NASA’s ‘Hidden Figures’ Honored with Congressional Gold Medals
By Movieguide® Contributor
The African American women who fueled NASA’s work during the space race were honored last week with Congressional Gold Medals, the highest award that can bestowed upon a civilian.
“These women dared to step into the fields where they had previously been unwelcomed. They excelled in science and math and made groundbreaking contributions in aeronautics,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson during the ceremony. “But these women didn’t just crunch numbers and solve equations for the space program. They actually laid the very foundation upon which our rockets launched and our astronauts flew and our nation soared.”
“Although we call them, ‘Hidden Figures,’ we shouldn’t think of them merely as supporting characters in the American story of space exploration,” he added. “They were the engineers and mathematicians who actually wrote the story itself.”
The incredible story of these women was made widely known in 2016 through the movie HIDDEN FIGURES. The movie reveals the vile racism these women endured while being key components of America’s efforts in the space race offering support in mathematics and engineering and serving as “human computers.”
“[These women are] giants on whose shoulders all of those astronauts actually stood at a time…when our nation was divided by color and often by gender,” Johnson said.
The awards were accepted by the women’s families posthumously. The efforts of these women had previously been recognized by NASA through the dedication of certain buildings in their honor. Katherine Johnson had a NASA facility renamed in her honor in February of 2019, and NASA’s D.C. office was renamed after Mary W. Jackson in June of 2020.
“NASA facilities across the country are named after people who dedicated their lives to push the frontiers of the aerospace industry. The nation is beginning to awaken to the greater need to honor the full diversity of people who helped pioneer our great nation,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in 2020.
Movieguide® previously reported on HIDDEN FIGURES:
By the end of her 40-year stint with NASA, Christine Darden was known as a brilliant mathematician and engineer. Obtaining her dream job wasn’t an easy goal, though.
Today, she is heralded as the fourth “Hidden Figure,” a title used by author Margot Lee Shetterly to refer to NASA’s “human computers” Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Darden herself: all of whom were scientifically-minded African American women whose example aided the civil rights movement. HIDDEN FIGURES was even adapted for the big screen back in 2016.
Though she wasn’t featured in the production, the biblical principles in the movie applied to her life, as well.
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