The following article originally appeared in Juniata High School's newspaper The Arrowhead.  

Hidden Figures was one of this year’s nominees for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. This movie tells the true story of three African-American women who worked at NASA and helped launch the Friendship 7, the first manned American spacecraft to orbit the Earth. The three women, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Katherine G. Johnson, were immensely intelligent, as the women would solve math by hand for NASA before computers were widely used.

Truly, the Friendship 7 could not have made it out of the first layer of the atmosphere without these ladies. The reason many people do not know of them is because during the early 1960s, African-Americans and women were both greatly oppressed. The movie portrays this oppression extremely well. For example, when Katherine receives a promotion in a completely different building, she has to run a half mile away to the nearest "colored persons’" restroom. Also, after Mary expresses a desire to go to college for engineering, she walks into the classroom and the professor states that the material isn’t planned to be taught to a woman. Another instance is when Dorothy has the position of a supervisor but isn't given the official title (or likely the pay raise that comes with it) because of  her skin color and gender.

As a person who enjoys math, as well as astronomy, I found Hidden Figures extremely captivating. Even if it doesn’t seem like your kind of movie, everyone should watch it anyway. It’s a movie that proves almost anything can be done if you continue working toward it. One of the biggest lessons is how the people we may not think much of at first may be the people that help us out of tough situations when we need it. Hidden Figures will surely become an important part of history thanks to Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson, and Janelle Monae doing an amazing job of presenting the stories of three inspiring women that, after 60 years, finally get the chance to be known.

by Haylee Yocum