Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

20 “The Light Still Shines”: Eloise Barker, “Farmville,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, December 11, 1943.

20 4-H club made care packages: “Farmville,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, November 28, 1942.

20 “What Can We Do to Win the War?”: Ibid.

20 put war stamps on sale: Ibid.

20 held going-away parties: Patrick Louis Cooney and Henry W. Powell, “Vagabond: 1933–1937,” The Life and Times of the Prophet Vernon Johns: Father of the Civil Rights Movement (Vernon Johns Society), http://www.vernonjohns.org/tcal001/vjvagbnd.html.

20 a unit called Wartime Mathematics: Vaughan Personnel File; Alan W. Garrett, “Mathematics Education Goes to War: Challenges and Opportunities during the Second World War,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, April 21, 1999.

21 “pay at the rate of $2,000 per annum”: Vaughan Personnel File.

21 $850 annual salary: Ibid.

21 “instructor in mathematics”: Barker, “Farmville,” December 11, 1943.

21 only until the bell rang at the front door: Hammond interview, June 30, 2014.

22 in 1932 when they married: Hammond interview, April 4, 2014.

23 an evening extension course in education: Vaughan Personnel File.

23 accompanied him to White Sulphur Springs: Hammond interview, June 30, 2014.

23 setting foot on the hotel grounds: Ibid.

23 peering through the shrubbery-covered iron fence: Ibid.

23 German and Japanese detainees: Robert S. Conte, The History of the Greenbrier: America’s Resort (Parkersburg, WV: Trans Allegheny Books, 1989), 133.

23 an older Negro couple: Katherine Johnson, personal interview, September 17, 2011.

24 graduated from high school at fourteen: Katherine Johnson, personal interview, March 6, 2011.

24 every math course in the school’s catalog: Ibid.

24 created advanced math classes: Katherine Johnson, personal interview, September 27, 2013.

24 third Negro in the country: “University History: Pioneer African American Mathematicians,” University of Pennsylvania, http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/aframer/math.html.

24 in 1929: Ibid.

24 degree in math and French: Heather S. Deiss, “Katherine Johnson: A Lifetime of STEM,” NASA.gov, November 6, 2013, http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/a-lifetime-of-stem.html 24 she was denied admission: “Virginia Women in History: Alice Jackson Stuart,” Library of Virginia, http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawomen/2012/?bio=stuart.

24 continued until 1950: Ibid.

25 “unusually capable”: Albert P. Kalme, “Racial Desegregation and Integration in American Education: The Case History of West Virginia State College, 1891–1973,” PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa, 1976, 149.

25 decided to leave WVU’s graduate program: Johnson interview, March 6, 2011.





CHAPTER 4: THE DOUBLE V


27 by the hundreds of thousands: Charles F. Marsh, ed., The Hampton Roads Communities in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1951/2011), 77.

28 the melodies of a hundred different hearts and hometowns: “Hampton Roads Embarkation Series, 1942–1946,” US Army Signal Corps Photograph Collection, Library of Virginia digital archive; http://www.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/treasures/arts/art-m12.htm. All descriptions in this paragraph are taken from photographs in the collection.

28 coverall-clad women: “What’s a War Boom Like?” Business Week, June 6, 1942, 24.

28 hired women to pose as mannequins: Ibid.

28 exploded from 393,000 to 576,000: Marsh, The Hampton Roads Communities, 77.

28 from 15,000 to more than 150,000: Ibid.

28 PLEASE WASH AT HOME: “What’s a War Boom Like?” 28.

28 showed movies from 11:00 a.m. to midnight: Ibid.

29 Victory Through Air Power: Walt Disney Productions, 1943.

29 still enjoyed a waiting list: “What’s a War Boom Like?”; Marsh, The Hampton Roads Communities; William Reginald, The Road to Victory: A History of Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in World War II (Newport News, VA: City of Newport News, 1946).

29 5,200 prefabricated demountable homes: “Newsome Park Homes Defense Workers,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, March 6, 1943.

29 arrived in Newport News on a Thursday: Vaughan Personnel File.

29 “avoid embarrassment”: W. Kemble Johnson to Staff, “Living Facilities for New Employees,” September 1, 1942, NARA Phil.

29 Five dollars a week: “Local Housing Facilities Available to NACA Employees,” January 1944, NARA Phil.

29 Frederick and Annie Lucy: Ann Vaughan Hammond, personal interview, June 30, 2014; 1940 US Census, Ancestry.com.

29 owned a grocery store: Ibid.

30 plans to open the city’s first Negro pharmacy: “Smith’s Pharmacy,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, National Park Service, April 18, 2002, http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/NewportNews/121-5066_Smiths_Pharmacy_2002_Final_Nomination.pdf

30 Whittaker Memorial opened earlier in 1943: “Whittaker Memorial Hospital,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, National Park Service, August 19, 2009, http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/NewportNews/121-5072_Whittaker_Memorial_Hospital_2009_FINAL_NR.pdf.

30 Whites entered and exited: Virginius Dabney, “To Lessen Race Friction,” Richmond Times Dispatch, November 13, 1943; “VPS Begins Two Man Operation,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, November 14, 1942.

31 wrote a letter to the bus company: Theresa Holloman and Evelyn Fauntleroy, “Local Women Protest Bus Drivers’ Discourtesies,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 5, 1943.

31 denied entry to Negro men: “An Investigation Is Indicated Here,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, March 17, 1945.

31 “Men of every creed”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Four Freedoms: Message to the 77th Congress, January 6, 1941, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/pdfs/fftext.pdf.

31 “Four Freedoms”: Ibid.

32 “With thousands of your sons in the camps”: Herbert Aptheker, “Status of Negroes in Wartime Revealed,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, April 26, 1941.

32 “I felt damned glad”: Genna Rae McNeil, Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 1283.

33 A 1915 rule requiring a photo: Samuel Krislov, The Negro in Federal Employment (New Orleans: Quid Pro Quo, 2012).

33 purging the rolls of high-ranking black officials: John A. Davis and Cornelius Golightly, “Negro Employment in the Federal Government,” Phylon, 1942, 338.

33 “There is no power in the world”: John Temple Graves, “The Southern Negro and the War Crisis,” Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1942.

33 ripped Negroes asunder: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903, University of Virginia, http://web.archive.org/web/20081004090243/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html.

33 “Every type of brutality perpetrated by the Germans”: Cooney and Powell, The Life and Times of the Prophet Vernon Johns. http://www.vernonjohns.org/tcal001/vjthelgy.html.

34 “brilliant scholar-preacher”: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 6.

34 “Help us to get some of the blessings of democracy”: P. B. Young, “Service or Betrayal?” Norfolk Journal and Guide, April 25, 1942.

34 “Being an American of dark complexion”: James G. Thompson, “Should I Sacrifice to Live ‘Half-American’?” Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1942.

35 “as surely as the Axis forces”: Ibid.





CHAPTER 5: MANIFEST DESTINY


37 “If the Placement Officer shall see fit”: “The First Epistle of the NACAites,” Air Scoop, January 19, 1945.

38 a disproportionate number of Hampton citizens: F. R. Burgess, “Uncle Sam’s Eagle’s Saved Hampton,” Richmond Times Dispatch, January 13, 1935.

38 “The future of this favored section of Virginia”: Hansen, Engineer in Charge, 16.

38 “life-giving energy”: Ibid.

40 2 percent of all black women: Blood, Negro Women War Workers, 19–23.

40 Exactly zero percent: Ibid.

40 10 percent of white women: US Bureau of the Census 1940 population survey.

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