Hidden Figures - American History Part V
More U.S. History, Chapters 14 - 18, Hidden Figures
IT MAY HELP TO WATCH VIDEOS ON FULL SCREEN MODE TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE LANGUAGE. AND CLICK ON "CLOSED CAPTIONS."
REMINDER: Pick Two Videos from this page or previous page to write low stakes #6 paragraph later in Module.
Videos are all short, 2-5 minutes long except last two which are around 10 min. each on Mercury astronauts.
(7) Chapter 15 Hidden Figures - School Segregation - (122-23)
Brown vs. Board of Education - A Summary - 1954 Decision. The most important desegregation decision by the U.S. Supreme Court - schools must be integrated. This is connected to Christine Mann's story and to Dorothy Vaughan in this chapter.
Basically all the characters in our Reader were segregated from white students while they were going through school.
Plessy vs. Ferguson 1896 case said that "separate but equal" education was legal, keeping white and black students in separate schools, claiming they were still equal, just not in the same building. That lasted until 1954.
Notice in the video below that Justice Thurgood Marshall was formally a lawyer for the NAACP (National Advancement of Colored People). Remember Dorothy Vaughan founded the Farmville, Virginia chapter of NAACP (27).
This 1954 Supreme Court ruling changed everything and was the beginning of integrated schools in the U.S. although it took years to fully implement the law.
Federalism - means that individual states have the right to make decisions for their own state.
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(8) SUPREME COURT DECISION TO BAN SEGREGATION IN SCHOOLS - (1954) - The Court unanimously ruled that separate education was not equal.
"The era of Jim Crow is over." [Jim Crow - negative term describing blacks as inferior to whites]
Unanimous - everyone agrees 100%.
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(9) CHAPTER 15 - RACIAL CRISIS AT LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS , in 1957. NINE BLACK STUDENTS TRIED TO INTEGRATE ALL WHITE CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL THREE YEARS AFTER THE SUPREME COURT DECISION. See Hidden Figures, page 123.
Remember, each state in the United States, set their own time limit when to integrate schools. Notice this event took place in 1957, three years after the Supreme Court decision.
The Governor did not want to integrate schools. He sent Arkansas National Guard to block the nine black students from entering the school. The black students were referred to as "colored" then. President Eisenhower brought in Federal troops to protect the black students and allow them to attend. They finally attended that year.
However, like Dorothy Vaughan's former high school being closed from 1959-64 by Virginia's governor because he'd rather have schools closed than integrate, Arkansas public schools were also closed by the governor for one year after 1958.
In this video (1 minute in) you will see Civil Rights Leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking to the community about civil rights. Right after, Rosa Parks speaks, who gained fame a year earlier by refusing to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This led to a boycott by blacks of not riding the buses that year which resulted in the city losing millions of dollars in revenue.
These nine black students changed history. Central High School is now a National Historic Monument. Here's a short video:
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(10) MANY YEARS LATER - INTERVIEW OF SOME OF THE NINE BLACK STUDENTS - WHAT IT WAS LIKE ATTENDING CLASS THAT YEAR.
(11) IN THIS SECOND VIDEO, THE STUDENTS GIVE PERSONAL STORIES OF STUDENT INTERACTION - BOTH GOOD AND NOT SO GOOD.
(12) ELIZABETH AND HAZEL - TWO WOMEN COMING TOGETHER
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(13) End of Slavery - Emancipation Proclamation - becomes a Federal Holiday, June 17, 2021
JUNETEENTH Links to an external site.
(14) - NACA BECOMES PART OF NASA, A NEW AGENCY FORMED IN 1958 (Chap.16)
Note from text: "The West Area Computing Unit [was] dissolved" when NACA was combined with NASA. Eventually, most black female mathematicians were transferred to other engineering departments (137).
Notice in this short video below, that the narrator talks about putting "man" in space. What he means is "mankind" which was the accepted term for both men and women at the time. This part of the film was made during 1958 when that language was acceptable because men were more visible and held most jobs.
As more and more women entered the workforce and were doing just as much as men in many fields, the modern American Women's Movement in 1960s-70s argued that the language needed to be more equal to reflect that change. Stating "man" only was excluding "women." Through scholarship and research, the Women's Movement in the U.S. attacked "gender bias" in language and demanded reform to recognize women's contribution to society. The terms "man" or "men" or "mankind" had to be replaced to show more gender equality.
It took some years, but finally the term "humans" was substituted for the word "man." Another acceptable substitute was "men and women, or "the human race." Eventually English vocabulary began to change in many areas. Hundreds of gender-biased words were replaced. For example, "salesman" became "sales person" because women were employed in sales. Women were eventually allowed to be police officers, so instead of the former "policeman" the term "police officer" was used to show more equality.
Notice also, in the 1958 video footage, only white employees were shown at Langley. We know from our book, that there was at least one black male engineer and many black female "computers" in West Computing, but they are not visible in this 1958 video.
NASA - HOW IT ALL BEGAN - Started with NACA - WW II.
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(15) MERCURY MISSION - 1959 - AND KATHERINE GOBLE
CH. 18 , Hidden Figures - This video is a short summary of the Mercury Mission program that Katherine Goble Johnson worked on.
Sorry about the fast-talking young woman narrator. It was the only short video I could find that explained the Mercury Mission which was discussed on pages 148-52 of our Reader.
My apologies. Do your best. I had to watch it more than once. Remember, it was Katherine Goble Johnson's job to calculate the correct trajectory of the spacecraft from liftoff to landing. This was an amazingly important job for someone like Katherine.
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(16) CHAPTER 18 - KATHERINE GOBLE JOHNSON - CALCULATING TRAJECTORIES OF SPACECRAFT AT TAKEOFF AND LANDING.
Katherine said, "Tell me where you want the man to land, and I'll tell you where to send him up" (151). The short animated video below shows what a planned trajectory from start to finish looks like. Katherine figured the entire plan just by her mathematical calculations.
Please note: There is no sound to this 1.20 minute video. It is an animated version of trajectories only to give you an idea of what kind of vision Katherine had to have to plan the liftoff of a rocket and calculate exactly where it was going to land.
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(17) PART I - MERCURY SEVEN ASTRONAUTS - 1959 INTERVIEW
See pages 148-149 of Hidden Figures regarding Project Mercury.
This day in 1959, NASA introduced the finalists of Mercury Seven. They were the first American "pioneers" to fly into space. This video shows the day they were introduced to the American public.
Amazing side note: Some of the astronauts are smoking! A reporter noticed and asked a question.
Motivation: (definition - the reasons why someone acts) The astronauts are asked about their motivation for wanting to be a part of Project Mercury.
The tape continues in Part II below.
We'll hear more about some of them in Chapters 19-23.
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(18) PART II - MERCURY SEVEN ASTRONAUTS, 1959 CONT'D
I am only showing Parts I and II to give you an idea of Mercury Seven astronauts.
Note: The first African-American astronaut was U.S. Airforce Maj. Robert Lawrence, in 1967, but he was killed in a jet plane air crash. Guion Bluford, Jr. was the first African American in space and was on the Challenger spacecraft that orbited earth in August of 1983.
The first woman in space was Sally Ride, June 18, 1983.
Note: Astronaut Virgil Grissom was killed along with two other astronauts (not in this group) in a faulty launch in 1967 where the capsule they were in caught fire on the ground.
Alan Shepherd was chosen as the first man in space in 1961. John Glenn became the most famous. After he retired, he entered politics and became a long-time U.S. Senator. Astronaut Deke Slayton was grounded (not allowed to fly) because he had a heart murmur; however, he did get on a mission many years later.
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Make note that in Chapter 21, Katherine Goble Johnson will also play a big part in calculations of a future launch when Project Mercury astronaut, John Glenn, refused to take off unless he saw Katherine's calculations. That's how trusted she was with her mathematical genius (178).
Next page contains ten questions for Quiz on Ch 14-18.