Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures is a triumphant movie about the space race and the black female computers who were behind it. Throughout the movie, three women defy the odds and all obstacles in their way to get their job done. They had to deal with segregated bathrooms, coffee pots, and workplaces, all while keeping their cool and breaking new scientific ground. The unconscious bias of their white coworkers was very apparent throughout the movie as Dorthy Vaughn's boss would always tell her shes "just following the rules" and therefore could not promote her to a supervisor. Paul Stafford in the geometry department would exclude Katherine's name from the reports, and the engineering department required Mary to go out of her way to get more degrees than her male counterparts- just to be as qualified as them. After watching this movie we were asked reflective questions on if we have ever felt we could or could not do something. I had always been raised thinking that my possibilities were limitless in life, and I could go as far as my imagination would permit, but sadly this is not the case for all women. I felt this way because being a white woman I have had numerous role models who look like me and who accomplish almost anything I can dream of. Black girls, on the other hand, do not have as many role models to look up to, because history has "hid" so many important black women leaders. Before the movie Hidden Figures was released, the work of the three women and the rest of the black computers working for NASA was hidden in the dark, but now those three women are heroes. History is constructed of the stories that are kept alive, and for so long those have been about white men. Society tends to not tell the stories of black heroes, keeping them in the dark. But black women just as much as white women need idols to look up to. There are so many more hidden figures in history that should be brought to light, and tell those girls like Mary, who thought she could not be an engineer because of her race, that anything is possible.