programming support,
Speaker 1: she I mean she just felt limited. She didn't feel
Speaker 1: like she had enough knowledge of everything that she was
Speaker 1: working on, and also she hadn't gotten promoted, so she
Speaker 1: was she was getting a little anxious to do some
Speaker 1: new stuff. Yeah, So in nineteen seventy two she complains
Speaker 1: to the section head about men who were coming in
Speaker 1: with similar credentials but getting more opportunities for advancement. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was the same kind of thing that we're hearing
Speaker 1: from the very get go of women being hired first
Speaker 1: at NAKA and then at NASA. So he transfers her
Speaker 1: to sonic boom research, like like you do well. And
Speaker 1: I think that she had even suggested to him because
Speaker 1: she had started doing sonic boom research on her own,
Speaker 1: that that's the direction that she should go in and
Speaker 1: her career path also echoes Katherine Johnson in the sense
Speaker 1: of speaking up, calling attention to what you know and
Speaker 1: what you would be good at, incessant questioning, very important.
Speaker 1: Uh three. She earns a PhD in engineering and becomes
Speaker 1: one of NASA's foremost experts on supersonic flight and sonic booms.
Speaker 1: And one of the most endearing things about Johnson and
Speaker 1: Darden's ten years at NASA is how they were not
Speaker 1: only invested in their nine to five work, but also
Speaker 1: in outreach and encouraging girls, in particular to get into
Speaker 1: STEM like they did. Yeah, work that is so important,
Speaker 1: and I mean, yes, the NASA works important, but that
Speaker 1: outreach work and providing visible role models to children is
Speaker 1: so important, and that is something that NASA itself has highlighted.
Speaker 1: They put out a report in um that looked at
Speaker 1: data stretching from two thousand eight to twelve that found
Speaker 1: that women of color make up just five and a
Speaker 1: half percent of aerospace tech engineers, and they linked this
Speaker 1: to quote inherent biases and stereotyping that exists for women
Speaker 1: of color in the science and engineering work place. In addition,
Speaker 1: they write there are challenges related to the lack of
Speaker 1: mentorship and isolation, and so they strongly encourage in this
Speaker 1: this report those same outreach efforts, but in an official capacity.
Speaker 1: So yes, it's so important to have these visible figures
Speaker 1: like Johnson and like Darden. But now the this NASA
Speaker 1: report is saying, we have to continue our efforts to
Speaker 1: create a pipeline in the same way that having Langley
Speaker 1: next door to Hampton created a you know, a figurative
Speaker 1: pipeline of people geniuses to Langley. NASA still needs to
Speaker 1: continue to do that kind of work of encouraging boys
Speaker 1: and girls, but in this case women of color to
Speaker 1: join their ranks and be among their researchers. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: one astounding statistic is that there are around one hundred
Speaker 1: black female physicists in the US. Well, yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: not just an issue at NASA. I mean this is
Speaker 1: across the board um in the US and likely abroad
Speaker 1: as well, although there are countries that are far better
Speaker 1: in terms of gender equity in STEM fields. But now
Speaker 1: we're curious to know who your STEM heroines are, and
Speaker 1: especially the unsung ones, because as you can probably tell,
Speaker 1: it really excites Caroline and me to learn about new
Speaker 1: not new but women we should have known about a
Speaker 1: long time ago. We were doing all sorts of trailblazing
Speaker 1: and brainpowering. Yeah. So I encourage all of you. If
Speaker 1: you're at school or at work and you're starting to
Speaker 1: doubt yourself, I want you to ask yourself, what would
Speaker 1: Katherine Johnson do? She knew who she was, she knew
Speaker 1: what she was good at, and she was not going
Speaker 1: to stop asking questions or counting or counting. She just
Speaker 1: counted everything. Well. Listeners, you can email us mom Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or you can also
Speaker 1: tweet us your thoughts at mom Stuff podcast, or send
Speaker 1: us a message on Facebook. And we've got a couple
Speaker 1: of messages to share with you right now. I have
Speaker 1: a letter here from Sarah in response to our abortion episodes.
Speaker 1: She says, I love the show and love that you
Speaker 1: ladies are so vocally supportive of a woman's right to
Speaker 1: have an abortion if she wishes. However, there seems to
Speaker 1: be this narrative of the good abortion, and more specifically
Speaker 1: the hard decision abortion that I find frustrating. Yes, there
Speaker 1: are many women for whom choosing to have an abortion
Speaker 1: is stressful, emotional, and heart wrenching, but there are just
Speaker 1: as many women for whom it is a no brainer decision.
Speaker 1: When I found out I was pregnant at twenty one,
Speaker 1: I didn't even have to think twice before calling an
Speaker 1: abortion clinic and making an appointment. I have been using
Speaker 1: contraception because I was not ready to have a child,
Speaker 1: and I had always known that I would abort in
Speaker 1: the case of an unplanned pregnancy. I feel like there
Speaker 1: is a cultural perception of the good abortion at an
Speaker 1: in dudes handwringing with a long term boyfriend or a
Speaker 1: high stakes job or a traumatic situation, and that simply
Speaker 1: isn't always the case. Women should feel free and empowered
Speaker 1: to have an abortion simply because they don't want to
Speaker 1: be pregnant, which I'm sure you already know, so thank you, Sarah. Well.
Speaker 1: I've got a letter here from Sierra about psychic women
Speaker 1: line of employment far different than the NASA work we
Speaker 1: were talking about in today's episode, but she writes about
Speaker 1: how she briefly worked as a phone psychic when she
Speaker 1: was having some trouble finding steadier employment, and she says
Speaker 1: you would collect as much personal information from the collar
Speaker 1: as you could before launching into the reading in order
Speaker 1: to give your psychic forecast some degree of believable, very similitude,
Speaker 1: and this may speak to why so many psychics are women.
Speaker 1: The people who are in the company I worked for
Speaker 1: were of the opinion that women were better at teasing
Speaker 1: out the nuggets of personal intel that were so crucial
Speaker 1: to creating a believable chic experience. My callers were pretty
Speaker 1: evenly split between men and women, but both groups seemed
Speaker 1: more willing to open up to a female psychic and
Speaker 1: divulge personal details without suspicion that I could then work
Speaker 1: into my readings. I had a male roommate at the
Speaker 1: time who worked at the same company, and he had
Speaker 1: a harder time with callers getting aggressive when he asked
Speaker 1: personal questions. I didn't work as a phone psychic for
Speaker 1: long because it was a very sad job. I knew
Speaker 1: I had no psychic abilities, and most people who called
Speaker 1: were in desperate situations and just looking for someone to
Speaker 1: tell them it would be okay. I felt terrible about
Speaker 1: the fact that they were paying three dollars a minute
Speaker 1: to get support during some of the darkest times of
Speaker 1: their lives, and the company's only directive to me was
Speaker 1: to keep callers on the line for as long as possible.
Speaker 1: I also felt exploited because it's emotionally draining to listen
Speaker 1: to the sad stories of strangers and concoct b as
Speaker 1: designed only to fleece them out of money, and I
Speaker 1: was only being paid twenty cents a minute. The emotional
Speaker 1: labor the job demanded, combined with the lack of financial security,
Speaker 1: was just too much and I quit after a few months.
Speaker 1: I love the show well, Thanks Sierra for sharing your
Speaker 1: experiences with us and now listeners, do we want to
Speaker 1: hear what's on your mind? Mom? Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com is our email address and for links
Speaker 1: all of our social media as well as all of
Speaker 1: our blogs, videos, and podcasts with our sources so you
Speaker 1: can learn more about the incredible women of color who
Speaker 1: worked at NACA and NASA. Head on over to stuff
Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com.