Hidden Figures Brought Tears and Pride in Being a Black Woman

Daily writing prompt

What’s the last movie that made you cry?

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I did not know the history of the black women who worked at NASA and helped with John Glenn’s historic orbit and the Apollo 11 moon landing. To see Black women portrayed in a film as more than domestics cleaning houses and as maids was amazing and wonderful. I was stunned to learn that the calculations of Katherine Johnson, a Black female mathematician known as a human computer, were instrumental in the success of the early space program.

As I looked at the treatment of the black women at NASA, the separate bathrooms and the refusal to see those brilliant women as equals, I cried because of the inhumanity on display. In one scene in which Katherine Johnson is admonished for being away from her desk so much, Taraji P. Henson, who portrayed Johnson in the movie, explained that she couldn’t use the “Whites Only” bathroom, which meant taking a long walk across the building to the one “Colored” Bathroom. She couldn’t even drink from the same coffee pot. When Kevin Costner, playing her boss, made the bathrooms equal, I cried at his compassion and empathy.

Tears came to my eyes also because, through all of the education I received, including a doctorate, I never heard of the women who broke gender and race barriers at NASA. This was information that would have lessened the feelings of inferiority that I felt when looking at Gone With the Wind. I had to watch that movie in high school, as though it was something to be proud of, a White woman saving her house but wanting to retain slavery. I never watched it again. It was not a history I wanted to remember.

But Hidden Figures instilled in me a pride that I find difficult to describe. I was a math major in college. From a child, I loved Math, and addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division brought me such joy in the classroom, allowing me to forget being abandoned by parents and living in a segregated world where I was not seen as worthy of a new school but attended the White kids’ old school. I would have loved knowing there was a Black woman at NASA who played such an important role in the moon landing.

I cried at finally learning of Katherine Johnson and the other Black women who opened doors for me. I hope other “hidden figures” will be brought to the big screen, for the many young Black girls and boys who need to know that we have always been a part of making America a great nation.

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