Big Screen, Big Crucibles 2: Hidden Figures

Gary Schneeberger:
The Three Women Warwick is describing are the characters at the center of Hidden Figures, the second film in our summer series, Big Screen, Big Crucibles. As we discuss their grit, fortitude, and brilliance are critical to the U.S. winning the space race against the Russians in the early 1960s. They would all become NASA legends and our inspirational examples we all can follow to move beyond our own crucibles. Welcome friends. We are back to our summer series. We had so much fun, as we said last week, last year with our summer series on classic films and the lessons they can teach us about overcoming crucibles that we’re doing it again this summer. And this year we are calling it Big Screen, Big Crucibles. For eight weeks this summer, this is our second one, we’ll be taking a look at films that feature a wide variety of crucibles. Insightful lessons they teach us about how not only to bounce back from those crucibles, but casting a vision for and charting a course for a life of significance.
And our film this week is… I’m not going to go with that. We don’t need it. We’re just going to say it straight up. Our film this week is Hidden Figures. Scott, we’ll save the drum roll for what our next movie’s going to be at the end. Our film this week is Hidden Figures, and that film came out in 2016. And here’s its official synopsis, “In the heart of the space race, three brilliant African-American women at NASA, working as ‘human computers’ become the unsung heroes behind the launch of John Glenn into orbit, defying racial and gender barriers while proving their genius.” Warwick, obviously, this is a movie we both like very much. We talked about it quite a bit as we prepared for this.
Before we dive into the crucibles that these ladies who make up the three main cast members of this film, the crucibles they face, and how they overcame them, and what their actions can teach us about how we can overcome our own crucibles, this is the third time we’ve done this thing, films, and what they can teach us about overcoming crucibles. What are you hoping our listeners and viewers get out of these discussions this time around in our series this year?

Warwick Fairfax:
Gary, we both love movies and we love superhero movies, sports movies, which you’ve done a series on. Last year was a really fun series, the American Film Institute’s Top 100 movies. And I think the reason that I liked them, I believe, we liked them, is that, these great movies, they portray a protagonist that’s typically facing significant challenges that they seek to overcome. And that’s really what we do here at Beyond The Crucible. We talk to guests who had to overcome significant challenges, and bounce back, and lead a life of significance. So this year, we thought we’d look at some of the best movies that we could think of that show people overcoming really significant crucibles to lead a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others, and all these movies which we really are enjoying discussing, they all do that. They all feature protagonists who have to face long odds to overcome significant barriers, significant crucibles to move forward to indeed achieve a life of significance.

Gary Schneeberger:
And I like it for one additional reason, because it’s the one time of year really when your Australian way of articulating things comes out and you say, “Protagonist.” Which I just love, as opposed to the American, “Protagonist.” Right? Yeah, it sounds very poetic.

Warwick Fairfax:
I didn’t even know. So there you go.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Honestly, I mean, I like it, because it just makes it sound so much better than when I say, “Protagonist.” So, yes. So let’s start talking about those protagonists, folks. The first crucible all three ladies in this movie face, as the film kicks off, the women that we’re going to be talking about are Katherine Goble, who will later be Katherine Johnson, more on that later, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. They live in Hampton, Virginia and work in nearby Langley at NASA. They are part of the computing team. When you hear that, don’t think machines think computations in your brain. Really smart people, because this is 1961. And those machines aren’t widely available for folks, not even at NASA. So the computing team are people who compute things in their minds. So keep that in your mind. And these women who are doing the computing, truly, they fuel our race to get into space. It’s not that big of a stretch to say as much as the fuel that fuels the rockets that get us to space. So very, very important what they do, and it’ll come through as we discuss this film.
One of the first scenes, Warwick, in the film introduces a concept that will help the ladies handle the crucibles they face. We call it having a team of fellow travelers. What is that scene that really stood out to you in the film and how does it show the importance of having people around you who believe in you when others might not? Because there’s a lot of others might not in Hidden Figures for the ladies at the center of the story.

Warwick Fairfax:
So in this opening scene, her parents are talking to her teachers and it would appear it could be an African-American school, because all the teachers we see are African-American. And these teachers, they say that Katherine’s mind is exceptional and that she has to go to another school. One teacher says to Katherine’s parents, “You have to see what she becomes.” And the teachers really believe in Katherine. They gather together some money to send Katherine onto the next school, the school that has maybe better teaching, more opportunities to truly help Katherine be the best she can be with incredible talent, because it’s very clear that Katherine’s parents and her teachers realize that Katherine has an exceptional mathematical mind. It’s not overstating to say that her mind is a genius level.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
And they realize this. And obviously, for a young African-American child, that’s not going to be easy to really fully utilize her genius and her brilliance, but they want to do everything they can to help her reach her full potential. And so, this early scene really shows it’s so important and helpful to have people who believe in us, perhaps they see qualities in us that we don’t see, and maybe they see something exceptional in us, which we might find about what could be exceptional in us. But, I think we all have something that’s at least special. Not all of us are at the genius level that Katherine Goble is, but having somebody that sees-

Gary Schneeberger:
Especially not in math. Especially not in math.

Warwick Fairfax:
… I hear you there. So having people that sees something special in us and are really willing to get a bat for us and help us is just so helpful.

Gary Schneeberger:
And in the context of this film, and I think in the context of experiences with crucibles, it’s helpful, because there are many people that Katherine and the other ladies in this movie will meet throughout this film who don’t believe in her, who don’t have a great opinion of her, who think that she’s not going to be able to rise up. There’s prejudice involved, because this is 1960s, and they are African-American women. So having fellow travelers, yes, it’s people who encourage us, but that encouragement can stick with us and we can draw on that as we run into a lack of encouragement as we go forward, can’t we?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it’s so true. Having a team of fellow travelers, a team of cheerleaders that are in our corner, because you’re very right, Gary, there are many people that want to pull us down. Maybe they’re just jealous of our skills, or who we are, or maybe they feel threatened by us. And so, there are many that may say as many people that will pull us down. So it’s really critically important to have fellow travelers, cheerleaders who believe in us, especially in those times when we doubt ourselves or other people are trying to pull us down.

Gary Schneeberger:
Speaking of crucibles, our first hint at the crucibles of Katherine, Mary, and Dorothy will face is when their car breaks down on their way to work. A police officer stops by when he sees they’ve stalled, but he’s not really there to help them in the beginning. Talk about that scene a little bit. How does this early scene set the stage, the parameters, if you will, of what these ladies will face throughout this film?

Warwick Fairfax:
So here we have really the first scene where these three women are adults. And, as you mentioned, it’s 1961, it’s Virginia. Virginia is obviously in the south. And, yes, John F. Kennedy is president, and things are beginning to change, but this is very early days in the Civil Rights Movement. And it sure doesn’t seem like it’s reached Virginia at this point. So you have their car broken down and here comes this white police officer wondering what’s happening. And so, they’re obviously nervous. Three black women, broken down car, white police officer. And so, they just try to calmly explain to the officer that they all work at NASA in Langley, Virginia. And then, they very intelligently engage in a discussion about the space race. You’ve got the Russians that have made some progress, or making progress, and it almost feels like at this point they may be a step ahead of the U.S. And, they all agree on the importance of helping the U.S. astronauts, like John Glenn, get into space.
And so, by talking about the space race, and really helping the U.S., and the space race against the Russians, and John Glenn, they find a point of agreement, a point of commonality, a point of something they both believe in. And so, this is a great example, is when faced with potential confrontation, when you feel there may be a difference between you and some other people, maybe there’s difference of opinion, or in this case, you’ve got racial and gender challenges, potentially discrimination here with this white officer, finding common ground and what you can agree on is very helpful. In fact, the white police officer says, “Can I escort you to work? I don’t want you to be late.” And he has his siren on. I mean, that’s next level being helpful. Not too many police officers stop us and say, “Can I help you and put the sirens on to clear traffic?” That’s not normal. So they really handled that situation, which could have been a very problematic situation very well. It was a really great example of how to deal with challenges.

Gary Schneeberger:
And it was interesting, that scene starts out, when he pulls them over and he walks out of the car, you see him from behind as he’s walking toward the car and he’s got his nightstick out of his pocket, right? Out of his thing. I mean, he’s ready for… Right? There’s African-Americans there. And he is as a white officer in Virginia thinking that he may run into some trouble. And, just how quickly that turns when he talks to them and they talk about what they do. And you’re right, he turns the sirens on, and the lights on, and two of them at least are a little like, “Oh, that’s strange. I don’t know. I don’t want to get too…” And one of them is like, “Yeah, this is the way it should be.”
So we’ll learn all more about the personalities of these ladies and why they have that reaction. But it’s a great scene to both introduce us to the themes of the film in terms of the racism that’s there, even subtly so in many cases. But also, the personalities of these exceptional women. So the ladies finally do make it to the office, thanks to the police escort. And when they get there, we see that they work at a segregated NASA literally toiling in a separate building from the main crew working on getting the space program off the ground. They’re having an impact, but they’re not allowed to fulfill their full potential. That’s because the government thinks that it’s all women and African-Americans can handle is what they’re being asked to do. There’s sexism and racism at work here we see pretty quickly. In these early scenes, Warwick, what stands out for you once we get them into NASA and we see the machinations of what’s going on there.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, for these African-American women, they have two challenges against them, they’re African-American and they’re women. Two strikes against them in this time where certainly it would be assumed in the early-60s, women should be secretaries, but not much else, irrespective of race. That alone would be a challenge. But, it’s the fact that African-American and women. So these two factors would definitely limit them in 1961, Virginia. And we see Dorothy, who is the de facto supervisor of a group of African-American women at NASA. She talks to a boss, Leah Mitchell, about formally getting the title of supervisor, which we would assume gets increased pay. And, basically, her boss says, “Not at this time.” So she has the role, we would assume, without the pay, right?

Gary Schneeberger:
All the responsibility, none of the extra money.

Warwick Fairfax:
And Dorothy is a smart person. She realized what’s going on. And she wants the formal title, because A, it’s right. And B, one would assume that the pay goes with it. And then, one of the other women, Mary, she talks to her boss, Carl Zalinski, who is a Polish Jew, who is one of the engineers working on the rockets. And, interestingly enough, Carl encourages Mary to apply to be an engineer. And Mary pushes back and says, “Look, that’s impossible for people like me, with my race to get a job as an engineer, that’s never going to happen.” And Carl pushes back and says, “We’re living the impossible. This is the space age.” And, Carl identifies, to a degree, with Mary saying that he’s lost family members in the Holocaust and World War II. And, his family obviously knows something about persecution, to say the least.
And, in some ways, I don’t know if it’s a kindred spirit, but Carl just really advocates for Mary. And, over time, Mary would actually listen to that encouragement. “We’re living the impossible.” And so, we see that for these African-American women in 1961, Virginia, capability and intelligence are not enough. In an ideal world, in a fair world, in a just world, capability, and intelligence, and a work ethic is all that’s required, but not here. It’s just not enough, not for these three women.

Gary Schneeberger:
And, it’s interesting, we’ve all heard about the glass ceiling, right? Certain groups can’t get up there because there’s a glass ceiling. Really, for women and African-American women in particular at NASA, it seems like that’s made of bulletproof glass, just these early scenes make it very clear that their upward mobility is not going to be easy, it’s probably just not going to happen. That’s the odds they’re facing at the beginning.

Warwick Fairfax:
Right. Right. You’re right. Very well said. Not so much that it’s challenging, it’s impossible. “It’s not your place.” Say the people above her, “For you, an African-American woman to rise above your station of being basically a secretary of some very low level administrative work. It’s unthinkable and it’s not possible. And it’s not challenging. It won’t happen.” That’s the attitude of the people above them. So yes, it’s a very difficult situation, to say the least.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, when I was watching these scenes, in my mind, I couldn’t help but paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, that what they’re facing is they’re not being judged by, I’ll say, the content of their intelligence, right? King said, “Content of their character.” They’re not being judged by the content of their intelligence, they’re being judged by the color of their skin. And, that will continue to plague them for a while. But, stay tuned, folks, because this is a movie with a happy ending. I’ll give you that. Things begin to change when Katherine, the most mathematically gifted of the trio is assigned to the space task group, charged with literally getting the U.S. space program off the ground to catch up with the Russians who have a head start. At this time in the Cold War, space is considered a critical arena for the U.S. to master to continue being the world’s greatest superpower.
So when Katherine arrives at the office for the space task force, one of the men there though, thinking that she’s a new janitor, hands her a garbage can that hasn’t been empty from the night before. Again, what they’re up against. But we also meet her boss, Al Harrison, who tells her he’s been through a dozen computers, again, human computers in 11 months, and he’s been unable to find a good one. And he’s hoping she’ll be that good one. This pretty strongly sets up this idea that Katherine’s going to have to face a lot of trial before she can get to triumph. Every bit of work she does and how she does it will be severely scrutinized. Why is this such a difficult crucible to encounter? Because it’s hard to encounter, but it’s also hard to endure. Why is that?

Warwick Fairfax:
So these early scenes with Katherine is very instructive. Remember, just the rampant gender and race discrimination. Here she is, Katherine, an African-American woman coming into a room of pretty much all white men who were doing the work. And, as she comes into this circular room, all eyes are on her as if, “What is she doing here?” She’s out of place. They’re just staring and they’re dumbfounded. They just can’t get what she’s doing there. Al Harrison as we’ll discover is a very tough taskmaster. He has a job to do. He wants to get astronauts like John Glenn into space. He sets high standards for everyone, and he will do whatever it takes to accomplish his goal. That is the overriding part of his personality, which as we’ll see, there can be challenges with that. But there are also opportunities. In his first interaction with Katherine, in part, because Katherine is so quiet, Al Harrison asks Katherine, “Can you do math and can you speak?” And, she says yes to both.
And so then, Harrison gives us a mathematical test, like a bunch of pages with computation on it, and in a flash, she explains what it is, what math it is, and it’s very clear she knows a lot about math. So it doesn’t take Harrison long to realize, “Okay, got it. She is really intelligent.” That’s pretty much all he needs to know. I mean, he’s a pretty much of a one track mind, “Can you do the job? Are you smart? Can you help me get people in space?” That’s pretty much how you would sum Al Harrison.
So there’s a potential with Harrison. But a lot of the others, like Paul Stafford, who was the lead engineer, who in some sense, unfortunately, Katherine will have a lot to do with, all of them give icy stares to Katherine. And, somebody has put another coffee maker out there on the coffee table on the side of the room with the word colors printed on the label. This is a coffee maker for white people. And then, one for African-Americans, for colors as they called them back then. So Stafford seems to feel threatened by Katherine and is dismissive of her work. So Harrison has told Katherine to check Stafford’s work. Can you imagine? I can’t think of too many things more threatening to some white engineer to have some black woman come in and be told, “Check this guy’s work because maybe he’s made mistakes.” That will feel, in the culture, very demeaning to Stafford.

Gary Schneeberger:
And he does it in front of the whole team.

Warwick Fairfax:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Again, Harrison’s got a job to do. He doesn’t care what people are thinking. And, Harrison, when he can see people are pushing back, he says, “America’s greatest minds will not have a problem getting their work checked.” So he tried to put people in their place. And Stafford, of course, tries to make things as impossible as he can. So he gets these sheets of paper and he starts redacting most of what’s on there. In other words, he gets some black highlight, or magic marker, or whatever and just blacks out pretty much everything he can. He says it’s classified and she doesn’t have clearance. Well, how in the world is Katherine going to check his computations when she can’t see three quarters of them?
Now, Katherine being a smart person, holds up those sheets of paper to the light and you can actually see the computations through the blacked out. So later on, there’s a funny scene where Harrison and Stafford are like, “You can’t get how she can figure this out.” He said, “I hold it up to the light and I can see it.” And they hold it up to the light. “Well, I guess she can too.” So she outsmarts them pretty early on.

Gary Schneeberger:
And then, at the time, one of them says, “How do we fix that?” And, Harrison says, “Get darker ink.”

Warwick Fairfax:
Oh, really?

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Which was just extraordinarily funny.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, I think he was probably being sarcastic as I don’t think he could care less. But there’s another interesting aspect to this, is that in the building where Katherine now works, there is no “colored restroom.” She has to go all the way over the other side of campus. I mean, it’s a long way where she used to work to go to an African-American restroom, a colored bathroom as they called it. And so, she’s running through rain or whatever it is, and even when she’s in the bathroom, she’s taking these sheets of paper, these computations with her and looking at them.
And so, people like Harrison are wondering, “What the heck is with Katherine? She takes these long breaks. Where is she? I mean, we need everybody. It’s all hands on deck. We’re trying to get John Glenn into space. What’s the deal here?” So Harrison is wondering what’s happening. And there’s a scene where Katherine is staying late, because she’s a very dedicated team member. And the only one there is Harrison. He has this almost or this glassed paneled room that’s set above the main circular office. So he can look down everybody from his office.
And, Katherine is talking with Harrison. And Harrison says that he’s asking his team to look beyond the numbers, to look around them. He says, “We need to find answers to questions we don’t have with math that doesn’t exist.” I mean, that’s as hard… Yeah. So if ever you would need a genius to figure out new math, math that people haven’t used maybe for centuries, you need, at the very least, a genius because it’s so complicated. We see two themes that work. We see definitely discrimination, where the team, Paul Stafford, and the other folks there really don’t want to give Katherine the time of day, because she’s an African-American woman, and Paul Stafford just can’t stand the fact you’ve got an African-American woman checking his work. He feels like it’s so beneath him.
But on the other hand, you’ve got Harrison who has a clear job, he wants to get astronauts in space. And he is tough on everyone, regardless of race or gender. He’s tough on everyone. And wants to make sure that work gets done. So in that sense, there is hope for Katherine, because she realizes Al Harrison is a simple person in one sense. He wants to get astronauts in space. And anybody that can help him, he will give them a shot. It’s not like you have Al Harrison as some necessarily civil rights crusader.

Gary Schneeberger:
Correct.

Warwick Fairfax:
That’s not really what animates him. What animates him is getting the job done. So, “If you can help me get the job done, I don’t care what background you are, your age, ethnicity, just help me get the job done.” It’s that simple with him. And so, Katherine being a very smart person, she realizes there is room for hope. If she can justify and prove to him, “I have the solution to help get John Glenn and the other astronauts in space.” I think she begins to realize Harrison might listen.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, I mean, I think what she sees in Harrison and I think what audiences see in Harrison is a fairness, right? There’s a fairness about him. One of the secretary in the office speaking to an earlier comment you made about women in the workplace in 1961 were usually secretaries. There’s a woman there who’s a secretary, and one of the things she tells Katherine about Harrison is, “He’s not going to warm up to you.” And it’s not even so much that he warms up to her, it’s that he’s a fair man. He wants to see fairness carried out. And I think that ends up helping both her and helping his pursuit of getting the job done, to your point.
As all this is happening, Warwick, the ladies become their own fellow travelers as they navigate their desire to do a good job and to do a job they’re truly qualified for with the racial realities of early 1960s and the still segregated state of Virginia. There are a couple of scenes in this part of the film, Warwick, where we see the women at home, and when they all cut loose, and enjoyed an evening together as friends, not as NASA employees with challenges. Why is that such an important scene in the film and why is taking time to enjoy the company of fellow travelers and the camaraderie of fellow travelers so important to any of us who find ourselves in any crucible at any time?

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s such a good question. Picture Katherine. Here she is. She’s in this new work environment with a space task force. Most of the people there just do not want her there. Paul Stafford, the lead engineer, it drives him crazy to have an African-American woman check his work. She has to run way all over the other side of the campus to go to the bathroom through rain. Her day-to-day life at work is tough. It’s challenging. She has to go through the indignity of getting coffee out of the so-called colored coffee maker. Her days are not easy. So she comes home and we see Katherine with her mom and her three daughters, her husband has died, and we see this really strong bond. Her kids and her mother, they love her, they admire her. They realize how exceptional it is to have an African-American woman working at NASA. It may be tough, but what she’s doing already from their perspective is just amazing. They’re incredibly proud of her and what she’s achieved.
There’s another scene around this time where one of the other women, Mary, she’s talking to her husband and he has more of a confrontational civil rights approach to combat discrimination. And Mary understands his approach, and says, basically her approach is a bit different. It’s not so much she’s saying, “He shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing.” But in her case, at NASA, she is trying to find a way to get ahead and she’s thinking about applying for a job as an engineer. Remember, she was encouraged by her supervisor, Carl Zalinski, Polish Jew, who lost family members in the Holocaust. So she has a different approach. She wants to get ahead, but she wants to try and figure out a way to work around the system to become an engineer.
So at a party, we see these three women, they’re enjoying themselves, they’re dancing, there’s great music. And, we see that Katherine sees Jim Johnson, who’s an African-American military officer. Now earlier on, we see that they met at a church picnic, where Jim Johnson seemed surprised that a woman would be working at NASA. And, his surprise Katherine doesn’t like. Katherine almost takes it as being dismissive. So later on at this party, Jim apologizes to Katherine and she doesn’t let him off the hook quickly. It takes a few beats.

Gary Schneeberger:
Of course not.

Warwick Fairfax:
And, he apologizes to her for underestimating her. So really, what we see here is life is tough for these African-American women, but they get support from their families, their kids, in the case of Katherine, from her mom. And, what it shows is that through trials, it’s critical to have people that love and support us, what we call, fellow travelers. Life is not easy and life is excruciatingly tough for these three women. And so, having fellow travelers is so helpful.
In that earlier scene at the picnic, right before we see this African-American pastor, he exhorts and encourages them from the pulpit. And he invokes Martin Luther King and he says, “God’s faith has no limits.” So here’s Katherine and these other African-American women, they’re getting encouragement from their loved ones, from their family, their kids, from their pastor, and all of this is so critical to help them combat what they have to live with day-to-day, which is rampant racism and just discrimination because they’re women.

Gary Schneeberger:
And, if that name sounded familiar, Jim Johnson, remember we said, Katherine Goble Johnson in the beginning, I said that. We tell more about it. Well, they begin to get serious at this time. And if her last name becomes Johnson, you can see how serious that they get. But we’re still not there yet. But, that is a little plant up ahead for you to follow. This is the moment in the film, folks, when the crucibles that women face begin to be displaced by their bounce back from those crucibles. Katherine earns more and more trust from Harrison for being the most accurate computer on his team and gets more and more opportunities to figure trajectories for upcoming flights as the Mercury 7 astronauts come to Langley. Mary makes the decision to apply to become an engineer and refuses to let new requirements for her application stall her dream.
Meanwhile, Dorothy begins to study the computer language Fortran, while NASA has just gotten huge IBM mainframes to do more quickly the calculations that will fuel space flights, all three ladies are seizing control of their careers, their futures, their lives of significance that they want to live. So this is a very pivotal part of the movie where things begin to turn away from being held down to being lifted up and they’re lifting themselves up. Warwick, talk a bit about the story of how these women are bouncing back from their crucibles as this part of the movie kicks off.

Warwick Fairfax:
We see evidence of all three women fighting for their rights and finding a way to move forward in their careers despite just the incredible and rampant discrimination that they face. So one of the pivotal scenes of the movie is where Harrison is asking Katherine basically, “Where the heck do you go? I mean, you go for such long periods of time. It’s all hands on deck. We are trying to get John Glenn in space. And, the whole Mercury Space Program. And, where do you go? Again, his motivation is pretty simple, “I want to get these folks in space. Everybody needs to be full on and with the program.” And so, at that point, Katherine just explodes in frustration. She says she has to run half a mile to the other side of the campus to go to the bathroom. And Harrison, frankly, he just doesn’t get it, because he’s just focused on getting people in space. He’s not really aware of other things. He’s just not focusing on it.
And Harrison asked, “Well, why?” And Katherine says, “Because there’s no colored bathroom in their building.” She says, “Someone labeled a coffee maker as colored in that very room where they’re having this conversation in that office.” And, Harrison is just dumbstruck about this. He seems oblivious. He’s like “What? There’s a colored coffee maker and you’ve got to run all the way over to the other side of campus just to get to the bathroom?” And, Harrison is one of these people where he will not let anything get in his way. We can consider or muse about it saying, is it because he has innate sense of fairness? Maybe. Or maybe, it’s also like, “I’ve got to get a job done. And, this stupid stuff is getting in my way. So I need to remove the obstacles that might make it tough to get John Glenn in space.”
I mean, again, relatively straightforward mindset. But, whatever his motivation, he takes action. He takes the colored sign off the coffee maker. He then goes all the way to the other side of the campus and he gets a sledgehammer and he starts banging away at that colored sign on the restroom. I mean, this thing is not coming down easily. It’s bolted on. It’s a metal sign. And he’s hammering away at it. He gets a crowbar. I mean, he’s not giving up until that sign is removed. Well, in this other building, you have all of the African-American women, they’re standing probably dumbstruck themselves, watching this guy who’s the senior guy on the campus, who basically runs the show at Langley it seems, with the sledgehammer and the crowbar, and he’s yanking it off. And then, he says, “There are no more colored restrooms. There are no more white restrooms.” He says, “You can go wherever you damn well please.” And he says, “Here at NASA, we all pee the same color.”
It’s a dramatic scene. It’s very blunt to the point. But Harrison, whatever his motives are, he is fighting for Katherine and for African-American women. It’s just amazing. Now, with Mary, she wants to become an engineer. She has been encouraged by Carl Zelinsky. She needs to take extra coursework that is not offered to African-Americans. So you’ve got white schools and schools for African-Americans. To take the courses she needs that is required to become an engineer, it’s only offered a school she can’t go to. So she’s not going to let that stop her. She wants to become an engineer at NASA. So she is brought before a judge, and she makes this impassioned speech that she wants to be the first African-American woman engineer at NASA. Now, Mary is not a trained lawyer, but you would think that she’s Clarence Darrow, one of the best lawyers that ever existed.

Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed.

Warwick Fairfax:
She does her homework. She says to this white judge, “You were the first in your family to do a whole bunch of things.” And he says, “You’ve done your homework.” “So you know what it is to be the first. I want to be the first African-American woman engineer at NASA. And, I can’t, because there aren’t courses that I’m allowed to take.” So the judge considers this. And he allows her to take night classes. So maybe not during the day, but at least somewhere. So Mary is overjoyed. And her husband, the one who’s more of the civil rights activist that wants to take a more violent approach, he is deeply moved and deeply respects what Mary was able to accomplish. He is amazed.
And we see a later scene where she walks into her classroom at night and the other all male white classmates, and the professor is, again, dumbstruck. It’s like, “What is she doing here?” But she has a piece of paper that says she’s meant to be there. And, off she goes. So Dorothy, she sees this huge new IBM computer. And, she realizes that this computer has the potential to take her job and all the other African-American women that report to it. And, she tells her team, I mean, she has a very smart person, very direct, “We need to understand how to work with computers.” Because she knows this computer could take away their jobs. And we see early scenes where these IBM techs can’t figure out how to work their own computer. They can’t get it to work. And they have to be the experts from IBM. And, Dorothy sneaks in there and she starts tinkering with it. And, the IBM techs begin to realize that she can get this thing to work where they can’t.
Now, they’re under a lot of pressure. Again, Harrison is on their backs saying, “You sold us this big IBM mainframe. We need this to do very tough computations. Get this thing working.” He’s not going to be patient at all with anybody. So we find that all three women, they’re fighting the system and they’re finding ways to succeed against this ramped discrimination. And they’re beginning to find ways through, around, over their crucibles to have their visions become reality. Each in different ways, but it’s just amazing how none of these three women are going to give up. They’re going to find ways to become the people that they feel they were led to become and fulfill their purpose.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. It’s that these moments when we’re talking about these things in a series on film that are really important, I think, to be on the crucible, and that is when we can step off the screen for a second and apply it to the folks who are listening and watching. And, I’m going to ask you this, why are moments like this, moments where we choose to find a way around obstacles like the ladies have done to achieve a vision that will help us bounce forward to a life of significance that fits our skills and values so critical to all of us, to any of us who find ourselves in crucibles? We do these movie series because they teach us things about how to manage our own crucible experiences. And what you’ve just described, moving around obstacles is critical to doing that, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, well said. We all face challenges. Obviously, not all of us are African-American women. And, we don’t live in the 1960s anymore, although there’s still obviously racism and gender discrimination. The level they were at was certainly very high in the 1960s. So they obviously believed that gender and racial discrimination was wrong. But, what were they going to do about it? Well, they found ways to move forward with their lives and careers in their own unique ways.
So I think what this tells us is when we feel that we’ve been treated unfairly, that we can’t achieve our dreams, maybe we didn’t go to college, maybe it seems like we have a bad boss, or a company just won’t give us a shot, they won’t really give us a chance. We can yell and scream and say, “This is unfair.” If Ernie had gone to college, or if Ernie had had an upbringing that had more advantages, or wasn’t abused as a kid, or whatever background you’ve had that may have really make you feel that the world is stacked against you, you can yell and scream and say it’s unfair and it may well have been incredibly unfair, where you can yell and scream about it. Or you can say, “Well, what am I going to do about it? How do I find a way around these obstacles? How do I find a way to achieve my dreams? Who can help me? How do I get around these barriers?”
I think what this movie tells us is, you can’t get much bigger barriers in early-60s racial and gender discrimination that these women face. That’s about as big a barrier as any human’s going to face. But yet, they found a way.

Gary Schneeberger:
So a critical turning point in the film is a critical turning point in the space race. The Soviets have sent the cosmonaut, Yuri Grigarin, into space. The U.S. wants to send John Glenn, not just into space, but to orbit the earth to achieve supremacy in the space race. There’s one problem though. The computers, again human computers, know how to get Glenn’s rocket up, but they haven’t quite figured out how to get it back down. That’s when Katherine in a meeting with all the top brass that she’s had to fight to get into is asked by Harrison to work out the coordinates right there in real-time in front of everybody, including John Glenn. Here’s that very intense and inspirational scene from Hidden Figures.

Speaker 1:
So we have the vehicle’s speed, the launch window, and for argument’s sake, the landing zone is The Bahamas. Should be enough to figure the go/no-go?

Speaker 2:
Yeah, in theory, sir.

Speaker 1:
We need to be past theory at this point.

Speaker 3:
We’ll be able to calculate a go/no-go with that information.

Speaker 1:
When exactly is that going to happen?

Speaker 3:
Katherine? Have a go at it.

Speaker 4:
The goal point for re-entry is 2,990 miles from where we want Colonel Glenn to land. If we assume that’s The Bahamas, 544 miles per hour of 46.56 degrees, 2,900 landing miles. Okay. So that puts your landing zone at 5.0667 degrees north, 77.3333 degrees west, which is here. Give or take 20 square miles.

Speaker 1:
I like your numbers.

Gary Schneeberger:
So Warwick, what’s the context behind that clip? Some things were happening that got us into that room. What’s the context behind that clip and why is it so important to this story told by this movie?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, so this is a very intense scene. And, before the clip starts, Katherine was not going to be allowed in this meeting with the Pentagon brass. Paul Stafford certainly didn’t think she should be there, an African-American woman. She wasn’t qualified. Maybe she thought she didn’t have the security clearance. And, Katherine pushed back in front of Harrison saying that she needed to be in that room, because what kept happening is changes kept happening in real-time. And by the time she finished her computations, Harrison would say, “I’m sorry, no offense to you. But, this is old data. Therefore, the work you’ve done is irrelevant.” And, that’s frustrating. Well, she needed to be in the room, so that in real-time she could make recommendations for calculations that basically all this is about getting John Glenn safely back from orbit, back to earth through Earth’s atmosphere. I mean, very challenging computations.
So Harrison being a practical guy, he wants to get the mission done, he wants to get Glenn up in space and then home. It’s like, “Okay, fine.” And so, Harrison brings Katherine in the room. And as you see in that clip, look at the faces of those men. They’re like, “Who is this African-American woman? What is she doing there?” Now, earlier on, Harrison says, “Okay, you can come in the room, but don’t say anything.” He says, “Don’t say anything.” As we see in that clip, Harrison gives the chalk to Katherine and she starts coming up with all these calculations, and just look at the faces on those men. They’re just dumbstruck. Clearly, she’s a genius. She figures it all out. As you know, I think, from this clip, the wrong calculation means that the capsule would burn up, or it would bounce off Earth’s atmosphere, both are problematic obviously. So it’s really difficult to get the right trajectory.
And so, not only does she figure that out, she figures out the landing point within 20 square miles. I mean, that is just stunning. That is genius level. She does it in minutes. So I think what this scene shows is that an African-American woman can be smarter than anyone on the planet. This demonstrated to that whole room, her brilliance, and that brilliance was undeniable. Math doesn’t lie. You can’t fake it or fudge it. They’re all smart enough to realize she knows her stuff and she can figure things out that nobody we know can figure out. And it has to be figured out for John Glenn to be able to come back to us safely. It’s a remarkable scene.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, for sure. Meanwhile, as this is going on, things are looking up also for Dorothy and Mary. Mary, as we’ve mentioned, wins her legal challenge and can attend a white school to earn the extra credit she needs to be considered for the engineer’s job. And Dorothy is told by the same supervisor that didn’t want to let her become a supervisor, that she has been reassigned to work in the IBM section of NASA and she can bring along all of her fellow computers, all the women that she works with, with her. Later on, she is promoted indeed to being supervisor of that entire group.
Warwick, there’s an interesting scene where there’s a question about whether the calculations are right for John Glenn to come out of orbit and back to earth. Everybody’s unsure, are they right, are they wrong? Glenn has a point of view though, about how this should be resolved. Talk about this scene a little bit, because it may be surprising to people who… If you just think of it on its face, “Hey, there’s this computer, this big IBM thing. And then, there’s a bunch of people who figure stuff out with their brains.” John Glenn has a point of view. What’s John Glenn’s point of view? What’s that scene like?

Warwick Fairfax:
So clearly, Katherine has won the respect of the people in that room. So by this time, Katherine is certainly respected by Al Harrison. And John Glenn, who’s being a part of some of these meetings clearly respects her expertise. So really early on in the movie, when John Glenn first comes on the picture, you can see him greeting a whole bunch of people. And he goes down the line shaking hands, including these three African-American women. John Glenn is somebody that treats everybody the same. So he certainly doesn’t appear to be prejudiced at all. He just goes out of his way to be nice to them, before he even knows who they were and what they did. So there’s a question about the right trajectory to bring Glenn home. Again, the wrong trajectory, you bounce off the Earth’s atmosphere, or the capsule burns up. And the IBM calculations seem to vary from day-to-day. So that makes everybody nervous, especially John Glenn who’s in space and his life is on the line. He is especially nervous.
And so, Glenn says to Harrison, he wants Katherine to check the numbers. He trusts Katherine. And Glenn tells Harrison in a blunt way, and that’s Harrison’s language. He wants to be able to look in the eyes of the person who’s done the calculations, not some computer, so to speak. And so, really, this scene is a pivotal, because what it says about John Glenn is he is willing to trust Katherine with his life, that’s what at stake here, wrong calculation, and he dies. So that is the ultimate compliment, “I respect you so much, I’m willing to put my life in your hands.” It’s really remarkable.

Gary Schneeberger:
Katherine’s calculations proved perfect in getting John Glenn back home, even after a scare in space where the module’s heat shield almost fails, threatening to burn him up on reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere. The film ends with the United States leading the space race, just a few years away from putting a man on the moon, one of the most miraculous achievements, not just in American history, but in all of human history. And Katherine, Mary, and Dorothy play key parts in making all of this happen. They become NASA legends, celebrated figures, not hidden figures.
As we begin to wrap up here, talk a little bit about, yeah, they’re legends. How are they legends? We learned a little bit about how they became legendary at the end of the movie when it closes. And, how does their journey give us hope and inspiration to move beyond our own crucibles, especially in the face of challenging circumstances?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, we see in the closing credits that Mary goes on to become NASA’s first female black engineer. And in 1979, she becomes Langley’s women’s program manager, where she fought to advance women of all colors. We see Dorothy becomes NASA’s first black supervisor. And in computing with Fortran, the computer language on IBM, she was considered one of the most brilliant minds at NASA. We see actually a neat scene right I think before the credits roll where you can actually see Katherine and Paul Stafford working together.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
Paul Stafford actually brings her some coffee.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yes, yes.

Warwick Fairfax:
Now, that’s about as high praise as you’re ever going to get from Paul Stafford, who’s really felt very threatened. So finally, clearly, he respects her. Winning over Paul Stafford almost feel like [inaudible 00:54:28]. So Katherine went on to perform calculations for Apollo 11, which was the mission to the moon and the space shuttle after that. In fact, in 2016, NASA dedicated the Katherine Johnson Computational Building in her honor. Remember, as Gary mentioned, Katherine Goble becomes Katherine Johnson after she marries Jim Johnson. And at age 97, Katherine Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and celebrated her 56th anniversary with Jim Johnson. My understanding is the Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest of it in honor that a U.S. person can get. So it’s truly remarkable the journey of these three women and the successful careers they had.
And so, looking more broadly, we can learn a lot from these three African-American women who faced both racial and gender discrimination. The fact that they’ve become leading figures in NASA’s history is absolutely remarkable. How they would achieve that in their careers at the time in the early-60s is really unthinkable. But they found a way. And it’s a testament to their resilience and their belief in their skills and abilities. All three would make significant contributions to NASA. And this at a time in the early-60s for African-American women would be thought of as absolutely impossible.
And I’m reminded of what that lead engineer, Carl Zelinsky, said to Mary when she was thinking of applying to be an engineer. He said about living in a space age, and he applied it to her situation, “We are living the impossible.” That’s what these three African-American women did. They lived the impossible. It’s easy to look back and say, “Well, that’s great.” But it’s hard to underestimate how difficult it was and how rapid the gender and racial discrimination was in the early-60s. These three African-American women, they did not let obstacles or challenges get in their way. They found a way to achieve their dream despite these obstacles. So when we’re faced with overwhelming challenges and obstacles, let us remember the courage and the perseverance these three women had. They never gave up. Their example can be an inspiration to us all.

Gary Schneeberger:
With that, let’s turn on the lights, the movie’s over. It’s time for us to pick up our popcorn boxes and head out. Truly, that was an excellent discussion, again, of an excellent movie. But also, excellent points that we can all grasp onto as we go through our crucible experiences. And that folks is why we do this summer series on movies. We’ve done three of them in the last few years.
So next week, we will take a look at another movie with some crucible stories in it, some big crucibles in it, and that… Scott, are you there? Are you in the control booth? If you’re ready, give me a drum roll before I can tell everybody what it is we’re going to be talking about next week, what movie we’re going to explore. Here it is. Give me the drum roll. Thank you very much. That movie is Rudy. An excellent movie, very inspirational. We’ll be talking about that next week. But until we get around until next week, remember, we know your crucibles experiences are hard. They can take the wind out of your sails. But here’s the good news. Like the Ladies in Hidden Figures learned, when you learn the lessons of your crucibles, when you have the resilience to move through the challenges of your crucibles, and apply those lessons, you can end up charting a course with to the greatest place you could ever want to get to, and that is to a life of significance.
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