Five of my father's seven siblings made their bones as engineers or technologists, and some of his best buddies - David Woods, Elijah Kent, Weldon Staton - carved out successful engineering careers at Langley.
Five of my father's seven siblings made their bones as engineers or technologists, and some of his best buddies - David Woods, Elijah Kent, Weldon Staton - carved out successful engineering careers at Langley.
As much as I think it is necessary and desirable for white people to have an expanded view of the black American experience, it's probably even more important for black people to have that expanded view.
We want the big stories, of course, of the great men, but there's as much drama and interest and lessons to be learned in actions that people like us take on a daily basis.
My dad worked with Mary Jackson very closely at one point. I knew Katherine Johnson as well. They were all part of this group of black engineers and scientists within this larger NASA community.
Our next-door neighbour taught physics at Hampton University. Our church abounded with mathematicians. Supersonics experts held leadership positions in my mother's sorority, and electrical engineers sat on the board of my parents' college alumni associations.
I remember 'The Norfolk Journal and Guide,' which is a black newspaper that still exists, but it was really influential, as you can imagine, in the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties. But all of their archives are online and digitized, and it was a really great resource.
As a callow 18-year-old leaving for college, I'd seen my home town as a mere launching pad for a life in worldlier locales, a place to be from rather than a place to be.
It has been very rare to see a black woman as a protagonist. And also as three-dimensional people - mathematicians, mothers, wives, complicated people, not perfect.
For too long, history has imposed a binary condition on its black citizens: either nameless or renowned, menial or exceptional, passive recipients of the forces of history or superheroes who acquire mythic status not just because of their deeds but because of their scarcity.
You don't get the good without the bad, but you really do have to see it all in order to make progress.
A lot of times, we talk about black people as if being black is all they are. They get up, go to work... and are as complex and interesting and variable as any other group of people. We don't often capture that or write about it.
Katherine Johnson actually integrated the public university in West Virginia. And Mary Jackson had to petition state courts to be allowed to attend an all-white college to get the qualifications needed to become an engineer. At every turn, these women were involved in the Second World War, the Cold War, the civil rights movement.