Hidden Figures

“Later generations would associate the black freedom movement with King’s name, but in 1941, as the United States oriented every aspect of its society toward war for the second time in less than thirty years, it was Randolph’s long-term vision and the specter of a march that never happened that pried open the door that had been closed like a bank vault since the end of Reconstruction. With two strokes of a pen—Executive Order 8802, ordering the desegregation of the defense industry, and Executive Order 9346, creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee to monitor the national project of economic inclusion—Roosevelt primed the pump for a new source of labor to come into the tight production process.” 

This provides the historical genesis of the book: the presidential executive order that first made possible the hiring of Dorothy and those like her who followed. It’s also an example of how Shetterly weaves aspects of the civil rights movement into the narrative. A. Philip Randolph was the leader of an African American union of railroad porters, who put pressure on Franklin D. Roosevelt to hire African Americans for federal jobs related to World War II.

“There were black jobs, and there were good black jobs. Sorting in the laundry, making beds in white folks’ houses, stemming in the tobacco plant—those were black jobs. Owning a barbershop or a funeral home, working in the post office, or riding the rails as a Pullman porter—those were good black jobs. Teacher, preacher, doctor, lawyer—now those were very good black jobs, bringing stability and the esteem that accompanied formal training.

But the job at the aeronautical laboratory was something new, something so unusual it hadn’t yet entered the collective dreams. Not even the long-stalled plan to equalize Negro teachers’ salaries with those of their white counterparts could beat this opportunity. Even if the war ended in six months or a year, a much higher salary even for that brief time would bring Dorothy that much closer to assuring her children’s future.” 

This passage gives a sense of the watershed event that was President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802. The jobs it opened for African Americans, like the one Dorothy would take at Langley, were not even on their radar. By making these jobs available, the federal government was making a step in the direction of equality by providing equal opportunity. The women profiled in the book took up the call to make this equality a reality. 

“From the fissure of their ever-present double consciousness sprang the idea of the double victory, articulated by James Thompson in his letter to the Pittsburgh Courier: ‘Let colored Americans adopt the double VV for a double victory; the first V for victory over our enemies from without, the second V for victory over our enemies within. For surely those who perpetrate these ugly prejudices here are seeking to destroy our democratic form of government just as surely as the Axis forces.’” 

Shetterly uses the idea of the “Double V” to illustrate that the careers of the main characters had a dual purpose. The term is originally used here, in reference to World War II, but victory over “enemies” could also be extended to the space race against the Soviets during the Cold War.