On Katherine Johnson’s first day as a computer for Langley’s Flight Research Division, a white man stood up and walked away when she sat beside him. This begins to imply the collateral damage of racism: had these individuals been less courageous and persistent, their lives and career contributions might have been utterly stifled. In the face of relentless racism and without much institutional support, the West Area computers succeeded in their jobs and became crucial assets to the NACA. Shetterly writes, ”It was no small irony that Woodrow Wilson, the President who had authorized the creation of the NACA and who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his promotion of humanitarianism through the League of Nations, was the very same one who was hell-bent on making racial segregation in the Civil Service part of his enduring legacy.” The NACA enforced racist federal laws at the expense of its employees’ own progress, and thus, at the expense of the nation’s WWII military effort.
Segregation at the NACA was only one symptom of a larger national problem, one put in place and encouraged by the highest office in the land. Because of the obstacles the NACA put in their way, black computers had to fight hard to succeed in the very duties they’d been hired by the NACA to perform. “The women of West Computing were the only black professionals at the laboratory-not exactly excluded, but not quite included either,” Shetterly writes. Black computers were only allowed to use bathrooms designated “colored“ (which were few and far between), while all other restrooms were off-limits. White female computers could live in a dormitory at Langley (the Air Force Base that hosted the NACA), but black Computers could not. White computers rode a special bus to the office while black computers had to walk, drive, or take public transportation. Although the NACA badly needed the skills and expertise of its black computers, its segregationist policies devalued their contributions. The NACA’s segregated workplace-like segregated workplaces nationwide-created cruel and taxing obstacles that kept black employees from performing to the best of their abilities. Shetterly also shows the self-defeating consequences of racism at the national level through the lens of the NACA. Shetterly writes, “the contradiction ripped Negroes asunder, individually and as a people, their American identities in all-out, permanent war with their black souls.”
These same restaurants refused to wait on the West Area computers, even though they worked at the NACA in the service of the U.S. For example, restaurants in Virginia readily served enemy prisoners-of-war, some of whom were kept in detention facilities near Langley. Black Americans couldn’t help but compare the plight of Jewish people abroad with that of people in their own communities, where blacks were beaten, tortured, and imprisoned for demanding the rights they were owed as U.S. Hidden Figures takes place against the backdrop of World War II, with Americans (black and white) following with horror the torture and deportation of Jewish people in Europe. While the United States fought for equality and freedom abroad, the country demonstrated its hypocrisy by enforcing segregation on its own soil. Shetterly shows the impact of racism at the international level by highlighting the racial implications of WWII. Ultimately, she shows how, at each level, the United States worked against its own self-interest to enforce racist laws.
Hidden Figures author Margot Lee Shetterly examines the long-term impact of this segregation and racial discrimination at an international, national and interpersonal scale. The NACA recruited highly qualified female mathematicians (called “computers”) regardless of color, but the organization housed its black computers in a segregated workspace (called West Area) and made their career advancement difficult. Jim Crow laws mandated segregation between blacks and whites in the NACA’s home state of Virginia, and African-Americans who lived there had to make do with “separate but equal” bathrooms, water fountains, parks, restaurants and schools. In 1943, the United States found itself embroiled in World War II, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the NACA) in Langley, VA needed mathematicians to crunch numbers for its engineers.
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