‘Hidden Figures’ Trailer Acknowledges Black Women Working For NASA In The 60s

First Posted: Aug 16, 2016 06:09 AM EDT
Close

For so long, African-Americans have been discriminated against. In fact, even during these modern times, racism in America still exists. People may be calling for equality nowadays, but women are still held a lower regard than men. So what happens if black women are actually at the center of what is one of the biggest steps of mankind?

During the coverage of the women's vault finals at the Olympic Games in Rio De Janeiro, Popular Science reported that NBC aired its first trailer for January's "Hidden Figures," which centers around the work of human computers - black women who did critical work for the NASA during the early years of the space race as they calculate flight trajectories for the earliest crewed spacecraft in the US.

Nobody even knew of the role these women played - and their success has been grossly overlooked until recently when Katherine G. Johnson had NASA name a building after her earlier this year. In 2015, Engadget also mentioned that she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her accomplishment as one of the "human computers" working for NASA. These recognitions are a long time coming, and the film seems like it will show challenges that these mathematicians - happen to be black women - had to undergo during the sixties, when people were not only sexist, but racist as well.

Half a century later, the civil rights movement is gone, but the inequality still remains. The movie serves as a reminder to its audience, "We all get there together, or we don't get there at all."

Based on a book by the same name, "Hidden Figures" addresses racism and sexism faced by these women privately and professionally, even as they worked with NASA to send a man to space. The film will star Taraji P. Henson as Johnson; Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan, Johnson's supervisor; and Janelle Monae Mary Jackson, a fellow engineer.

Check out the trailer below:

See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone

©2017 ScienceWorldReport.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The window to the world of science news.

Join the Conversation

Real Time Analytics