Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Folks that
Speaker 1: have seen the movie Hidden Figures or read Margot Lee
Speaker 1: Shutterley's book by the same title will probably recognize the
Speaker 1: name Mary Jackson. She was the first black woman to
Speaker 1: become an engineer at NASA, and she's been on my
Speaker 1: list for an episode for a while. We have a
Speaker 1: collection about women in stem fields, but we haven't talked
Speaker 1: specifically about a woman engineer, and she really hasn't gotten
Speaker 1: as much recognition as some of the other women who
Speaker 1: are featured in Hidden Figures, such as Catherine Johnson, who
Speaker 1: calculated the trajectory for the United States first human space
Speaker 1: flight and celebrated her hundredth birthday in August. But I
Speaker 1: didn't realize until I got into this episode just how
Speaker 1: much Mary Jackson also to clear the way for other
Speaker 1: underrepresented people at NASA. I mean, she changed the too right,
Speaker 1: the whole direction of her career to do this, and
Speaker 1: in particular, she did a lot to try to make
Speaker 1: more room for black women in the ranks of NASA. Engineers.
Speaker 1: That made me even more excited to talk about her today. Yes,
Speaker 1: she's pretty great. Uh. And Mary Jackson started working as
Speaker 1: a computer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics or
Speaker 1: the n a C a years before it was absorbed
Speaker 1: into NASA. So before we get to her specifically, we
Speaker 1: have to back up and talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: human computers. If it sounds weird for you to say
Speaker 1: someone worked as a computer, that is what they were
Speaker 1: called human computers, and how Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory now
Speaker 1: known as Langley Research Center came to have a segregated
Speaker 1: pool of human computers in the nineteen forties. There were
Speaker 1: surely people doing this kind of work in other parts
Speaker 1: of the world as well, but our focus today is
Speaker 1: really on Europe and North America. In English, the word
Speaker 1: computer to being a person who makes calculations or computation,
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to the early seventeenth century.
Speaker 1: Many of these early computers were men. They were apprentices
Speaker 1: and assistants who were doing this work as part of
Speaker 1: their education and training to become say an astronomer or
Speaker 1: an engineer. But women have played a really important part two,
Speaker 1: especially the wives and sisters and daughters of astronomers and
Speaker 1: physicists and other scientists, some of whom were scientists in
Speaker 1: their own right. These women did calculations to support the
Speaker 1: research of their male family members, often without ever getting
Speaker 1: the credit for it. One example is mathematician and astronomer
Speaker 1: Nicole Rain Lepote, whose husband Jean Andre, was France's royal clockmaker.
Speaker 1: She worked with astronomer Joseph Leland and mathematician Alexei Clarroux
Speaker 1: to calculate the return of Halley's comment in seventeen fifty eight.
Speaker 1: Leland later said, quote, for six months, we made calculations
Speaker 1: from dawn to dusk, sometimes even during the meals. The
Speaker 1: help given by Madam Napote was such that without her
Speaker 1: I would not have been able to complete such a
Speaker 1: colossal enterprise. But when Clara published their findings, which were
Speaker 1: far more accurate than previous predictions had been, he did
Speaker 1: not acknowledge Lepote's work at all. The Harvard College Observatory
Speaker 1: started hiring women as assistants towards the end of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. They cared for glass plates that were used
Speaker 1: to record images of the night sky, and they analyzed
Speaker 1: and recorded the images from those plates, classifying the stars,
Speaker 1: and compiling the data. Observatory director Edward Charles Pickering, in particular,
Speaker 1: started hiring a whole group of women computers in eighty one.
Speaker 1: They were nicknamed Pickering's Harem, which was not a particularly
Speaker 1: nice nickname, and nods too. Sort of a perception that
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that some of these departments where
Speaker 1: all women was because the men in charge wanted to
Speaker 1: be surrounded by young women. You don't talk about that
Speaker 1: as much, and other reasons why there were women's staff
Speaker 1: of computers, but that was a thing that there was,
Speaker 1: at least the perception was going on. One of the
Speaker 1: computers at the Harvard College Observatory was Anti Jump Cannon,
Speaker 1: who developed the method for classifying stars that is still
Speaker 1: used today. During World War Two, hundreds of women worked
Speaker 1: as computers at the U. S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory,
Speaker 1: doing the math for the firing tables for rockets and artillery.
Speaker 1: This included civilian women with degrees in math or science,
Speaker 1: as well as women from the Women's Army Corps. Women
Speaker 1: worked as computers at the Manhattan Project that Los Alamos
Speaker 1: National Laboratory as well. Some more women with math or
Speaker 1: physics degrees who had been recruited for that work, and
Speaker 1: others were the wives of other Los Alamos employees thanks
Speaker 1: to hidden figures. Today the idea of a whole department
Speaker 1: of human computers is heavily associated with Langley and the
Speaker 1: Space race, but within the n a c A. Computing
Speaker 1: departments weren't unique to Langley. Other n a c A
Speaker 1: facilities had them as well. They also significantly predate the
Speaker 1: Space program. Langley created its first computing pool in ve
Speaker 1: hiring five women as computers. These women did their calculations
Speaker 1: by hand, with the help of slide rules, mathematical tables,
Speaker 1: and mechanical calculators. Before the computing pool was established, Langley's
Speaker 1: engineers and scientists had been performing all of their calculations themselves,
Speaker 1: and the idea was that moving the calculating work over
Speaker 1: to a dedicated department could free up those men to
Speaker 1: focus on the science and the engineering, while also making
Speaker 1: the process of computing faster and more accurate. That's also
Speaker 1: why all of those wartime departments were women, because the
Speaker 1: men were needed to go to combat roles. At first,
Speaker 1: many of the men who had previously done their own
Speaker 1: calculations resisted this idea and doubted whether women could do
Speaker 1: the necessary mass. But the creation of the Computing Group
Speaker 1: had exactly the outcome the organization had been looking for.
Speaker 1: It was faster and more accurate. Plus, since women were
Speaker 1: being hired for the positions, they could be paid much
Speaker 1: less than the engineers and scientists whose work they were absorbing.
Speaker 1: Of course, we are not endorsing that fact that the
Speaker 1: administrators liked it. There's a lot to unpack. It's unfortunate,
Speaker 1: but that was part of the logic train. Yeah, computing
Speaker 1: was also considered a sub professional position, while engineering was
Speaker 1: a professional one. So the top of the ranks for
Speaker 1: a computer was mathematician, and that was equivalent to an
Speaker 1: entry level position for a male engineer. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the top of the computing ranks lined up with the
Speaker 1: bottom of the engineering ranks. And that brings us to
Speaker 1: how this job occupied a complicated spot in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things. Often women computers were paid significantly more
Speaker 1: than they might have been in other work that was
Speaker 1: open to them because things like teaching school. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, many of the women who were hired
Speaker 1: to be computers were overqualified for the job, and as
Speaker 1: we just talked about, they were handling work that had
Speaker 1: previously been done by men who were higher up in
Speaker 1: the org chart. Because the computers were women and their
Speaker 1: jobs were seen as subordinate to those of male engineers,
Speaker 1: they also faced sexism in a way that they might
Speaker 1: not have in other industries. These disparities became even more
Speaker 1: pronounced when Langley started recruiting black women to work as computers.
Speaker 1: In July of ninety one, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive
Speaker 1: Order eight o two, which said, in part quote, there
Speaker 1: shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in
Speaker 1: defense industries and in government because of race, creed, color,
Speaker 1: or national origin. This executive order followed extensive advocacy by A.
Speaker 1: Philip Randolph and other black labor and civil rights leaders,
Speaker 1: and it also established the Fair Employment Practices Committee to
Speaker 1: make sure that order was in forced. This executive order
Speaker 1: came as the United States was preparing for war. The
Speaker 1: previous May, the President had called for the US to
Speaker 1: build fifty tho aircraft. This was a dramatic increase in
Speaker 1: aircraft production, up from fewer than one airplanes a month.
Speaker 1: Langley was where aircraft manufacturers were having their high performance
Speaker 1: aircraft tested and improved. Langley engineers would put aircraft through
Speaker 1: test flights and wind tunnels and evaluate their performance and
Speaker 1: suggest improvements and refinements on the design. The goal was
Speaker 1: to make aircraft safer, faster, and more effective. So when
Speaker 1: the President made this call for more aircraft, that gave
Speaker 1: Langley a lot more work to do, and the n
Speaker 1: a c A had to hire a lot more people
Speaker 1: across the facility to do it. The expansion was so
Speaker 1: huge and dramatic that it led to a housing crisis
Speaker 1: in the area around Langley, addressed in part by building
Speaker 1: a dormitory to house some of the women. A three
Speaker 1: hundred seventy two unit dorm opened in the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three with a house mother who locked everything
Speaker 1: up at eleven PM. At first, a lot of these
Speaker 1: new hires were white candidates, but before long there just
Speaker 1: weren't enough white candidates to fill all the jobs, many
Speaker 1: of which were intended to be temporary, wartime positions and
Speaker 1: not long term careers. So after Executive Order A D
Speaker 1: eight oh to the administration at the n a c
Speaker 1: A started actively recruiting black candidates to phill these jobs.
Speaker 1: Langley had black employees before this point, but mostly doing
Speaker 1: things like janitorial work and groundskeeping in food service. This
Speaker 1: was the first time that Langley had recruited black employees
Speaker 1: for professional and sub professional roles. Although the executive order
Speaker 1: barred discrimination in hiring, Virginia, where Langley is located, was
Speaker 1: still racially segregated by law, so this newly hired group
Speaker 1: of black computers who started work in Ninette were placed
Speaker 1: in a segregated section known a the West Computing Group
Speaker 1: or just the West Group, in which black women reported
Speaker 1: to white supervisors. This also meant adding segregated restrooms in
Speaker 1: a segregated area of the lunch room. Segregation was so
Speaker 1: strictly maintained that many of the white computers and lab
Speaker 1: employees didn't realize that the West Group even existed. There
Speaker 1: was one computer named Miriam Man who made it a
Speaker 1: point of repeatedly removing the colored computer sign that was
Speaker 1: used to mark the blacks only part of the cafeteria.
Speaker 1: She would just basically take it and put it in
Speaker 1: her purse and leave, and a few days later it
Speaker 1: would show back up on the table again, and all
Speaker 1: the computers were like, we know, we know, this is
Speaker 1: where you want us to sit. We know this is
Speaker 1: our designated area. You don't have to keep pointing it
Speaker 1: out to us. And her husband was like, Miriam, they're
Speaker 1: gonna fire you. Miriam was kind of like, what they're
Speaker 1: gonna have to to kept doing it until they finally
Speaker 1: stopped putting the sign there. I'm like, that would be
Speaker 1: a firing well earned. In my opinion. We mentioned a
Speaker 1: few minutes ago how a woman might be better paid
Speaker 1: as a computer than she had been while working at
Speaker 1: another job, while still being overqualified for that computing job.
Speaker 1: This was particularly true for black women. Many had done
Speaker 1: exceptionally well in their study of math and had advanced degrees,
Speaker 1: years of experience teaching math and science, or both. Many,
Speaker 1: but certainly not all, of the white computers did not.
Speaker 1: They might have a math degree but little to no
Speaker 1: experience beyond college. Additionally, teaching was really one of the
Speaker 1: most prestigious jobs that was available to black women in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. Within their communities, black teachers were really
Speaker 1: regarded with a lot of respect and admiration, and the
Speaker 1: increase in pay between working as a teacher and working
Speaker 1: as a computer could be even more dramatic for black computers.
Speaker 1: Than it was for white ones. Black teachers overwhelmingly taught
Speaker 1: in segregated schools for black children, and they tended to
Speaker 1: have poorer facilities and much lower pay than the schools
Speaker 1: for white children. But once they got to Langley, these
Speaker 1: women were just a computer. They were often looked down
Speaker 1: on by the engineers whose calculations they were carrying out.
Speaker 1: Although the women hired as computers typically enjoyed and excelled
Speaker 1: at math, other people perceived that work as tedious drudgery.
Speaker 1: It could almost feel like a simultaneous step up and
Speaker 1: a step down, And for many of the women, the
Speaker 1: fact that they were doing critical wartime work at a
Speaker 1: facility as prestigious as Langley, but still being segregated by
Speaker 1: their race was even more galling. It was a little
Speaker 1: bit later, but still into this same world that Mary
Speaker 1: Jackson stepped when she got hired to work at Langley,
Speaker 1: and we will get to her after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Mary Jackson was born Mary Winston on April in Hampton, Virginia,
Speaker 1: not far away from Langley. She was from a large
Speaker 1: family and her parents, Ella and Frank Winston, were extremely
Speaker 1: focused on making sure all of their children got a
Speaker 1: good education. And we're really good citizens and role models.
Speaker 1: Mary attended high school at George P. Phoenix Training School,
Speaker 1: which was on the campus of Hampton Institute, which is
Speaker 1: now Hampton University. Hampton Institute has actually come up on
Speaker 1: the show before, most recently. It is where Susan La
Speaker 1: Flesh Picott continued her studies before going to medical school
Speaker 1: and becoming the first Native American woman in the US
Speaker 1: to earn an m. D. Hampton Institute was founded in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty eight to teach trade and industrial skills to
Speaker 1: freed people, as well as to train them to become teachers.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen twenties that had become a college with
Speaker 1: numerous courses of study. The city of Hampton didn't provide
Speaker 1: education for Black children beyond elementary school, so the Hampton
Speaker 1: Institute had established Phoenix Training School for that purpose. Mary
Speaker 1: graduated from Phoenix with highest honors and went on to
Speaker 1: college at the Hampton Instant too. She expected that she
Speaker 1: would become a teacher, but she pushed herself to finish
Speaker 1: a double major in mathematics and physical science, even though
Speaker 1: that was a far more strenuous course of study than
Speaker 1: she would need to teach. She graduated in nineteen two
Speaker 1: and was soon hired as a teacher at a segregated
Speaker 1: school for black students in Maryland. About a year later,
Speaker 1: Mary moved back home. Her father had become ill and
Speaker 1: she came back to help look after him, but she
Speaker 1: found that she couldn't get a teaching job back in Hampton.
Speaker 1: Two of her sisters were already teaching in Hampton, and
Speaker 1: there were nepotism rules that kept her from being able
Speaker 1: to join them, so she had to find a job
Speaker 1: somewhere else. She started out as the secretary at the
Speaker 1: King Street USO, doing everything from keeping the books to
Speaker 1: acting as a hostess. The King Street USO was one
Speaker 1: of the many USO centers established to serve black members
Speaker 1: of the military. The USO had a policy of serving
Speaker 1: the entire military regardless of race, but a lot of
Speaker 1: places had segregated USO center for reasons ranging from black
Speaker 1: service members requesting them to Jim Crow laws requiring them.
Speaker 1: Mary worked at the King Street USO until the end
Speaker 1: of World War Two, and it was there that she
Speaker 1: met her husband, Levi Jackson, who was a serviceman from Alabama.
Speaker 1: They got married in nineteen forty four and in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six, they had their first child together, a son
Speaker 1: who was also named Levy. Throughout all this Jackson was
Speaker 1: active with the Bethel A. M. E. Church, where she
Speaker 1: and her family had long been members. She also started
Speaker 1: serving as a leader for the church's Girl Scout troop,
Speaker 1: which she would do for about thirty years. She did
Speaker 1: not yet have a daughter. Her daughter, Caroline, was born
Speaker 1: several years later, but she loved the Girl Scouts. She
Speaker 1: was a teacher, a mentor, and a big sister for
Speaker 1: the girls in the troop, many of whom were from
Speaker 1: working class and poor families with parents who did agricultural
Speaker 1: or domestic work. While she was working as the Girl
Speaker 1: Scout leader, Jackson started doing something that would also be
Speaker 1: a hallmark of her time at NASA and before that,
Speaker 1: the n a c. A. She really that the girls
Speaker 1: that she worked with to see what was possible beyond
Speaker 1: what was familiar to or expected of them, and she
Speaker 1: wanted to open as many doors for them as she could.
Speaker 1: So she arranged all kinds of field trips and projects
Speaker 1: aligned with all the various merit badges to really try
Speaker 1: to broaden their experience of the world and encourage them
Speaker 1: to set really ambitious goals for themselves. Later on, Jackson
Speaker 1: would also play a key role in integrating the Black
Speaker 1: and White Girl Scout councils in the area into one
Speaker 1: integrated council in her part of Virginia. Jackson returned to
Speaker 1: work when Levi Jr. Turned four. She applied for a
Speaker 1: clerical position with the Army and a computing position at Langley.
Speaker 1: The offer from the Army came first, and she worked
Speaker 1: there for a few months before being offered the computer
Speaker 1: job at Langley, where the Army agreed her skills would
Speaker 1: be of better use. She started her job as one
Speaker 1: of the West Area Computers on April five, n one,
Speaker 1: at the age of six. That was just a few
Speaker 1: months after Dorothy Vaughan became the head of the West
Speaker 1: Area Computers, having started out as one of the West
Speaker 1: Area's mathematicians. This made Vaughan the first black supervisor at Langley.
Speaker 1: This was almost three years after President Harry Truman had
Speaker 1: signed executive orders and one that happened in July and
Speaker 1: ordered the desegregation of the federal workforce and the US
Speaker 1: Armed Forces, but segregation was still required by law in Virginia.
Speaker 1: That had not changed, so when Jackson started work at Langley,
Speaker 1: the West Area computers were still, in the words of
Speaker 1: administrative officer Kemball Johnson quote, composed entirely of Negro women.
Speaker 1: The restroom and cafeteria facilities were also still segregated. It had, however,
Speaker 1: become a lot more common for the West Area computers
Speaker 1: to be assigned out to other departments at Langley for
Speaker 1: periods of days two months to work on specific projects.
Speaker 1: This became more and more common as the white East
Speaker 1: Area computers shrank in number as their members were promoted
Speaker 1: or permanently transferred into other departments. In nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: after two years in the West Computing Group, Mary Jackson
Speaker 1: was assigned to a project on Langley's East Side along
Speaker 1: with several white computers. Jackson didn't know the layout of
Speaker 1: the buildings on the East side at all, and when
Speaker 1: she asked her coworkers from that side of the campus
Speaker 1: for directions to the restroom, they pointedly told her that
Speaker 1: they did not know where her restroom was. Jackson was
Speaker 1: frustrated and angry, not just about the insult of her
Speaker 1: bathroom and the dismissive way that her colleagues had talked
Speaker 1: to her, but also about being a second class citizen
Speaker 1: at Langley because of her race, even though she was
Speaker 1: a computer and she had more experience than some of
Speaker 1: her colleagues did. Later that day, she ran into Kashmirez Zarnecki,
Speaker 1: who worked at Langley's supersonic pressure tunnel. He asked how
Speaker 1: she was doing, and she answered him honestly. From a
Speaker 1: number of angles, it was socially unacceptable for a black
Speaker 1: person to unload their feelings on a white person, especially
Speaker 1: when it came to racism and discrimination. And it's not
Speaker 1: entirely clear whether Jackson had just gotten so fed up
Speaker 1: that she lost her temper or whether she had perceived Zarnecki,
Speaker 1: who had immigrated from Poland, as someone it was safe
Speaker 1: to be candid with, but either way, Zarnicki asked her
Speaker 1: why she didn't come work for him, and she agreed to,
Speaker 1: and this was before he learned that she had majored
Speaker 1: in both math and science. We don't want to apply
Speaker 1: that these racial disparities and who it's okay to like
Speaker 1: vent feelings too, were like, we don't want to imply
Speaker 1: that those disparities are gone. But that was what was
Speaker 1: happening at the time, so Jackson really made a name
Speaker 1: for herself almost immediately in this in this new department,
Speaker 1: when she completed some calculations for John Becker, who was
Speaker 1: the chief of the Compressibility Division and was multiple rungs
Speaker 1: up the ladder above Zarnicki, Jackson's final numbers didn't look
Speaker 1: quite right, and Becker insisted that they were wrong, but
Speaker 1: Jackson insisted that they were right. It turned out that
Speaker 1: Jackson had done all the calculations flawlessly, but the data
Speaker 1: that Becker had given her to start with was wrong.
Speaker 1: This earned her an apology and praise not only for
Speaker 1: her skill, but also her confidence and her insight. Serniki
Speaker 1: soon suggested Jackson joined the Engineer Training program. The n
Speaker 1: a c A had very few women engineers at all,
Speaker 1: and no black women engineers. The engineer training program required
Speaker 1: after work classes from the University of Virginia, which were
Speaker 1: held at Hampton High School, which was still whites only,
Speaker 1: so to take the needed courses to become an engineer,
Speaker 1: Jackson had to get a special dispensation from the city
Speaker 1: of Hampton to allow her to take the classes that
Speaker 1: she needed. She did, and in nineteen fifty eight, after
Speaker 1: she finished her courses, Mary Jackson was promoted to engineer.
Speaker 1: This made her the n a c as first black
Speaker 1: woman engineer and possibly the first black woman working as
Speaker 1: an aeronautical engine near anywhere in the United States. Was
Speaker 1: a year of big changes at Langley, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get to those after we first paused for another
Speaker 1: sponsor break in. The n a c A and other
Speaker 1: similar organizations were merged together into the National Aeronautics and
Speaker 1: Space Administration, or NASA. As part of that whole process,
Speaker 1: the West Area Computing Group, which at that point was
Speaker 1: the last segregated department in the organization, was finally formally disbanded.
Speaker 1: There were only nine employees of the West Computers by then,
Speaker 1: including Dorothy Vaughn, who had been running it for seven years.
Speaker 1: At that point, those remaining computers were moved to various
Speaker 1: engineering groups around Langley, and Vaughan was one of the
Speaker 1: ones who started working with the IBM computers that were
Speaker 1: gradually making human computers obsolete. Women who had been working
Speaker 1: with mathematical tables and mechanical calculators began working with punch
Speaker 1: cards instead. Mathematicians were gradually replaced by data analysts, and
Speaker 1: the teams working with the IBM computers were integrated in
Speaker 1: terms of both race and gender, although over time more
Speaker 1: and more of the data analysts were young men. Mary
Speaker 1: Jackson co authored her first paper in Night as Well,
Speaker 1: effects of nose angle and mock number on transition on
Speaker 1: cones at supersonic speeds. She continued to work with Zarnecki
Speaker 1: at the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. In addition to her work
Speaker 1: as an engineer, Jackson informally mentored women and minorities, especially
Speaker 1: the ones who were hoping to get promoted into engineering roles.
Speaker 1: In a way, she was replicating and building on something
Speaker 1: that had always existed at the West Computing Group. Because
Speaker 1: they were segregated from the white staff, the West Computing
Speaker 1: Group had developed a deep network of support and resources
Speaker 1: among themselves. This gave them the tools to try to
Speaker 1: mitigate some of the racial discrimination that they faced on
Speaker 1: the job, something that black men, who were scattered across
Speaker 1: the organization could struggle with. So as Jackson mentored people,
Speaker 1: she tried to maintain that support network, including connecting to
Speaker 1: the former West Group computers who were now working in
Speaker 1: other parts of the organization. As the Space race wound
Speaker 1: down and the US Aeronautics industry became less focused on
Speaker 1: the idea of supersonic transport. Langley went through numerous re
Speaker 1: ords and reductions in force. Jackson continued to work in
Speaker 1: the supersonic pressure tunnel, specializing in how air behaves in
Speaker 1: proximity to supersonic aircraft. She took classes in the programming
Speaker 1: language for tran to be able to work with the
Speaker 1: IBM computers as well, but eventually her career hit a
Speaker 1: glass ceiling. Staff at Langley were paid according to the
Speaker 1: civil service pay scale known as the GS scale, which
Speaker 1: ranks people in pay grades from one to fifteen. Jackson
Speaker 1: got up to GS twelve, which was the top of
Speaker 1: the non management scale for her role. There were very
Speaker 1: few women at Langley in grade GS thir teen or above,
Speaker 1: and Jackson found that no matter how hard she worked,
Speaker 1: she just could not get to that next level. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, Casimirez Zarnecki retired, and by that point
Speaker 1: Jackson had written or co written twelve technical publications for
Speaker 1: NASA and its predecessor. But rather than continuing to struggle
Speaker 1: for another promotion that seemed like it would just never come,
Speaker 1: she decided to change directions. A position had opened up
Speaker 1: as Langley's Federal Women's Program Manager. This was a role
Speaker 1: that would let Jackson focus on what she had been
Speaker 1: doing informally as well as through the committees that she
Speaker 1: had been on at work, and it was also a
Speaker 1: demotion down to GS eleven, which she willingly accepted for
Speaker 1: the sake of helping other people. In one she was
Speaker 1: offered the role of Equal Opportunity Specialist, and she went
Speaker 1: to Washington, d C. To train for it. She spent
Speaker 1: the last years of her career at NASA focused on
Speaker 1: making sure women and minorities had equal opportunities. At Langley
Speaker 1: and these roles, Jackson took a more form all approach
Speaker 1: to the mentoring that she had been doing while she
Speaker 1: was still an engineer. She realized that a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who seemed like they were being overlooked for
Speaker 1: promotions had basically the same degree and experience as their peers,
Speaker 1: but they might be missing one particular course or one
Speaker 1: specific skill. She started intentionally seeking out people who fit
Speaker 1: this pattern to encourage them to go take that one
Speaker 1: class they needed to close the gap that She paid
Speaker 1: particular attention to women in the lower ranks of the
Speaker 1: organization who had the right skills and background otherwise to
Speaker 1: become an engineer. She also kept this focus outside of work,
Speaker 1: working as a Girl Scout leader and doing extensive lecturing
Speaker 1: and workshops at high schools in her area, demonstrating for
Speaker 1: students that neither engineering nor Langley was a world reserved
Speaker 1: only for white men. She said of this work quote,
Speaker 1: sometimes they are not aware of the number of black
Speaker 1: scientists and don't even know of the career opportunities until
Speaker 1: it is too late. Jackson retired from Langley in She
Speaker 1: aped up her volunteer community and church work after retiring,
Speaker 1: and she died on February eleventh, two thousand five, at
Speaker 1: the age of eighty three. She died in a retirement
Speaker 1: home in Hampton, Virginia, and was survived by her children,
Speaker 1: as well as grandchildren and great grandchildren. In the Salt
Speaker 1: Lake City Board of Education unanimously voted that Jackson Elementary
Speaker 1: School in Salt Lake City, previously named for President Andrew Jackson,
Speaker 1: would be renamed Mary W. Jackson Elementary School. That same year,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Senate passed the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold
Speaker 1: Medal Act, which would award the Congressional Gold Medal to
Speaker 1: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn Mary Jackson, and Dr Christine Darden.
Speaker 1: Darden was the first black person of any gender to
Speaker 1: be promoted to the senior executive service at Langley. The
Speaker 1: House referred the bill to a committee in November of eighteen.
Speaker 1: As of when we are recording this, which is the
Speaker 1: end of January nineteen, there have not been further updates
Speaker 1: on it, perhaps unsurprisingly given what January was like in
Speaker 1: the government. That is true. Uh, oh, Mary, I love
Speaker 1: her so much. I do too. If you want to
Speaker 1: learn um more about the computers and more about like
Speaker 1: life at Langley during all this time, really do go
Speaker 1: read Hidden Figures. You can also, if you like, go
Speaker 1: amuse yourself by reading the one star reviews of the
Speaker 1: book Hidden Figures by people who clearly thought they were
Speaker 1: signing up to read a novel. Oh well, yeah, these
Speaker 1: things like this book introduces ten new characters in a
Speaker 1: paragraph and then just never follows up on them. Agin,
Speaker 1: I was weren't characters, honey, they were people, people with
Speaker 1: their hearts. Um, do you have listener mail for us?
Speaker 1: But do I have a couple of pieces of listener mail? Uh?
Speaker 1: They are about um sa shrewda So just a heads up,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a little bit about surgery. We heard
Speaker 1: from a couple of people that they did not enjoy
Speaker 1: hearing the descriptions of surgery in that episode. The first
Speaker 1: thing is a quick correction that came in from Dave.
Speaker 1: Dave pointed out that we talked about one of the
Speaker 1: reasons people might have needed a nose reconstruction was because
Speaker 1: of late stage syphilis, and how as he understood it,
Speaker 1: when Sashruda was doing his writing and teaching, that would
Speaker 1: not have been an issue in India. It is true
Speaker 1: that the most mainstream idea about how syphilis spread to
Speaker 1: Europe and then beyond is that it came back from
Speaker 1: the America's with Christopher Columbus's expeditions, after there was, you know,
Speaker 1: transit between Europe and North America. That has been the
Speaker 1: very long standing um assumption we've I think we've had
Speaker 1: a couple things on Unearthed that suggests it might not
Speaker 1: have worked quite that way. But yes, I conflated two
Speaker 1: different pieces of material to get something that did not
Speaker 1: make a lot of ants um. By the time the
Speaker 1: British were writing down things about this whole nose reconstruction,
Speaker 1: they were witnessing. At that point, there would have been
Speaker 1: people that might have tried to have their nose reconstructed
Speaker 1: because of having late stage syphilis, but um that would
Speaker 1: not likely have been the case based on when Sastruda
Speaker 1: was writing. We also have something from Marcelo. I hope
Speaker 1: I am pronouncing your name correctly. This email says, dear
Speaker 1: esteemed s y M Historians. I am a longtime fan,
Speaker 1: first time caller who happens to be a facial plastic
Speaker 1: surgeon in Brazil specialized in nasal reconstruction. I loved your
Speaker 1: most recent episode on Struda and i ur Veda, which
Speaker 1: most of us read at some point during our residency training,
Speaker 1: as I usually love all your episodes. Here are a
Speaker 1: few answers to your questions. We still use the so
Speaker 1: called Indian forehead flap as what can be easily called
Speaker 1: the workhorse of our nasal reconstructions, except as a bit
Speaker 1: modified from its original central position into what's more scientifically
Speaker 1: termed a Paramedian forehead flap. It's most important advantage over
Speaker 1: the cheek advancement flap allegedly practiced by Shahruda, or even
Speaker 1: the forearm peticled flap practiced by the bolognaise is that
Speaker 1: it's petticle is based on an arterial blood supply i e.
Speaker 1: The supertri clear artery, which ensures a markedly diminished chance
Speaker 1: of tissue necrosis of the most distal portion of the flap. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: that bears the advantage of being more versatile, allowing for
Speaker 1: much better contouring of finer structures of the nasal tip
Speaker 1: that allows for the semblance of a natural nose, mostly
Speaker 1: because of the availability of more tissue from the forehead
Speaker 1: and or scalp that can be harvested without performing the
Speaker 1: nearby facial structures like the eye, and because of that
Speaker 1: arterially based guaranteed of blood supply. As a rule of thumb,
Speaker 1: the longer a flap is, the less blood is supplied
Speaker 1: to its most distal regions. With an arterial blood supply
Speaker 1: embedded into the peticle flap, there is much more range
Speaker 1: of blood supply to these distal read However, we do
Speaker 1: still use cheek advancement flaps for certain defects in the nose,
Speaker 1: mostly to the nasal side walls, and some smaller defects
Speaker 1: on the nasal dorsom. The Italian flap obviously offers the
Speaker 1: advantage of less scars on the face, but because such
Speaker 1: scars can be so well managed, it offers no extra
Speaker 1: advantage over locally based pedicled flaps, so you'd be hard
Speaker 1: pressed to find any surgeon using that technique today. There
Speaker 1: are other flaps as well, none is frequently used, the
Speaker 1: more more dependable than the modified Indian forehead flap. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work and thanks for all historical knowledge.
Speaker 1: I hope you two have a great trip. Cheers. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for this email. We have gotten several
Speaker 1: emails answering a number of questions from the Sashruda episode,
Speaker 1: and this one is a little longer, so we might
Speaker 1: read other ones in a future episode. I had to say,
Speaker 1: I was very delighted at how many surgeons were like,
Speaker 1: I can help you with this. We did. We have
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of emails from surgeons. I'm glad so
Speaker 1: many surgeons are listening to and enjoying the show. I'm
Speaker 1: glad I remember pretty much all of that medical terminology
Speaker 1: that I just read from the time I took anatomy
Speaker 1: and physiology, which just feels like a feat giving how
Speaker 1: much knowledge my brain just Jettison's in our work podcast
Speaker 1: on the daily I lose. I always feel bad when
Speaker 1: someone asked me something about a show and I don't
Speaker 1: even remember doing the show at all. Yeah, they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: did you ever think about And I'm like, I know,
Speaker 1: I don't even know. I did I ever think about that? Ever?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll be like, yes, you did it,
Speaker 1: and I feel very bad. My apologies if you ever
Speaker 1: talk to me and I don't know what. I don't
Speaker 1: remember which topic it was. But as I was wrapping
Speaker 1: up my time hosting This Day in History Class, I
Speaker 1: was looking for the outline for a stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in History Class episode that like that thing was that
Speaker 1: day in History and I couldn't find it on my
Speaker 1: computer and I couldn't figure out why. And I was like,
Speaker 1: but I wrote this, why don't I have it? I
Speaker 1: didn't write it, You wrote it. I got it fused
Speaker 1: with a totally different topic that I did, right, been
Speaker 1: there anyway, That's how our brains work. Everyone, after years
Speaker 1: and years, you can't remember all the details of every show. Nope, nope.
Speaker 1: But if you remember details of shows, if you would
Speaker 1: like to write us an email about them, We're at
Speaker 1: History Podcast how stuff Works dot com. And then we're
Speaker 1: all over social media at missed in History. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook and our Pinterest, in our Instagram
Speaker 1: and our Twitter. You can come to our website, which
Speaker 1: is missed in History dot com. You can find the
Speaker 1: show notes for all the episodes Holly and I haven't
Speaker 1: worked on. You can find uh searchable archive every episode ever,
Speaker 1: and you can find information about our trip to Paris
Speaker 1: coming up in June. And you can subscribe to our
Speaker 1: show on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app in
Speaker 1: anywhere else you get your podcasts. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
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