African American Women In The 1960's

Being a Woman means many things, good and bad. Often, women are seen as being incapable of doing many things. In the 1960’s, three women started a change. These 3 women known as Katherine Goble, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan shared something in common, they were African-American female engineers . They have had a big impact in the mathematics world and the technological world. They did not let their race or gender get in the way of their dreams. Women in the 1960’s did not have the same rights as men, especially African-American women. Langley Research Center is a center where the African-American “computers” would gather together and wait to be assigned their temporary job. In this time, women were not being hired as engineers, therefore …show more content…
Katherine helped do calculations for “Friendship 7” the first flight to orbit the earth. Goble graduated highschool at the young age of 14 and graduated college with a degree in mathematics at the age 18, as well as being the third African-American to receive a PhD in math. Katherine joined NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) in 1952 as a computer in Hampton, Virginia. Luckily, in 1953, she was offered a job in NASA and accepted and started her early career as an engineer. Katherine was doubted by some people many times due to her race and gender, but she did not let that bring her down. When Katherine's husband died of a brain tumor in 1956, she became a single mother but that did not stop her from fulfilling her dream. Everyone in the area she worked with asked her to review their calculations and never missed a single calculation. Katherine helped perform calculations for Apollo 13 and Apollo 11 as …show more content…
Dorothy was among the first group of African-Americans to be hired as mathematicians and scientists at NACA. Vaughan was the first African-American supervisor at NACA in 1949. Dorothy helped on the Scout Launch Vehicle program that shot satellites into space as well as helping the West computing group. She was a big help to NACA and NASA. Dorothy helped guide West Computing for almost a decade. Became an expert FORTRAN programmer. Without the help that Dorothy Vaughan contributed to NACA, NASA and the West Computing, NASA would not be as advanced as it currently is. Without Dorothy there would have been great disorder in NASA, where the Computers would have to be, and they would not have knows how to properly use the FORTRAN