Even More Hidden Figures
The introduction to a series of four biographies of overlooked women in science
The movie Hidden Figures is a great example of erasure in history that was recently brought to light. It was eye-opening that such fundamental contributions to science could have been overlooked so easily. Unfortunately, this is common for women, especially women of color, working in STEM fields.
Many people saw Hidden Figures as a breakthrough. However, it isn’t widely known that the movie wasn’t based entirely on fact.
In case you haven’t seen Hidden Figures, the film was based on the real story of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorthy Vaughan. These three Black female mathematicians worked at NASA in the 1960s and were crucial to the Mercury Atlas-6 mission sending America’s first man into orbit.
A memorable scene in Hidden Figures is when Katherine Johnson’s white boss realizes Johnson has to go to a different building to use a “Colored” bathroom. After Johnson came back to her desk from a bathroom break she was soaked from running for 40 minutes in the rain. Her boss was portrayed as being ignorant about the impact of the racism happening all around him.
The next scene shows her boss picking up a crowbar and tearing down the “Colored” restroom sign. A large group of Black women who worked in the building gathered as he announced, “No more colored restrooms. No more white restrooms…. Here at NASA, we all pee the same color.”
It’s a moving scene. But it never really happened.
The movie is based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book in which there are interviews with the women who worked at the Langley Research Center. In the book, it clearly states that Katherine Johnson “refused to so much as enter the Colored bathrooms,” and that no one ever tried to make her. According to Vice, when Johnson was asked about this, she explained, “I just went on in the white one.”
The film’s director, Theodore Melfi, portrayed the boss as a white savior, which completely contradicts the message of the movie. When asked why he had included a misleading, fictional scene, he said he didn’t see an issue with adding a white hero into the plot.
Melfi said, “There needs to be white people who do the right thing, there needs to be black people who do the right thing.”
There are other whitewashed scenes throughout the film. In one, Johnson completes some much-needed, last-minute calculations that allow for the launch to happen. She rushes them to Mission Control and is not permitted to enter. Finally, after insisting to the guards that she needs to go inside, her boss arrives and allows her in. She proceeds to watch the historic takeoff.
This again is entirely fictional. Johnson said she was at her desk when the launch happened and was not allowed into Mission Control. Shetterly’s book confirms this as well: she “sat tight in the office, watching the transmission on a television.”
Hidden Figures is not a documentary. It is not required to adhere to a certain set of rules. However it is perceived as non-fiction and is therefore extremely misleading. So why did the director need to include a white man who “does the right thing?”
Vice states, “In this case, it means that a white person doesn’t have to think about the possibility that, were they around back in the 1960s South, they might have been one of the bad ones.”
Finding out Hidden Figures wasn’t the full story and was changed merely for entertainment made me loose a little hope. It also made me want to know about the countless other stories that aren’t complete. I set out to research and write a short collection of articles concerning lesser known women in science.
These courageous women fought injustice every day and knew they wouldn’t get the credit they deserved. Yet they still pursued their dreams. It wasn’t for fame or awards. It was for the greater good of science and humanity. Their altruism is what gives me hope.
Links to articles:
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
-Harry S. Truman
