Hidden Figures: Black Women in the History of Computing
As a source of inspiration, motivation, and recreation, my colleague Eva Andersen and I went to the
screening of Hidden Figures in Kirchberg after our first full week of “being a PhD student”. As I will focus
on 20th-Century Women in Computer Science and zoomed in on African-American women for my
literature review, the film proved an ideal illustration of this particular group of women. Legal scholar
Kimberlé Crenshaw first introduced the concept of intersectionality when she studied violence against
women of colour in 1991.1 Even though she strictly treated the race-class-gender relationship, the term
has evolved over the years now including “additional axes of difference including sexuality and ability.”2
It specifically demonstrates the intersectionality of age, location, class, race, and gender, unavoidable in
discussing such a large group of people. Now for the first question: what is the film about?
HIDDEN FIGURES is the incredible untold story of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson),
Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe)—brilliant AfricanAmerican women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest
operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning
achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race, and
galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire
generations to dream big.3
In order to understand underlying and at times clearly exposed tensions, four main themes arise:
segregation and race, gender and class, American society, and finally the IT culture. Although these
themes seem clearly defined, in reality and in the film they often intertwine into complex narratives and
scenes with hidden messages. Therefore, it does not make sense to rigidly discuss each theme
separately, but to embrace their intersection.
The exception: education past the eighth grade
In the opening scene we see a meeting of Katherine’s parents with the principal of her school and her
teacher, urging them to accept a scholarship and some money for the trip to send her to the West
Virginia Collegiate Institute. In the words of the principal “West Virginia Collegiate Institute is the best
school for negroes in the state,” and the teacher specifies that “it’s the only school, past the eighth
grade, anywhere near here.” 4 After finishing there, as Katherine tells Colonel Jim Johnson in a response
to his insult, “I was the first Negro female student at West Virginia University Graduate School.” 5 Starting
around the turn of the century, “growing numbers of Black women had the opportunity to enter college
and the professions,” but “the masses of Black women were still relegated to domestic and menial
work.”6 By 1952 62.4% of degrees from Black colleges went to women.7 However, “Black women were
caught between the two functions they were expected to fulfill: enhancing the material quality of life for
1
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of
color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no.6 (1991): 1241-1299, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039.
2
Roopika Risam, “Beyond the Margins: Intersectionality and the Digital Humanities”, DHQ: Digital Humanities
Quarterly 9, no.2 (2015), http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/2/000208/000208.html.
3
“Hidden Figures,” 20th Century Fox, accessed March 16, 2017, http://www.foxmovies.com/movies/hidden-figures.
“Hidden Figures (2016) Movie Script,” Springfield! Springfield!, accessed March 16, 2017,
http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=hidden-figures.
5 Ibid.
6
Paula J. Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (Harper Collins, 2009), 7374.
7 Ibid., 235.
4
their families, and at the same time behaving like housewives.”8 Another important remark here
concerns the fact that the three protagonists were educated and belonged to the middle-classes. In the
1950s they began “perceiving themselves as Whites perceived them: a group distinct from the masses of
Blacks whose fate was no longer bound to the poorer classes.”9 Even though the film does not mention
or show the poorer classes, it is necessary to note that the women in this film do not represent American
Black women in the 1960s, and their position was an exception, rather than the rule.
This exceptional position is further illustrated by the legal battle Mary has to fight in court to gain access
to the “advanced extension courses” at the University of Virginia that she needed to take part in the
Engineer Training Program of NASA. Unfortunately, as the judge duly notes, “Virginia is still a segregated
state. Regardless of what the Federal Government says, regardless of what Supreme Court says, our law
is the law.”10 In the end, she is allowed to take the evening classes after work. The fact that Mary goes to
court also demonstrates the contrast to the stance of her husband, who shows a more militant point of
view in saying that “you can’t apply for freedom. Freedom is never granted to the oppressed. It has got
to be demanded. Taken.”11 The more general struggle for civil rights is also briefly mentioned during the
sermon given by a preacher in church on Sunday, who mentions the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference supported by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957 and the students taking part in the
sitt-in in North-Carolina in 1960, followed by the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee or SNCC.12 This brings me to my next point in case, racial segregation as illustrated by the
assigned space for Blacks at the back of public transportation and the distance between the East Group
for White women and the West Group for Black women at NASA.
The East Group vs. the West Group at NASA
Immediately after the scene of young Katherine going to college, we see the three women going to work
by car instead of by bus. When they experience car trouble, a number of segregation issues arise. Their
first fear is being fired due to arriving late. In response to Mary’s complaints, Katherine suggests that she
should walk the 16 miles, “or sit on the back of the bus” as the absolute last resort. Two questions arise:
why do they live so far from work? And why can’t they afford a better car? Before turning to those
problems, a third segregation issue presented itself in the form of a White police officer. Before he can
overhear them, Mary states that it’s “no crime being Negro either,” followed by Katherine hissing
“nobody wants to go to jail behind your mouth”.13 The second Mary opens her mouth to defend herself,
the policeman assumes that she is being disrespectful. In a turn of events, after hearing they help to “get
a man up there before the Commies do,” the police officer decides to give them an escort. In a sarcastic
tone Mary pretends to report on this remarkable role reversal as follows: “three negro women are
chasing a white police officer down the highway in Hampton, Virginia 1961. Ladies, that there is a God
ordained miracle.”14
8
Ibid., 248.
Ibid., 174.
10 “Hidden Figures (2016) Movie Script.”
11 Ibid.
12 Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 268.
13 “Hidden Figures (2016) Movie Script.”
14 Ibid.
9
1 The West Group (http://www.foxmovies.com/movies/hidden-figures).
When the three women finally arrive at NASA, they go to the West Group for coloured people where the
toilets are not clean, the desks put closely together, and the building blocks exposed. This stands in stark
contrast to the architectural details and finishes at the East Group for White people, who get a nicely
decorated office and even an armchair in the bathroom. Furthermore, Dorothy has to fulfill the function
of a supervisor for the Coloured group, but since they are not assigning a permanent supervisor, she
does not get the title or the pay. When she finds out about the construction of an IBM mainframe
computer which will eventually take over the function of human “Computers”, she decides to take
matters into her own hands. At the library the book on FORTRAN does not belong to the Coloured
section, but before the guards can turn her out, she manages to put the book in her purse. She then
teaches herself and her division all the necessary skills to manage the machine in order to retain their
jobs at NASA, since “somewhere down the line a human being is going to have to hit the buttons.” 15
In the meantime she is able to assign Mary a permanent position, and she sends Katherine to the Space
Task Computer group. Confronted with a group of White men, Katherine faces discrimination on several
levels. When she first enters, someone hands her the dustbins assuming she is the custodian. When she
puts the bin back down to go to her place, she is stared at as if she is an alien from outer space. I would
like to insert a small personal experience: people stared at me the exact same way when I first entered
the Computer Science Department of KU Leuven as a Digital Humanities student. Followed by that
15
Ibid.
awkward entry, Katherine faces another challenge, since the bathroom for coloured women is 40
minutes away. After her boss confronts her about her constant absence, she bursts out:
Mr. Harris:
Now where the hell do you go every day?
Katherine:
To the bathroom, sir.
Mr. Harris:
The bathroom! To the damn bathroom! For 40 minutes a day!? What do you do
in there!? We are T-minus zero here. I put a lot of faith in you.
Katherine:
There’s no bathroom for me here.
Mr. Harris:
What do you mean there’s no bathroom for you here?
Katherine:
There is no bathroom! There are no colored bathrooms in this building, or any
building outside the West Campus. Which is half a mile away! Did you know that? I have to walk
to Timbuktu just to relieve myself! And I can’t use one of the handy bikes. Picture that, Mr.
Harrison? My uniform. Skirt below the knees and my heels. And simple string of pearls. Well, I
don't own pearls. Lord knows you don’t pay the coloreds enough to afford pearls! And I work like
a dog day and night, living of coffee from a pot none of you want to touch! So, excuse me, if I
have to go to the restroom a few times a day!16
When it dawns on her boss that the racism and discrimination is hindering her work, he personally goes
to the West Wing to break down the sign reading “colored bathroom”. In front of surprised Black women
he shouts “There you have it! No more colored restrooms. No more white restrooms. Just plain old
toilets. Go wherever you damn well please. Preferably closer to your desk. At NASA...We all pee the
same color!”17
“And it’s not because we wear skirts, it’s because we wear glasses.”
New technology both in the workplace and at home reduced the need for domestic help, and although it
“placed the burden of household maintenance on the shoulders of one woman,” new technology also
meant that occupations in factories required less training, which opened positions for women who also
provided cheaper labour.18 In the case of operating the IBM computer, however, women needed even
better training, but working on machines which required repetitive tasks was seen as less important and
thus less threatening to men who could pursue upward mobility and got recognition for their work. In
any case, Dorothy is finally accepted as supervisor of the group of women programming the mainframe
computer at NASA.
16
Ibid.
Ibid.
18 Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work. A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press),
1982, 113, 143.
17
2. Division of Coloured Women entering the room of the IBM Mainframe Machine (http://www.foxmovies.com/movies/hiddenfigures).
Although Mrs. Mitchell, the women in charge of the White group of Computers, said to her: “You know
Dorothy, despite what you may think, I have nothing against y’all.” Dorothy understands that White
women, such as the members of the National Organization of Women, are mostly concerned with their
personal lives and relationships instead of larger political or economic issues, and responds: “I know. I
know you probably believe that.”19
In the 1960s “Black women were proud that they were strong, that they were responsible, but wondered
if they were too strong, both for the good of their men and the good of the race.”20 As early as 1955, the
organisers of the White House Conference on Effective Uses of Woman-power, identified the opposition
of women’s place in the home on the one hand, and their “actual and potential contribution to the
economy” on the other.21 Even the labour market “rooted in conceptions of women as homebound had
consistently denied women access to jobs with responsibility, decent pay, promotion, and policy-making
power.”22 In the film, this tension becomes clear when Mary and Dorothy urge Katherine who is a widow
with three children, to approach Colonel Jim Johnson. Even though he does not make the best
impression at first, questioning NASA for “letting women handle that sort of …,” she does accept his offer
to marry her. Her full-time job made her “mommy and daddy” at the same time, and she had to leave
her children in the care of her own mother in order to work late at night. After Yuri Gagarin becomes the
19
Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 303.
Ibid., 320.
21 Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, 300.
22 Ibid., 301
20
first man in space, therefore leaving America in second place in the Race for Space, Mr. Harris further
pushes his team by requiring them to work over time without their paycheques “to reflect the extra time
it is going to take to catch up and pass those bastards”.23 Instead of calling home to her wife to announce
this news like her male collegues, Katherine not only does not have a partner to turn to, she has to rely
on her own mother to take care of the children before she is married.
Hierarchical Structures: “Fast with rocket ships. Slow with advancement.”
At NASA, several hierarchies present themselves, not least in the form of Women of Colour being
addressed by their first name, whereas White women and men were addressed by their last name. The
only exception occurs when Mr. Harris informally adresses an engineer, Mr. Stafford, as Paul to put him
in his place. One finding I could not have made manually occurred to me after running the script in the
Voyant tool.24 Through textual analysis, it became clear that the most frequent words are Yes (71
instances) and sir (69 instances), often occurring together.25 When talking to supervisors or other staff
higher on the hierarchical ladder, others need to address them in the polite, but almost submissive “Yes
Sir.”
Furthermore even middle-class and educated women were restricted to female fields, clearly
demonstrated in two instances. First, Mr. Zielinskis tries to convince Mary that “a person with an
engineers’ mind should be an engineer. You can’t be a Computer the rest of your life.”26
23
“Hidden Figures (2016) movie script.”
“Voyant Tools,” Stéfan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell, last modified 2017, voyant-tools.org.
25 Ibid.
26 “Hidden Figures (2016) movie script”.
24
3. Mr. Zielinskis suggesting Mary should become an engineer instead of remaining in her position as a "Computer"
(http://www.foxmovies.com/movies/hidden-figures).
In the film all Computers were female, and all engineers were male, accompanied by a female secretary.
The second example of this restriction reveals itself in the tension between Mr. Stafford and Katherine in
two instances. When Katherine arrives, one of her first jobs is to double-check Mr. Stafford’s math,
which he immediately perceives as an insult to his work. As a result, he hinders her by crossing out all
classified information, thus effectively doubling her workload. Later, she has to type his reports and
when she adds her name to the list of authors because she contributed, he viciously responds
“Computers don’t author reports,” obliging her to retype the front page.27
Another issue for the Women of Colour’s computer group was the lack of a permanent position. So even
though Stafford rejoices after the Alan Shepard Launch on May 5, 1961, saying “we should all thank
President Kennedy for continued job security,” Katherine’s position in the Space Task Computer Group is
not certain.28 Since the calculations for the Mercury Atlas Space vehicle can be done by the IBM
mainframe computer, she needs to return to the West Group. In an effort to thank her and to apologise,
she receives a pearl necklace for her engagement, which symbolises the double-edged sword of
progress. On the one hand, the pearls symbolise a woman’s place in the home, since it is assumed that
she will return to the home as a married woman. On the other hand, her boss tries to make up for her
low pay check and the gift can thus be seen as an effort for equal pay. During the Great Depression,
women already continued working after they were married, which gave way to the issue of whether
27
28
Ibid.
Ibid.
“married women with employed husbands should ever work.”29 Furthermore, “as government policy
began to encourage women to move into the labor market, and women began to accept their status as
permanent wage workers with the right to a job, they became eager for rewards of that status.”30
Luckily for Katherine, when problems arise due to an inaccuracy of the IBM, one of the engineers has to
run to the West group to ask Katherine to verify the numbers on John Glenn’s launch of the Atlas
manually. After that, “Katherine Johnson went on to perform calculations for the Apollo II mission to the
moon and the Space Shuttle.” To conclude, I would like to briefly explain why the concept of
intersectionality and the context of Hidden Figures fits into my research. The reason it is important to
consider intersectionality in research on women lies in the fact that “intersectionality resists binary logic,
encourages complex analysis, and foregrounds difference.”31 Instead of restricting myself to studying
White Western-European women in the field of Computer Science, I want to involve women with
different ethnic, racial, geographical, and religious backgrounds who belong to different classes and have
different levels of education. The Women of Colour represented in this film and belonging to the
educated Christian African-American middle-classes are therefore only part of the complex puzzle that
creates the backdrop for my research.
Annotated Bibliography for Further Reading
“Hidden Figures (2017). Starring Taraji . Henson, Octavia Spencer, Keving Costner | based on the book
‘Hidden Figures’ by Margot Lee Shetterly.” HistoryvsHollywood. Accessed March 20, 2017. URL:
http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/hidden-figures/.
Explains the difference between reality and fiction of the film which was not the immediate
purpose of this blog. It also contains photographs and details of the historical characters
portrayed in the film. Unfortunately there is no clear author, thus no way of verifying whether
the information can be trusted without double-checking the sources. Either way, the assertions
and suggestions made here make you think twice about what the three protagonists actually
experienced in real life.
Shetterly, Margot Lee. “Hidden Figures.” Margot Lee Shetterly: Research. Write. Repeat. Accessed March
20, 2017. URL: http://margotleeshetterly.com/hidden-figures-nasas-african-american-computers/.
On her personal website the author of the book inspiring the film briefly describes her personal
inspiration and experience in researching and writing about the Black women at NASA. She also
provides information on her “Human Computer Project” which has a separate website
(http://thehumancomputerproject.com/about). She graduated from the University of Virginia
herself.
Shetterly, Margot Lee. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women
Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. Harper Collings, 2016. URL:
https://books.google.be/books?id=26mpCgAAQBAJ.
29
30
31
Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, 254.
Ibid., 308.
Ibid.
Here you can find more information regarding the book which inspired the film, and an answer
to the perhaps all important question seemingly ignored by the creators of the film. Were there
also African-American engineers, and were they male or female? Hint: check the prologue.
Sytze Van Herck