Hidden Figures Chapters Twenty-One–Twenty-Three Summary & Analysis

Chapters Twenty-One–Twenty-Three

Summary: Chapter Twenty-One: Out of the Past, the Future

The press and the public are growing impatient with NASA and Project Mercury. Russia completes a seventeen-orbit mission while the Mercury engineers iron out a series of problems. Finally, in July of 1962, Project Mercury is ready to launch its first astronaut into Earth orbit: John Glenn. Like most pilots, he instinctively mistrusts fully automated flight. Similarly, with data analysis, he wants to see a human being at the controls. “Get the girl to check the numbers,” he says—the one he has heard about and occasionally seen in the halls at Langley. He means Katherine. After a day and a half of work, she has confirmed the IBM machines’ output. The launch proceeds.

As Glenn circles the Earth, an indicator signals possible trouble with a heat shield. During reentry, the capsule wobbles, and Glenn must make manual corrections. In the end, however, he lands safely. Three weeks later, thirty thousand people turn out for a parade through Hampton and Newport News. Glenn is the hero, but word in the Black community has gotten around about Katherine’s contribution. The Pittsburgh Courier runs her photo on the front page.

Summary: Chapter Twenty-Two: America Is for Everybody

In August of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., gives his “I Have a Dream” speech to the crowd gathered for the March on Washington. The event organizer is A. Philip Randolph, head of the railroad porters’ union during the Roosevelt era. A few months later, Dorothy is recognized for twenty years of service at Langley. Randolph’s confrontation with Roosevelt made her career possible. Over the next few years, NASA increases its efforts to recruit Black men and women for science and engineering jobs.

By early 1967, NASA is closing in on Kennedy’s Moon landing goal. The effort suffers a tragic setback when the three astronauts of the Apollo 1 mission die in a capsule fire during testing. For the Space Task Force, the disaster means long workdays to meet new, tighter safety standards for future missions. Katherine pushes herself relentlessly. One day, she drives her car off the road after falling asleep at the wheel. Fortunately, she is unhurt. In the spring, Christine Mann, now going by her married name, Darden, completes a master’s program at Virginia State University. Christine is encouraged to apply to work for NASA and is quickly hired at Langley. She never works for Katherine, but they attend church together and are socially close.

Summary: Chapter Twenty-Three: To Boldly Go

In July of 1969, the Moon-bound Apollo 11 mission launches. A worldwide audience follows the mission with excitement. For Black Americans, however, the event highlights mixed-up national priorities. While billions of dollars are being spent to put two white men on the Moon, Black Americans on Earth are still denied access to gas station bathrooms. As for economic opportunity, the ranks of NASA employees illustrate the problem. Despite recent recruitment efforts, Black employees are still underrepresented, and none of the men in the astronaut program are Black.

Still, there is a very visible reason to hope that Black men and women have a future in the space program. On the television show Star Trek, a Black woman, Nichelle Nichols, has been playing Lieutenant Uhura, communication officer of the starship Enterprise. Nichols planned to quit after one season, but Martin Luther King persuaded her to stay on. A fan of the show, he urged her to remember what it meant for Black Americans to see one of their own on the Enterprise bridge.

Katherine, enjoying a weekend with sorority sisters at a Black-owned resort in the Poconos, watches the Moon landing on television. As a child, she had followed her father in working a service job at a hotel. Now she is enjoying a resort stay as a guest, as the event she helped bring about unfolds. The Moon landing is proof: anything is possible.

Analysis: Chapters Twenty-One–Twenty-Three

The fact that John Glenn still refers to Katherine as "the girl" is an example of white men’s ability to compartmentalize their need for a Black woman’s expertise, and their view that they still maintain a superior status. Her race against time in checking the computers is a classic literary trope of “man versus machine,” and while Katherine is almost superhuman in her ability to manage this thinking machine, the battle also highlights that she was once a mere “colored computer” herself.

When the Pittsburgh Courier publishes Katherine’s photo, it provides another concrete, indisputable record of her contributions to her field and her country. Just like her coauthor credit on the report, her photo will become archival evidence that proves her value to future generations. Her name on the report, however, will only resonate with her peers in a very specialized industry, and her name alone gives no indication as to her race. A photo of a successful, educated Black woman in a widely read publication in a large urban area can reach and inspire countless people, and this significant exposure foreshadows that Katherine and her peers will not be “hidden figures” forever.

The historical links to the work of A. Phillip Randolph, who many also consider to be a hidden figure in the Civil Rights Movement, indicate how much the women at Langley owe their success to the groundbreaking work of those who came before them. A. Phillip Randolph’s efforts as an organizer during the Roosevelt administration resulted in Black women being permitted to serve at Langley, and mentioning him in the same chapter that details the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of Dorothy's service at Langley highlights her debt of gratitude to him. Dorothy has repaid this debt forward many times throughout her career, including to Katherine, who went on to pave the way for Christine Darden’s success.

The euphoric atmosphere surrounding the moon landing highlights the disparities in social and economic positions for Black Americans. The government spent billions of dollars to send a white man to the moon at a time when there were no known Black astronauts waiting to be selected for a mission, all while failing to ensure that Black children in the same country had access to equitable public education opportunities. The Black women who worked as mathematicians at NASA are intertwined with the history of the United States of America and the success of the Space Program, but they battled constantly for the tools that they needed to help the program succeed and for the recognition that they deserved.

The final chapter highlights how crucial it is for Black women to be visible to their peers and to the world at large in order to continue to break through the barriers of racism and sexism. Just as Katherine’s photo in a Black newspaper provided an example of success to a wider audience, Nichelle Nichols’ character on a widely viewed television show for a multi-racial audience made the notion of a Black woman in space seem accessible to all who saw her. Only Katherine knew of her role in the moon landing when she watched it on television, but the fact that she watched it among Black female friends foreshadows the possibilities for the women who will follow in her path once they can see for themselves what success looks like.

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