welcome to conscious movie reviews I'm
your host joy Davis and here to review
the historical drama hidden figures the
film's story that features three
african-american women of the NASA space
program is a mix of truth and fiction as
a consequence of the Cold War the United
States and Soviet Union engaged in a
space race that began in 1955 it was the
height of paranoia when the Soviets took
the u.s. by surprise when they launched
the Sputnik one satellite into earth's
orbit establishing air space superiority
Americans feared the worst
being spied on and attacked from above
by their enemy before this time the
United States conducted a secret mission
near the end of World War two called
Operation Paperclip that lasted from
1945 until 1976 they rushed to collect
as many former Nazi scientists as they
could to exploit their knowledge for the
building of the space program and
military industrial complex in America
many were members of the Nazi Party and
the Gestapo just as secretive was
development of anti-gravity artificial
Sun and levitation technologies by NASA
during the 1950s to 1960s at NASA's
Langley Research Center in Hampton
Virginia colored women were hired to do
mathematical computations earning the
nickname human computers with skirts
among them was Catherine Goble Johnson a
mathematics and physics genius she was
joined by her close friends Mary Jackson
an aspiring engineer and Dorothy Vaughn
fellow mathematician an unofficial
supervisor of their segregated
department at West area computers al
Harrison NASA's director of the space
Task Group pressured the staff
their efforts training with astronauts
was in 14 days they had to send men into
space before the Soviets do when a
mathematician with a background in
analytical geometry was needed
supervisor Vivian Mitchell reassigned
Catherine to join the all-male flight
research team and to Mary's delight she
was transferred to work alongside the
engineers of the mercury 7 program
briefed by the secretary Catherine was
told what to wear and not wear they
never had a colored person in their
department before so don't be an
embarrassment just do your work and keep
your head down right away catherine was
mistaken for a custodian and not
accepted as an intellectual equal by
Paul Stafford head engineer of the space
Task Group reflecting the racist and
sexist attitudes of their era during a
failed testing of the space capsules
heat shield Mary recognized the flaw
pointing it out to the head engineer
Carl szalinski he was impressed with her
a mechanical insight encouraging Mary to
get a degree in engineering according to
him they were living the impossible
going beyond the societal limitations
placed on him as a Polish Jew and on her
as an african-american woman
his attitude showed how Jews have
thrived around the world despite
persecution by being relentless equality
Mary will need NASA does not commission
females to be engineers if she wants an
engineering degree she'll have to get
the local court's permission first to
take advanced extension courses at a
whites-only high school as for Dorothy
she requested to be made the official
supervisor of the West area computers
division but was met with unfair
resistance by miss Mitchell there's no
way even though Dorothy has been
performing the duties of a supervisor
without the title a quote by famous
Russian author Leo Tolstoy best
describes the tensions between Dorothy
and her races supervisor at NASA I sit
on a man's back choking him and making
him carry me
and yet assure myself and others that
I'm sorry for him
and wish to ease his lot by any means
possible except getting off his back at
work Catherine and her friends were
subjected to institutional racism that
many blacks recognize as invisible
racism it's not over like slavery but
just as oppressive through unjust laws
and regulations imposed on them by the
white establishment the Jim Crow laws
were instituted to keep things separate
but equal' it made racial segregation of
all public facilities nationwide legal
and binding this was painfully obvious
every time Catherine needed to use the
toilet instead of using the one down the
hall she had to run in heels to the
bathroom for colored women that was half
a mile away forcing her to take
40-minute breaks each round trip even
Catherine's boss was annoyed enough to
question her frequent absence in front
of everyone historically it was really
Mary Jackson who was inconvenienced at
NASA she was made to take the long walk
just to use the restroom for coloreds
only separating fact from fiction the
real-life Catherine Johnson revealed
that she was treated as a Piron and
didn't feel the segregation at NASA
because everybody there was doing
research I knew it was there but I
didn't feel it
she mentioned during an interview in the
film al Harrison tore down the colored
bathroom for women sign an aloud
Catherine into the Pentagon briefings
with NASA historically this never
happened a white Savior was written into
the movie as fiction to gain wider
acceptance by audiences this is
according to viewers who are upset
Caucasians are commonly used in
Hollywood films to save people of color
from their oppression for anyone caught
up in racist thinking it can keep you in
a very low level of social consciousness
that's rooted in the ego mind wanting
separation from others the way to get
beyond this is by operating from the
higher mind through principles Sharif
Abdullah founder of the common way
recognized at a young age that there was
something wrong with fighting from black
power it was too localized and not
global in perspective because it didn't
take into account the dire needs of
other disenfranchised groups by taking
the black power stance you're a victim
and villain in this society it violates
the principles of inclusivity to realize
that my fate is inextricably tied to
yours we can come together in dialogue
through shared beliefs and common goals
to birth a new society that works for
all exclusivity is a failed mindset it
hasn't worked in the past and the proof
is that were headed for extinction
teaches Abdullah dancing at a birthday
celebration for Dorothy's son was
interrupted by late-breaking news Soviet
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first
person in space to make an orbital
flight it surpassed NASA's earlier feet
when Ellen Shepard took a suborbital
flight in a mercury rocket to blast off
and make a huge arc then fall back down
to earth again NASA would have to do
more than a manned orbital flight but
shoot for the moon to win a different
kind of space race is being waged today
instead of a rivalry between adversarial
countries it's by billionaires competing
for private exploration of space to
attempt interstellar colonization and
commercial tourism leading the way our
Jeff Bezos of Amazon Paul Allen
co-founder of Microsoft Richard Branson
head of Virgin Atlantic and Elon Musk of
Tesla Mary made a historical
breakthrough by convincing the judge in
court to let her take night classes she
became the first Negro woman in America
to attend an all-white high school and
earn a degree to be NASA's first black
woman aeronautical engineer Dorothy had
enough foresight to know that the newly
installed IBM 7090 data processing
system would one day replace her at NASA
by learning Fortran the programming
language for scientific computation then
training her co-workers in it
Dorothy became an asset she was later
assigned to supervise a team of 30 women
mathematicians in the programming
Department as we near the robotics age
in 2025 millions of jobs will be lost
according to futurist thomas fry having
a working knowledge of coding will be a
necessity as rapid growth industries
will need workers for the construction
of drones designing sensors 3d printing
big data hyper speed transportation
driverless transportation and more
NASA's space Task Group had little time
to mathematically figure out how to
safely launch the Atlas rocket that
would be piloted by astronaut John Glenn
to do elliptical orbits around the earth
then make a parabolic safe descent the
team was clueless until Katherine
masterfully calculated how it could be
done reverting the old math by following
Euler's method
even after Katherine was instrumental in
plotting an exact mathematical course
for the orbital flight her services were
no longer needed by the space Task Group
she was transferred back to the
West area computers division just before
astronaut John Glenn was too bored
friendship 7 the landing coordinates for
the capsule provided by the IBM
computers or noticeably off he hesitated
to do the launch insisting that they get
the girl to check the numbers referring
to Kathryn once the calculations were
verified by her he was ready to go after
three orbits around the earth friendship
7 was in danger of losing its heat
shield Kathryn was fast thinking to
suggest that they should leave the
retrorocket attached to heat shield for
re-entry the plan worked
streaking like a fireball to re-enter
the Earth's atmosphere friendship 7
splashed down safely into the North
Atlantic Ocean Kathryn was later
reassigned to work with the analysis and
computation division her trajectory
calculations enabled the man missions of
Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 to reach the
moon that were big wins for the United
States in the contentious space race in
truth President John F Kennedy proposed
a joint space and lunar exploration with
the Soviets ten days before his
assassination it would have ended the
Cold War decades early
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