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African American Women, Getting Hired
During WWII, men were out at war and women got jobs that men usually had. Langley Aeronautical Laboratories started hiring African American women to work as computers. These people are the ones that did all the math for the Space Race. -
First Segregated Computing Pool
The Langley Memorial Lab establishes the first -- all black -- computer area for black women. They will help a lot throughout the course of this book, even the putting the first American man in space. -
Dorothy Vaughan; Start at NACA
Dorothy was first a math teacher. After some time she was hired in 1943 at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Then in 1949, she became the first black NACA supervisor. -
Katherine Johnson
Later, in 1953, Katherine joined Dorothy at Langley and began by analyzing data from flight tests. Very quickly, she moved into the computing area and ran math equations. -
Mary Jackson; Joins NASA
Mary was from Hampton, Virginia, and there she worked as a school teacher. She, later, joined NASA and NACA as an engineer. She was the first African American, female, engineer to work at NASA. -
Segregation Was Ended
In 1958, NACA became NASA. With that, they created a division called Analysis and Computation. Dorothy Vaughan was considered to ba an expert programmer. NASA essentially, desegregated because they were under pressure from African American civil rights leaders, which opened up many jobs and areas for black women(people) to join alongside the others. -
Freedom 7
This was the first crewed flight of Project Mercury. Alan Shepard was the one to man the fight, and he wouldn't do it unless Katherine Johnson did the math. The IBM's had an error, and he didn't trust them. So Katherine did the math and the manned flight was off the ground. -
Katherine Johnson and the Engineers
Katherine had to think ahead with her team in order to solve all possible problems before they happened. The lives of the astronauts depended on it. -
Apollo 11
The astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission were ready to lose their LIVES for this mission. It was 238,900 miles round trip. It would take a total of six days. Three to the Moon, three days back to Earth. If something were to go wrong they would be stranded, but Katherine worked hard to keep the astronauts safe. -
One Small Step
The Apollo 11 mission was successful. We had put man on moon. Neil Armstrong had climbed down the short ladder and made history with a step and a leap.