Hidden Figures Summary

Hidden Figures Summary

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Setting 

Hidden figures is set in NASA Langley Research Center in 1961

Main Characters

Margot Lee Shetterly – she is the author of Hidden Figures and the daughter of a climate research scientist who worked at Langley Research Center.

Dr. Robert B. Lee III – he is Margot Lee Shetterly’s father and a renowned climate scientist who, for years, worked at Langley.

Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson – she is a passionate, outspoken black mathematician who works in the Flight Research Division at the Langley Research Center

Dorothy Vaughan – she is a strong-minded, black mathematician who joins Langley as a human-computer in 1943 and then works her way up to become the organization’s first black section head.

Mary Jackson – she works as a teacher and a USO secretary before taking a job as a computer at the NACA.

Christine (Mann) Darden – she is a black female aeronautical engineer who worked at the Langley Research Center for many years as a data analyst before rising to the top level in her field.

Margery Hannah – she is West Area computing’s white section chief.

John Glenn – is an astronaut and the first American to orbit the Earth.

A. Philip Randolph – he is an African-American Civil Rights leader and labor organizer who fights for equal rights for African-American workers.

Henry Pearson – he is the head of the branch of the Flight Research Division where Katherine Johnson works.

William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor – he is a black research mathematician who graduates from Howard University in 1929 and earns a Ph.D. in math from the University of Pennsylvania in 1933

Plot Summary

In 1943, in the midst of World War II, the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, VA seeks to hire hundreds of junior physicists and mathematicians to help in the war effort by supporting engineers in performing aeronautical research as part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the NACA). At the time, mathematicians, who are commonly called "computers,” are almost all women. Further, Jim Crow laws are still in place in the South, which means that Hampton is a segregated place. Langley hires some black female computers but places them in a segregated office called West Area.

In the summer of 1942, Dorothy Vaughan, a math teacher, is also working in a military laundry room in order to earn extra money and support the American war effort. Married with children, Dorothy comes from a middle-class black family, well-respected and well-known by other black families in town. One day she sees an advertisement for jobs at the NACA. She applies and is hired as a mathematician. She accepts the job, even though it requires her to move quite a distance and be away from her family.

At around the same time, Katherine Coleman is a math major at West Virginia. She is such an excellent mathematician that she is invited to integrate a nearby university, where she has been accepted into a master’s program in mathematics. She completes the summer session of the master’s program but then drops out of the program to start a family.

Meanwhile, Dorothy Vaughan begins work at the NACA. As a black computer, she must work in the segregated West Area Computing room. White computers, run by white Head Computers Margery Hannah and Blanche Shopsin, work out of a different office on the East Side of Langley’s campus, called East Area. The black computers, much to their consternation, are also made to sit together in the cafeteria at a table marked with a sign that reads "Colored Computers.” Nonetheless, the black computers play an important role in helping the engineers at Langley improve American fighter planes and develop ever more powerful bomb payloads.

After the war, Dorothy fears she will be let go by the NACA, but instead, she is made a permanent employee in 1946. Even so, she finds it hard to move up the ranks: there are few opportunities available to women, and even fewer for black women. Yet when the Head Computer Margery Hannah gets promoted and Margaery's second, Blanche, unexpectedly falls ill and dies, Dorothy is asked to fill the role. For a number of years she serves only as of the "acting head” of the West Area computing division, but she performs so well that she becomes full head of the unit in 1951. That same year, Mary Jackson joins West Computing, working as a computer under Dorothy Vaughan.

Globally, the "Cold War” between the United States and the Soviet Union becomes more intense. Yet as the United States dedicates itself to fighting the spread of Communist oppression around the globe, many black Americans, including many at the NACA wonder why at the same time the United States perpetuates the oppression of African-Americans on its own soil.

Yet the NACA, perhaps, offers more opportunities than much of the rest of society. A NACA engineer named Kazimierz Czarnecki invites Mary Jackson to join his research team. Impressed by Mary’s intelligence, he then pushes her to become an engineer. Slowly, but surely, the NACA begins to integrate. That doesn’t mean bias against women and blacks is absent from the organization. It is a place where the chief officer, John Becker, thinks little of accusing Mary of making a mistake in her calculations. But it is also a place where she can use her skills to prove to him that he had actually made the mistake. Her willingness to stand up for herself inspires other black computers and shows those in leadership positions that Mary has what it takes to succeed.

Themes

1. Community. Black computers like Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, and Mary Jackson depended on their families and communities to thrive. Extended family, the church, and civic organizations like the Girl Scouts all played a part in their achievements.
2. Luck, Persistent Action, and Hard Work. Pioneering black computers like Johnson, Vaughan, and Jackson worked very hard. They also benefitted from healthy doses of luck. Shetterly argues that hard work and persistence set the stage for luck to make a difference in a person’s life, and she uses the term "serendipity” to describe what happens when random chance collides with preparedness.