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Chapters Twelve–Seventeen

Summary: Chapter Twelve: Serendipity

In 1952, at a family wedding, Jimmy Goble’s brother-in-law, Eric, urges Jimmy and Katherine to relocate from Marion to Newport News, where Eric and Jimmy’s sister, Margaret, live. Eric is well connected and can get Jimmy a job at the shipyard. Eric also thinks he can get Katherine a job as a mathematician at Langley. He knows several of the women who work there, including the section head. Katherine and Jimmy decide that the opportunity to earn much more than they currently do as teachers is too good to pass up. With their three daughters, they move to Newsome Park. Eric has found Jimmy a shipyard job as a painter, and Katherine’s Langley application is accepted. Once she starts work there, in 1953, she is happily surprised to find that her new boss is Dorothy, her former neighbor from White Sulphur Springs.

Soon, Dorothy sends Katherine on temporary assignment to the nearby Flight Research Division. Arriving there and unsure whom to report to, she finds an empty desk, sits down, and smiles at the white man next to her. He gives her a sideways glance, then stands up and walks away. She wonders whether he was reacting to her race or her gender, or was about to get up anyway. She cannot guess and chooses to give the matter no more thought. Soon after, Katherine and the man discover they have something in common: they are both West Virginia transplants. They become fast friends.

Summary: Chapter Thirteen: Turbulence

The engineers at Flight Research soon recognize Katherine’s talent, and in six months her temporary assignment is made permanent. One of her projects is an analysis of the flight data on a small propeller airplane that had tumbled out of the sky for no apparent reason. Katherine’s work reveals that a large jet leaves a turbulence trail that can be fatal to a small planes crossing the jet’s path, even as much as a half hour later. This discovery leads to changes in air traffic regulations.

Shortly after Jimmy and Katherine move their family from Newsome Park to a more upscale development, Jimmy is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. He dies just before Christmas of 1956. Katherine grieves but is determined to carry on with her career, grateful to have had Jimmy’s support getting started in it. She has an easier time ignoring white people's racism than some of her Black coworkers do. One reason is her light skin: white people are sometimes unsure whether she is Black. Also, like her father, she knows when to be pragmatic. Instead of eating cafeteria food at a segregated table, she eats a healthier bag lunch at her desk. Finally, she has, like her father, a knack for inspiring respect. She openly enjoys interacting with the smart white men she works with. By treating them as equals, she encourages them to treat her as one.

Summary: Chapter Fourteen: Angle of Attack

By the mid-1950s, electronic computers are starting to replace human ones. The machines are large and noisy, but they are fast, and they can run at night instead of sleeping. Dorothy encourages her women to take courses that, in an increasingly integrated workplace, will qualify them for jobs managing the machines. Kaz Czarnecki, looking at Mary’s career options, urges her to qualify as an engineer. To do that, she must take courses on the campus of Hampton High School, through the University of Virginia’s extension program. Despite the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools are unconstitutional, Hampton High remains off-limits to Black students, like all Virginia schools. Swallowing her resentment, Mary obtains “special permission” from the City of Hampton. In 1956, she starts her coursework.

Mary and Levi Jackson are friends with Thomas Byrdsong. Thomas is one of just three Black male engineers at Langley. They are treated cordially by most of their white colleagues, but they also encounter open hostility, especially from technicians and mechanics. One mechanic deliberately sabotaged Thomas’s first wind-tunnel test. Thomas’s white supervisor gave the mechanic an angry reprimand, in front of Thomas.

Summary: Chapter Fifteen: Young, Gifted and Black

School desegregation is a front-page news item in the fall of 1957, when nine Black teenagers try to attend an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. A showdown between the state and federal governments ends only when President Eisenhower sends Army troops to escort the Black students through the school’s doors. Just weeks later, Russia launches Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. The American press blames the United States’ failure to keep up with the Soviets partly on an education system that is more concerned with denying Black children a decent education than with preparing male and female students of all races for careers as scientists and engineers.

At the Allen School for Girls, a private all-Black school in Asheville, North Carolina, Christine Mann (no relation to Miriam Mann) has started her senior year. She has just turned fifteen. She showed unusual curiosity from a young age, learning how to maintain her bicycle and taking apart her talking dolls to see how they worked. The next spring, she is class valedictorian. She wants to attend a historically Black college, but not any of those her older siblings went to. In August of 1958, she begins her studies at Hampton Institute. There she will get to know Joylette Goble, Katherine’s daughter.

Summary: Chapter Sixteen: What a Difference a Day Makes

Thanks partly to research done at Langley, the problem of high-speed atmospheric flight has essentially been solved. Katherine and her colleagues have been wondering what comes next. Sputnik provides the answer: Langley will shift its focus to space flight. The government, eager to put the Sputnik embarrassment behind it, is determined to show the world that America’s space program can beat Russia’s. NACA, a small, engineer-run organization that stayed out of the public eye, is reorganized into NASA, a bureaucracy with a mandate to grow and to make news with its successes. Langley Aeronautical Laboratory is renamed Langley Research Center.

Katherine welcomes the challenges that lie ahead. For Dorothy, the changes are more bittersweet. Like Mary and Katherine, many other West Area women have ended up in specialized sections. Dorothy’s team has shrunk to nine women and no longer plays the central role it once did. There is also the awkwardness of an all-Black work unit, at a time when racial segregation is a growing international embarrassment for the United States. In 1958, West Computing is shut down, like East Computing before it. Dorothy will stay on at Langley, but from now on, she is just “one of the girls,” no longer a supervisor.

Summary: Chapter Seventeen: Outer Space

The Flight Research Division, where Katherine works, and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD) take the lead in developing Langley’s space engineering expertise. The engineers prepare lectures to give one another, on topics like rocket propulsion, the physics of orbit, and the problems of atmospheric reentry. They begin producing written reports. Every report must undergo editorial review by a committee looking for flaws. Katherine wants to attend the editorial meetings and ask questions, just like her male colleagues. “Girls don’t go to the meetings,” she is told—not Black women, and not white women, either. And yet a white woman, Dorothy Lee, is a PARD engineer and is even starting to earn authorship credit on some reports. Katherine persists and finally, in 1958, starts attending editorial meetings in the Guidance and Control Branch of the Flight Research Division.

Analysis: Chapters Twelve–Seventeen

Katherine’s second chance at a better life is serendipitous, but her ability to move past an awkward encounter and make a new friend illustrates how she possesses the traits that will lead her to take full advantage of this new opportunity, and chart her own course to success. Her rapid progression to a permanent position highlights her ability to adapt to new situations and foreshadows her ability to transition into becoming a single mother. On the surface, Katherine’s tendency to turn a blind eye to the casual discrimination she encounters is a liability, but her forward focus also allows her to lead by example and inspire her white male coworkers to treat her in the same manner that she treats them, which leads to a more lasting occurrence of equality in the workplace.

The Russian triumphs in the Space Race are a catalyst for increased demand of American technological advancements, which in turn leads to societal change. Just as World War II led to increased opportunities for Black men and women to contribute to the war effort and new hiring practices at Langley, Americans’ fear of Russian superiority during the Cold War led to a more pragmatic attitude about the separate but unequal opportunities for Black schoolchildren. Although Langley's culture is not totally egalitarian, its many successes illustrate the dire need for talented scientists, mathematicians, and engineers of all races. 

While the plateau of Dorothy’s career arc highlights the positive changes underway for Black students, society deems it more important to cultivate emerging talent of color rather than reward the Black women and men who have contributed to their country by providing opportunities for late-career advancement. Dorothy quickly rose through the lower ranks at Langley early in her career, sought out training in order to remain a valued resource during times of change, and encouraged her peers to do the same. The fact that Dorothy’s department remains segregated despite the many women and men of color who now work alongside their white counterparts only shows that no matter how much Dorothy contributes to Langley’s success, she can only rise so far as a Black woman. At nearly 50 years old, she is again “one of the girls,” a sign that there is still a long road ahead to workplace equality.  

Katherine’s successful battle to join editorial meetings is a prime example of the fortitude and determination that women of color must employ in order to dispel racial and gender stereotypes as well as the bigoted policies that prevent them from succeeding. Access to the same information as one’s colleagues is a crucial component of doing a job effectively, and Katherine knows how important it is for her to have the ability to ask questions if she is to properly execute her own tasks. The admittance of a white woman to the meeting makes it clear that Katherine’s race is the only thing barring her participation, and unlike the casual racism that she has previously brushed off, Katherine will not let this blatant bigotry prevent her from doing her job well.

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