In 1943 a huge percentage of the American male population was in the service. Then the Second World War generated a new set of conditions which gave opportunities never before available. The black women whose lives she narrates in this study had mostly been, in fact, teachers. The most common professions for educated blacks were medicine, dentistry, businesses such as insurance and real estate and, for women, nursing and teaching. The author herself is the child of a black engineer who had joined the Langley Research Center in 1964, so SHE knew there were African-American technologists and engineers at NASA but the general public did not.īut it was unusual. She writes they were not "so much hidden as unseen." Shetterly writes that many readers have asked how these stories remained hidden for so long. “Hidden Figures” has an extended and explanatory subtitle: "The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race." The life stories of these black women were so immediately compelling the movie was produced about simultaneously with the book.
0 kommentar(er)
