Lessons to Learn From Hidden Figures

The film Hidden figures is a remarkably great American film, which revolves around the life of three Black women working at NASA. The film is inspired by true events. It shows the era of the 1950s and 60s when the US was in a space race with Russia. The film is an incredibly strong showcase of how women, most precisely Black women, participated in sending the first American to space. The main character is Katherine Johnson who was a mathematician and became the first Black woman to be part of the space task group at NASA. She helped in calculating the flight trajectories for the mission.

This film not only showcases the life of these women surrounded by white men but also teaches us some very important lessons that can help us in moving forward and achieving our goals.

IT IS NOT BECAUSE WE WEAR SKIRTS, IT IS BECAUSE WE WEAR GLASSES.

These were the lines said by Katherine, when Lieutenant James Johnson passed a sexist remark about women working at NASA. Katherine could not take that comment and she stood up for herself and all the women working at NASA.

“I will have you know I was the first Negro female student at West Virginia University Graduate School. On any given day, I analyze the manometer levels for air displacement, friction, and velocity, and compute over 10,000 calculations by cosine, square root, and lately, Analytic Geometry, by hand.

There are 20 bright, highly capable Negro women in the West Computing Group, and we’re proud to be doing our part for the country. So, yes, they let women do some things at NASA, Mr Johnson, and it’s not because we wear skirts. It’s because we wear glasses. Have a good day.”

By saying all of this she proved that you don’t need to be a man to work at NASA or any big company, which has a male majority. You just need to have a bright mind and should be dedicated to your work!

MARY JACKSON, THE FIRST BLACK FEMALE AEROSPACE ENGINEER

Mary Jackson is also one of the leading characters in this film. In the beginning, she was a human-computer at NASA just like other Black women but then she decided to become an aerospace engineer. Sadly, the classes that she had to take were all offered by all-white schools with a male majority but Mary did not give up, even though she had gone through so many difficulties to be allowed to study in those schools and she did it. All of this teaches us that in between all of the barriers, there is always a way. And that way comes from YOUR PASSION TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS.

These women were just so amazing, and even though they had to live hard life, they still managed to achieve their goals. In the end, I just want to say that, there are so many lessons that we can take from this film to make our dreams come true. There is nothing impossible; we just need to push ourselves a little.