But Shetterly is careful to note that what seemed normal to her, did not come easily to this previous generation. Her father, growing up during segregation, had a passion for engineering, but was told to become a physical education teacher instead.
In those days, writes Shetterly, college-educated African Americans with book smarts and common sense put their chips on teaching jobs or sought work at the post office.
Shetterlys fathers love of engineeringhe built his first rocket in junior high metal shop classwould not let him give up his dream. Still, it was not easy: As late as 1970, just 1 percent of all American engineers were blacka number that doubled to a whopping 2 percent by 1984, writes Shetterly. Still the federal government was the most reliable employer of African Americans in the sciences and technology: In 1984, 8.4 percent of NASAs engineers were black.
Hidden Figures shines a much-needed light on the contributions of black women in science and technology that have been vastly overlooked. In prose that is engaging and compelling, Shetterly refutes the commonly held stereotype that STEM fields are the province of men, specifically white men. Black women have been doing this work for ages. Before desktop computers, black women were the computing machines, using their vast intelligence to determine the orbital trajectories of space flight and accomplish other leading discoveries in aerodynamics and engineering.
Even as a professional in an integrated world, I have been the only black woman in enough drawing rooms and boardrooms to have an inkling of the chutzpah it took for an African-American woman in a segregated southern workplace to tell her bosses she was sure her calculations would put a man on the Moon, Shetterly writes.
