Dexter Thomas of Vice News criticized Melfi's additions as creating the white savior trope: "In this case, it means that a white person doesn't have to think about the possibility that, were they around back in the 1960s South, they might have been one of the bad ones. Dorothy tells the women that they've all been reassigned and they walk as a group to their new department.

A period space-race drama is inspired by the real-life tale of a group of African-American female mathematicians, Dorothy Vaughn, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson, who helped put astronaut John Glenn into orbit. Henson star in this drama inspired by the true story of NASA's ambitious program that helped America beat the Russians to the moon. Mary and the engineers examine it and the head engineer, Karl Zielinski (Olek Krupa), muses that they could use a corrugated heat shield. Mary is assigned to the space capsule heat shield team, where she immediately identifies a design flaw. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented them in U.Everyone in the department appreciates her and as she packs up her things, Ruth gives Katherine a wedding gift from the whole group: a string of pearls. It turns out Katherine is a widow, and her mother (Donna Biscoe) takes care of her children while she works. The official wants to sent Katherine to a school for gifted students -- she's an advanced student and a genius at math. It's Johnson and by extension Henson's performance of her, as a single mother and widow who is trying to forge new ground at the work place and at home with her relationships, that steals the show.

She tells Katherine the department she's joining is demanding and has dismissed several computers lately; she doesn't expect Katherine to last long. Aspiring astronaut Naia Butler-Craig wrote of the film: "I can't imagine what that would have been like: 16-year-old, impressionable, curious and space-obsessed Naia finding out that Black women had something to do with getting Americans on the moon. He asks if they've met the astronauts; Mary answers that they have but it's clear from the others' expressions that they're kept separate from them. She is kicked out of the library but once on the bus, she reveals to her children that she has taken the FORTRAN book with her.When Stafford sees it, he makes her retype the cover sheet without her name because computers aren't allowed to author reports.

At the end of the day, NASA was looking to get people on the moon, and blatant racism, at least compared to what was outside the NASA campus then, would presumably be not so prevalent. Despite Paul's protests, Al agrees to let her sit in, saying that they all work together or not at all. You should evaluate the security and trustworthiness of any other site connected to this site or accessed through this site yourself, before disclosing any personal information to them.

Katherine runs the numbers, identifies the correct set of figures, and races back to the control room to hand the notebook to Al, who is inside. In February 2017, AMC Theatres and 21st Century Fox announced that free screenings of Hidden Figures would take place in celebration of Black History Month in up to 14 select U.