Hi everyone, good morning. My last post was in the beginning of February. As I mentioned before, I have serious writers block and I was having a tough time trying to write something. I am still not over it, but I felt like writing today about a movie we saw last night. It is called Hidden Figures and it is about 3 black/African American women who worked at NASA. For those of you that have not seen the movie, I won’t spoil the suspense. But I want to make a point. Also, if you have not seen it, please do so. I also want to say that it is not my objective to discuss race and discrimination.

It was the late 1950’s-early 1960’s. America was still segregated between blacks (they used to be called Negros or colored) and whites. So much so that there were separate restrooms, water fountains, eating rooms. There were also separate schools. Libraries had separate sections and not all the books available to whites were available to the colored. in spite of all these things, NASA used to employ almost 30 African American women and they used to be called computers. Of course computers were just about being deployed in NASA and they had a lot of trouble getting them to work. So all the calculations were being done by using hand held calculators or adding machines. But there was a space race going on. Russia had already sent a dog into space, then Yuri Gagarin became the first man ever to go into space and return to earth safely.

Al Harrison, the head of the space program is under a lot of pressure. At that time his group consisted of 99% white males and 1% white females. The African American women were temporary staff and were assigned to different groups within NASA. They were not promoted, their work was not acknowledged. Even simple things like having a restroom close to your department, drinking coffee from the same pot as whites were not allowed. Given these odds, you would think that anyone would be discouraged. But these three women; Dorothy Vaughn (played by Octavia Spencer), Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) and Katherine Gobel (later she gets married and her last name changes to Johnson, played by Taraji P. Henson), persevere and are able to contribute to the space program. Their contributions were acknowledged by President Obama in 2016.

As I said, there is a message. It is that regardless of what the odds are and if they are not in your favor, if you are good, you can never be kept down. You just have to have the courage, patience and perseverance to get through it.