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
were embarrassed The press nicknamed it kaputnik and dudnik The U S responded by doubling down on its spaceflight efforts President Dwight D Eisenhower changed the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1958 This change showed a shift in priorities NACA had worked on new types of airplanes NASA would continue that work but it would also focus on spacecraft NASA launched a brand-new division called the Space Task Group This group hoped to send the first Americans into space But it couldn’t do so without mathematical pros like Katherine Johnson When NACA transitioned to NASA one very important change occurred The agency desegregated This meant that the all-black West Computing Division was abolished The employees scattered to various divisions In reality the official desegregation of NASA did not have a very big impact on the way its staff interacted Black and white employees already regularly worked together on assignments In fact when the agency desegregated there were only nine black women still working in West Computing Division All the rest of the black computers had been assigned to other divisions Nevertheless desegregation did not end racism at NASA Black employees still struggled to find equal treatment and recognition regardless of the division in which they worked The creation of NASA centralized the nation’s space program Early space projects that had been run by the Navy or Army were transferred to NASA The agency also received an enormous budget about 340 million per year NACA’s annual budget had been about 100 million per year This shift in money and resources reflected the importance of the space race
The Soviets dominated the early years of the space race They first sent more satellites and then sent a dog into space Engineers at NASA’s Space Task Group set their sights on sending a man into Earth’s orbit They thought that would be better than the Soviet’s accomplishments However they did not yet know how to do so They needed someone to come up with the math Katherine Johnson saw her peers working hard on the problem and she wanted to be involved She spoke up Let me do it she told her supervisor Tell me where you want the man to land and I’ll tell you where to send him up 4 She spent a year crunching numbers researching and testing her findings Finally in 1960 she became the first woman to publish a paper at Langley’s Aerospace Mechanics Division Her paper provided the groundwork the Space Task Group needed to begin pioneering orbital flight But the Soviet Union beat the United States to the punch again In April 1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space and orbit Earth Americans were humiliated Some at NASA were discouraged Yuri Gagarin circled Earth in Vostok 1
