hidden figures
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Mo’Nique Belongs in the Black Actress Pay Inequality Conversation With Taraji P. Henson
As "The Color Purple" star’s comments about Black actresses go viral, it’s important that we don’t exclude the "Precious" Oscar winner from the discussion.
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Online Bookshop Connects Parents to Books That Uplift Children of Color
ColorPop Books curates book bundles featuring notable authors including Stacey Abrams and Amanda Gorman.
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Pioneering Mathematician Katherine Johnson Will Be Laid to Rest Saturday at Hampton University
Katherine Johnson, whose exploits as a pioneering NASA mathematician were immortalized in the 2016 film Hidden Figures, will be laid to rest at Hampton University. WTKR3 reports that as part of the two-day commemoration, a public viewing will take place Friday at the O.H. Smith & Son Funeral Home from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.,…
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Another Honor for Our ‘Hidden Figures’: Congressional Gold Medals Given to the Black Women Behind the Space Race
America’s “Hidden Figures”—the black women behind NASA’s success in the “Space Race,” continue to be celebrated 50 years after their calculations helped man walk on the moon. Thanks to the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, computer programmer Dorothy Vaughan, and engineers Mary Jackson and Christine Darden are being awarded Congressional…
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Hidden No More: NASA Honors Its ‘Hidden Figures’ With a Street Renaming
Mathematicians Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson were memorably immortalized onscreen by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe (respectively) in the award-winning 2016 film Hidden Figures. Now, NASA is giving the trio a permanent place of honor, having renamed the street of its headquarters, the 300 block of E Street in Washington,…
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To the Stars and Beyond: A Single Mom Gets to Intern at NASA, Thanks to Crowdfunding From Strangers
One small step from a community of strangers just translated to a giant leap for Georgia State University Ph.D. student India Jackson. The single mom earned a highly competitive summer internship at NASA’s field center in Houston but was daunted by the fact that she’d have to fund her own travel, housing and living expenses…
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'Hidden Figure' Shelby Jacobs, Who Designed a Camera System for NASA, Finally Getting His Due Nearly 51 Years Later
If you have ever seen the iconic images of NASA’s Apollo 6 launch that took place in 1968, you have seen Shelby Jacobs’ work, whether you realized it or not. In 1965, Jacobs was given the task of designing a camera system that could capture the rocket separations for the unmanned Apollo 6 launch. He…
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One Less ‘Hidden Figure’: Dr. Gladys Mae West Inducted Into the Air Force Space Hall of Fame
She wasn’t one of the “Hidden Figures” immortalized in the award-winning 2016 film, but mathematician Dr. Gladys West was nonetheless a pioneer in her field and an innovator in all our lives due to her contributions to the invention of what we now know as global positioning systems or GPS. And now, the trailblazer has…
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Meet the Trailblazing Black Scientist Twitter Helped Identify From a Single Photograph: Report
Last week, Twitter jumped on the case of an unidentified black woman who appeared, partially obscured, in a 1971 photo taken at the International Conference on the Biology of Whales. She was the only woman in attendance in a sea of mostly white men, prompting the person who found the photo—Candace Jean Anderson, an author…
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Utah School Renamed in Honor of NASA’s 1st Black Female Engineer
Jackson Elementary School in Salt Lake City will remain Jackson Elementary school, but the name will now have a very different meaning. According to KSK-TV, the name of NASA engineer Mary Jackson, the first black woman to become an engineer at the esteemed space agency, and one of the subjects of the book and movie…