Like many others, I first heard of Hidden Figures through the movie adaptation, and immediately got stars in my eyes from Taraji P. Henson’s, Octavia Spencer’s, and Janelle Monáe’s stellar performances. I tracked down a copy of the book at my local bookstore and ended up, oddly enough, listening to the audiobook from the library because I lent a family member my physical copy. 

This book was an education. Starting in the USA’s total war society of the 1940s, Shetterly guides the reader and tracks Black women’s mathematical and engineering contributions through the end of the 1960s and the moon landing. The effect is an eye-opening saga of how race affected the American job landscape in this section of the twentieth century. During WWII, the air was a battlefield all its own, and those with the best planes won more often. All the white men went to war, and there simply weren’t enough mathematicians at home to crunch the numbers and design the best planes. White women were brought in, and the Air Force still needed more workers. At the same time, all over the country, Black woman mathematicians were primed for graduate work but found themselves barred from post-grad education by racism—so they applied to Langley and JPL and got the job because even the most stubborn racist couldn’t say no to such ridiculously over-qualified applicants. These women were paid juuuuuust enough to bring Black families into the middle class. Soon the Black community recognized “computer” as a highly valuable, respectable position, which led more Black women and men to the STEM fields. As the century advanced, these women, and the husbands who followed, broke down segregation by sheer force of will and merit. Racism has never made sense, and these logical wonders pointed out the inconsistencies until white people were forced to yield. 

Hidden Figures had a lot of revelations, but the Cold War section stuck with me. Shetterly brought home the point that racism is a distraction that holds back a country and its ideals. All the energy being put towards segregation, racism, and anti-Blackness could be directed towards spreading democracy and justice. During the Cold War, the United States went to enormous (and harmful) lengths to spread its brand of democracy. Shetterly describes visits from African diplomats and how these visits were meant to encourage the envoys to bring USA democracy to their new nations. However, these visits backfired—the diplomats were horrified at how the people who looked like them were treated. When the diplomats returned to their home nations, they carried their tales of micro-aggressions, segregation, and racial violence, and nobody wanted anything more to do with the United States. The fact that racism is pointless and keeps a nation from its full potential isn’t news to me, by any means. Yet I haven’t seen it conveyed on such an international scale before Shetterly’s work. 

The other big point of Shetterly’s that will haunt me is about historians. Shetterly notes that historians often either play down the contributions of Black women or they make a Black woman stand alone. It’s total erasure—or erasure of everyone except one remarkable individual. Historians only discuss Katherine Johnson, or Dorothy Vaughan, or Mary Jackson—but make no mention of the communities who supported them, or their Black women co-workers and subordinates. Though Shetterly did pick a few trend-setting or record-breaking individuals to follow closely, from the beginning she notes that there was always more, and even close to the book’s publication she was digging up more names and histories. 

Shetterly’s writing style is engaging, and the topic engrossing. Hidden Figures isn’t a novel or a biography, but more coverage of a historical phenomenon, so do come prepared for a lot of names and dates. Overall, Shetterly’s work is up there with David McCullough’s The Greater Journey for me. Can’t wait to see what she researches next.