Dreams Realized

" 5…4…3…2…1…We have liftoff!!! " The world watched nervously as three American astronauts blasted into space to become the first humans ever to step on the moon. It was a challenge that the late President John F. Kennedy did not live to see. It was the "dream" that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not witness. It was because of the contributions of an unlikely individual, along with other engineers, that these men made history.

It was Katherine Johnson’s first day at the University of West Virginia. She had worked so hard to get there and faced many challenges. As she took a deep breath and walked through the door to her math class, the glares of white students gaped at her. "Pay no attention to them," Katherine thought to herself as she walked nervously past them and took a seat in the front of the class. She focused on her passion for math and engineering.

Soon after graduation, Katherine started teaching math to black students. A few years later at a family gathering, her cousin told her that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics( NACA), which later became known as NASA, was looking for women to work at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Katherine applied with the hopes of getting in. However, a few weeks later, she found out that she had been rejected. Katherine did not let that stop her. The next year, as she nervously paced in the kitchen, Katherine worried out loud to herself, "I hope they do not reject me again." Suddenly, Joylette, one of Katherine’s daughters, swung the door open. “You got the letter!!!” shouted Joylette with excitement. Katherine opened it immediately and was thrilled to see the word, “accepted,'' big and bold, at the top of the paper.

Katherine was a human computer in the research center. She exceeded the expectations of this role by contributing to NASA missions through calculations of launch angles and trajectories to space and back to Earth. At the time, the engineers and mathematicians were distressed because they couldn’t figure out how to get astronauts into space and back through Earth's atmosphere safely. When she was finally allowed to attend highly classified meetings, she announced that the only way to launch and return astronauts was to follow the ancient equations called, "Euler's Method." Each mission from the Gemini, Apollo, and the early Space Shuttle missions required Katherine Johnson using Euler's Method by hand, because every trajectory was unique. She was responsible for checking all calculations, even after NASA had purchased IBM computers. She STILL had to check to make sure the computers were correct. Her knowledge was a stepping stone for orbital mechanics.

Katherine inspired many African American women to become engineers and be part of space missions. She was the woman who got men to the moon and back safely. Today we can do so many wonderful things like GPS tracking, communicating with people from different places, and predicting the weather forecast because of the satellites that are up in space, in part because of her discovery using ancient math.

Although working with some of the brightest engineers at NASA was an honor, Katherine faced social challenges as an African American woman. She faced the daily challenge of walking a long distance just to use the "colored" bathroom which was in another building. She was asked to send men to the moon and back safely ( approximately a half million miles), but she could not use a bathroom located a few feet from where she worked. Over time, NASA began recognizing not only her worth, but the value of all people.

In 2015, many years later, President Obama awarded Katherine with the presidential medal of freedom. Even though she passed away in 2020, Katherine Johnson continues to inspire young women of color to become engineers and mathematicians.