Untold story of the black women mathematicians who helped win the space race. Hear her journey about writing this remarkable story that combines the rich intersection of the civil rights era, the space race, the cold war and the movement for gender equality. As an anthropologist with an admiration for history, i was curious about this date, september 8th. What happened with nasa on this date. So september 8th, 1967, the surveyor v launched. 1983, sat com vii launched. And today, september 8th, 2016, Margot Lee Shetterly publicly launches her book [laughter] Hidden Figures into the literary world. [applause] so a little bit on margot. I know many of you you know her, or went to school with her. Margot was raised right here in hampton, virginia. She graduated from the university of virginia with a degree in finance. A journalist, independent researcher, entrepreneur and cocreator of an englishlanguage monthly magazine with her husband, aaron, margot is the daughter of one of the first nasa black male engineers, so she grew up knowing many of the women in Hidden Figures. Margot is the founder of the human computer project and the recipient of the Virginia Foundation of the humanities grant for her research into the history of women in computing. She lives in charlottesville, virginia. Writer virginia wolfe with once said anonymous in history was usually a woman. Let me say that again. [laughter] anonymous in history was usually a woman. Well, tonight these brilliant women are anonymous no more. Thanks to margot and her book, Hidden Figures. May the names of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, mary jackson, dr. Christine darden and the other women who contributed to the space race and changed the course of history finally receive their due. Now, lucy gave a few housekeeping notes. I just want to remind everyone that her talk is going to be here, but the book signing will take place at the Hampton History Museum afterwards in the great hall, okay . So walk back across the street. And so cspan asked me to say that because theyre filming, they ask for no flash photography. So if you want to take a picture, just turn your flash off. And please remember to science your phones. So, again, i welcome you on behalf of the Hampton History Museum, and they invite you to make history with us. And tonight margots doing just that, making history. It is with great pleasure and honor that i introduce my friend, Margot Lee Shetterly. [applause] chadra, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. Thank you to the Hampton History Museum which has been incredibly supportive of this Research Since the very beginning. And i cant think of any place better to publicly launch this endeavor than here in hampton, virginia, my hometown, with my home people. [laughter] thank you so much for coming out here tonight. Its actually sort of a wonderful thing that this venue, this speech that im giving now is taking place here at st. Johns in a church, because it really started six years ago also in a church here in downtown hampton, First Baptist church, where my home church where i grew up. And i was sitting in a pew with my parents, robert and margaret lee, who are here, and my husband, aaron shetterly. And we were interviewing a former sunday schoolteacher of mine, mrs. Kathleen land, about her career as a mathematician at the Langley Research center. None of us had an idea at the time that first interview would turn into all of this, this Hidden Figures, the book, my first book, and a movie. But as exciting as its been to receive that level of enthusiasm for this endeavor, the most gratifying thing for me about these last few years has been learning about my hometown. There is so much that i didnt know and so much that i didnt know about the people who lived here, the people who i knew growing up here. So writing this book for me has been a way of telling my story and tracing my path from the lives of these groundbreaking women. This is my history. This is your history. In this history belongs to this history belongs to all of us. The thrilling parts, the mundane parts, the hard parts and the painful parts. All of this has made us who we are today. And so the fact that we are here in this church across from the Hampton History Museum which sponsoredded this event sponsored this event, that were so close to Hampton University, to the Langley Research center, to fort monroe, to the archaeological remains of the grand contraband camp, it simply couldnt be a more fitting venue. Hidden figures follows the lives of four africanamerican women, Dorothy Vaughn, mary jackson, Catherine Johnson and Christine Darden, who is here. [applause] and i am so pleased also to let you know that many of the family members of Dorothy Vaughn and mary jackson and i believe mrs. Johnson are here as well as gloria who is a part of my book and many other women who worked with them, and men, who worked with them over at the Langley Research center. So thank you so much for coming. And if you see them in the crowd tonight, definitely, i think i see sharon stack back there. Im just so thrilled that these women who actually wrote lived the history so i could write it are here. So, yeah, so many of us gathered here. We were raised by them or lived with them or worshiped with them or socialized with them or taught by them or worked with them. And im sure youll agree with me when you say that we have learned a tremendous amount from them. So many lessons from these women, from their lives. And i have, you know, a list that could fill another book with the things that i have learned from them researching their lives. But one of the most timely, i think, and the one that i just like to emphasize tonight is the following never allow fear to get the best of curiosity and imagination. Sending humans into space is an inherently risky endeavor. It takes a powerful imagination to believe that its possible to land humans on the moon and to bring them back safely. But that adventure, one of humanitys greatest, had its roots right here in hampton, virginia. That a black woman could do some of the calculations to get them there, given time that might have taken even more imagination to come to fruition. But that happened as well as we know from the acclaim that our own Catherine Johnsons has received from the work she did on the mercury and apollo missions, most notably on john glenns groundbreaking orbital flight in 1962. People from around the United States, indeed from around the world, came to work at langley. These women worked alongside people of all backgrounds, and they achieved together things that even today, 47 years later, we have to stop and marvel. Its incredible what is possible when you take the best minds among us and allow their imaginations to run free. So the narrative is total through the eyes of these four africanamerican women. It was also my mission to use the stories of their lives to tell a series of other stories of world war ii and how it transformed our city and our society, of the anxious days of the cold waxer of the hope and the war, of the hope and the conflict of the Civil Rights Movement and of the Great Strides that all women have made legally, socially and economically over the course of the 20th century. Scores of black women worked as mathematicians at langley and at the other nasa installations around the country. There are so many names. Sue wilder, eunice smith, barbara holly, christine richie, ida bassett, miriam mann, annie easily, there are so many of them. But they were part of a larger cohort of women. White women like marjorie hanna, dorothy lee, sharon stack, sarah bullock, mary burton, barbara weigel, and these women were valedictorians, they were math and science competition winners. They were very smart women who, until they came to langley, thought that they would put their math degrees to work in a classroom. They too have received a fraction of the credit that that they deserve. In the 1970s and 1980s, black women like mary jackson and Janet Mckenzie worked together with white langley colleagues like gloria and jean and Belinda Adams to create opportunities for talented women of all backgrounds. Through an organization i started called the human computer project, im trying to recover the names of all of the women who worked as computers, mathematicians and engineers during the early days of the naca and nasa not just at langley, but at all of the nasa and naca installations over the years. So tonight id just like to encourage you to get in touch with me. Theres a contact form on my web site, Margot Lee Shetterly. Com. You can get in touch with the museum. But if you know the names of women who were your grandmothers or mothers, aunts, colleagues, friends, ladies that you knew from church, your neighbors, please let me know because i really would like to have all of their names so none of these women are in the shadows anymore. Now, all good stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. And i already knew the end. Im the result of this wonderful history that happened here in hampton, virginia. My fathers retired, nasa Langley Research scientist. My mother is a retired Hampton University english professor. Im the proud product of integrated hampton city schools, and i graduated from the university of virginia which now accepts men and women from all backgrounds. [laughter] but that first meeting with ms. Land six years ago led me to ask the question, how did this all begin . How did she and Katherine Johnson and the many other women that i remember from my childhood end up working at nasa of all places . Many people know the story of the Space Program which was gaining momentum at a time, the same time that a young preacher from atlanta named Martin Luther king jr. Was taking center stage in what was then becoming known as the Civil Rights Movement. But fewer people know that well before the start of the Space Program hampton was americas first center for Aeronautical Research and development. Fewer people know that before dr. King, a civil rights leader named a. Philip randolph led a campaign to ban discrimination in the Civil Service and the Defense Industries against africanamericans, something that also benefited mexicans, jews, catholics, many other people who had been left out of the new jobs that were coming about as the result of world war ii. In may 1943, almost two years after Franklin Roosevelts executive order desegregating the Civil Service, five black women started jobs working as mathematicians at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. So what id like to do right now is read from the first chapter of my book, Hidden Figures. This is how the story begins. And as im reading, remember it all happened here in hampton, virginia. Chapter one, a door opens. Melvin butler, the Personnel Officer at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, had a problem the scope and nature of which was made plain in a may 1943 telegram to the Civil Services chief of field operations. This establishment has urgent need for approximately 100 junior physicists and mathematicians, 100 assistant computers, 75 minor laboratory apprentices, 125 helpertrainees, 30 shing nothinger ifs and typists, explained the missive. Every morning at 7 a. M. The bowtied butt sprang to butler sprang to life to collect the men and women, so many women now each day more women who had made their way to the lonely [inaudible] on the virginia coast. The shuttle conveyed the recruits to the door of the Laboratory Service building on the campus of langley field. Upstairs butlers saf whisked them through the firstday stations; forms, photos and the oath of office. I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me god. Thus installed, the newlyminted Civil Servants fanned out to take their places in one of the research facilitys expanding inventory of buildings, each already full as a pop pod ripe with peas. No sooner had Sherwood Butler set the final brick on a new building, then his brother melvin set about filling it with new employees. Closets and hallways stood in as makeshift offices. Someone came up with the bright idea of putting two desks head to head in order to squeeze three workers in a space designed for two with. In the four years since hitlers troops overran poland, since American Interest in the european war, the laboratorys complement of 500 employees at the close of the decade was on its way to 1500. Yet the great, groaning war machine swallowed them whole and remained hungry for more. The offices of the Administration Building looked out on the crescentshaped airfield. Only the flow of civilianclothed people heading to the laboratory the oldest outpost to have National Advisory committee for aeronautics, naca distinguished low brick buildings belonging to that agency differed from the airplane air corps. The air base, devoted to the development of americas air power capability, the laboratory a civilian Agency Charged with advancing the Scientific Understanding of aeronautics and disseminating its findings to the military and to private industry. Since the beginning, the army since the beginning the army had allowed the laboratory to operate on the campus of the airfield. The close relationship with the army fliers served as a constant reminder to the engineers that every experiment they conducted had real world implications. The doublehangared 210footlong buildings standing side by side had been covered in camouflage tape in 1942 to deceive enemy eyes in search of targets. Its shady and cavernous interior sheltering the machines and their minders from the elements. Men in canvas jump suits moved from plane to plane stopping to hover at this one or that one like pollinating insects, checking them, filling them with gas, replacing parts, examining them, becoming one with them and taking off for the heavens. The music of airplane engines and proopel hours cycling through the various movements of takeoff, flight and landing played from before sunrise until dusk. Each machines sound as unique to its minders as a babys cry to its mother. Bethe tenor notes of the engines ondemand hurricanes onto the planes. Plane parts, model planes, fullsized planes. Just two years prior with storm clouds gathering, president roosevelt challenged the nation to ramp up production of airplanes to 50,000 per year. It seemed an Impossible Task for an industry that as recently as 1938 had only provided the Army Air Corps with 90 planes a month. Now americas aircraft industry was a production miracle, easily surpassing roosevelts mark by more than half. It had become the largest industry in the world, the most productive, the most sophisticated, outproducing the germans by more than three times and the japanese by nearly five. The facts were clear to all belligerents; the final conquest would come from the sky. For the flyboys of the air corps, airplanes were mechanisms for transporting troops and supplies to combat zones, armed wings for pursuing enemies, skyhigh launching pads for shipsinking bombs. Exhaustive preflight checkouts before climbing into the sky, mechanics rolled up their sleeves and sharpened their eyes. A broken piston, an improperly locked shoulder harness, a faulty fuel tank light, any one of these could cost lives. But even before the plane responded to its pilots knowing caress, its nature, its very dna from shape of its wings to the coulding of its engines had been manipulated, refined, massaged, deconstructed and recombined by the engineers next door. Long before americas aircraft manufacturers placed one of their newlyconceived flying machines into production, they sent a working prototype to the Langley Laboratory so the design could be tested and improved. Nearly every highperformance aircraft model in the United States made its way to the lab here in hampton, virginia, for drag cleanup. The engineers parked the planes in the wind tunnels making note of airdisturbing surfaces, bloated fuselages, uneven wing geometries. As prudent and thorough as old family doctors, they examined every aspect making careful note of the vital signs. Naca test pilots took the plane for a flight. Did it roll unexpectedly . Did it stall . Was it hard the maneuver . Resisting the pilot like a shopping cart with a bad wheel