in one of the only careers available for educated women she became a teacher Johnson enjoyed teaching but struggled to stretch her meager paycheck When she heard about an opportunity for black mathematicians in Virginia she jumped at the chance After all it promised to pay three times her teaching salary In 1953 Johnson was hired at NASA then known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics NACA Johnson could hardly contain her excitement at the chance to work full time as a mathematician On her first day of work she happily reported for duty in a building called West Area Computing As soon as she walked in she noticed something The building was almost entirely staffed by other black people Johnson was used to segregation Growing up in the South she was familiar with the notion that black and white people had to use separate facilities Jim Crow laws a series of rules that enforced racial segregation had been part of her life since birth Johnson’s supervisor was a black woman named Dorothy Vaughan She greeted her new employee and showed her to her desk Vaughan explained Johnson’s new responsibilities Each morning Vaughan would distribute mathematical equations to her staff of computers When they finished the computers would turn their work in to Vaughan She would then return it to the correct departments Occasionally Vaughan explained she might send Johnson out to a specific department to do on site calculations Just two weeks after Johnson started in West Area Computing Vaughan handed her an on-site assignment She would be helping calculate numbers for the Flight Research Division The engineers in this division were some of the agency’s smartest They worked on incredibly complex problems Their math took them to the cutting edge of
aeronautics As a black woman Johnson at first met some resistance from her white coworkers On her first day Johnson smiled at the white man working next to her He just walked away But she came to get along very well with her white male coworkers They appreciated her curiosity and intelligence Johnson loved how much they loved their jobs She even adopted their morning ritual She would get a cup of coffee sit at her desk and read through the daily newspapers and aviation journals She scanned them for new information about advancements in the aerospace industry Any news she spotted in the papers might affect her work Johnson’s colleagues noticed her commitment and drive They stopping thinking about her as a colored computer Now they simply thought of her as Katherine Johnson was delighted to have found such a challenging workplace After years of searching she knew she had landed in the right spot NACA appreciated her efforts and gave her a place to thrive But the Flight Research Division wouldn’t be the end of Johnson’s story Her work there would later land her a coveted seat in the Space Task Group the division charged with winning the space race
CHAPTER 2 THE SPACE RACE Katherine Johnson wasn’t the first black woman to find a bright future in the stars Black slaves had studied the constellations for centuries They etched the North Star into their brains Enslaved people could follow this beacon out of the South If they were lucky enough they might even follow it to freedom Slavery had been abolished in the United States for nearly 100 years when Johnson helped send John Glenn into space But life for black Americans was still very hard Many white Americans held onto old beliefs They thought that black people were inferior Reminders of the way black people had been treated in American history were everywhere Even the space-age campus at Langley could not escape the past It was built on land that had once been a plantation In fact NACA did not officially buy the land until 1950 This means that employees at Langley spend their days on land that at one time was worked by slaves In the 1960s racial tensions in many parts of the country were high Activists in the civil rights movement sought to end discrimination They fought against segregation Black students in cities such as Greensboro North Carolina engaged in peaceful sit-ins They sat in whites only sections of lunch counters to protest racial segregation Their actions were
often met with resistance by angry white people Some civil rights activists black African-Americans staged a sit down strike at a lunch counter in 1960 after a store refused to serve them and white took their fight on the road Activists called Freedom Riders rode buses into the segregated South Some people did not like what the riders were doing They wanted the black riders to follow the rules of segregation Mobs of white people attacked the Freedom Riders The assaults were sometimes very violent While civil rights activists were fighting for progress another American battle raged This fight wasn’t on the ground It was in the sky The Soviet Union and the United States were the two greatest global powers Each wanted to show that it was the best They raced to develop new and better military firepower technology and economies This fight became known as the Cold War Each side tried to show that it was more powerful than the other One way to show superiority was to be the first to explore outer space The U S and the Soviet Union frantically sprinted to build rockets satellites and other spacecraft in an effort that became known as the space race The Soviet Union dealt the U S its first blow in the space race in 1957 It launched a beachball-sized satellite into Earth’s orbit They called it Sputnik This is the Russian word for traveling companion Americans didn’t think of the metal orb as a harmless companion Many were terrified They feared that the Soviet satellite was spying on them Some even worried that the next Soviet space mission would be deadly They feared a Soviet spacecraft might drop nuclear weapons on the U S Two months after Sputnik Americans tried to launch a satellite of their own The rocket meant to boost the satellite into space exploded just 4 feet off the ground The mission was a flop American space scientists
