#GoodRead | The Hidden Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race
by Beverly Golemba [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. The three women, left to right: Dorothy Vaughan, Leslie Hunter, and Vivian Adair
"The Hidden Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race":
It was on a trip to the post office during the spring of 1943 that Dorothy Vaughan spied the notice for the laundry job at Camp Pickett. But the word on another bulletin also caught her eye: mathematics. A federal agency in Hampton, Virginia, sought women to fill a number of mathematical jobs having to do with airplanes. The bulletin, the handiwork of Melvin Butler and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ personnel department, was most certainly meant for the eyes of the white, well-to-do students at the all-female State Teachers College there in Farmville. The laboratory had sent application forms, civil-service examination notices, and booklets describing the NACA’s work to the school’s job-placement offices, asking faculty and staff to spread the word about the open positions among potential candidates.