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IDKMYDE: The Woman Who Integrated NASA... Accidentally · The Breakfast Club

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  Speaker 1: The woman who integrated NASA accidentally, I didn't know. Welcome
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: back Know. It alls to another episode of the most
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  Speaker 1: anticipated podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network, especially in February,
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  Speaker 1: entitled I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. I'm your
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  Speaker 1: host Be Dittes, and I do the football PA announcing
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  Speaker 1: for Winston Salem State, my alma mater, and for FAM.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: You for go rams and go wrap. We'll kick off
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  Speaker 1: today's episode, as we do every episode, with three of
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  Speaker 1: the most useless facts you'll never need not a day
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  Speaker 1: in life. Up first, John Glenn, a white man, the
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  Speaker 1: first American to orbit Earth. He refused to fly until
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  Speaker 1: a black woman checked the computer's math by hand. Your
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  Speaker 1: second useless fact, that same black woman calculated the trajectory
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  Speaker 1: for Apollo eleven's moonlanding the flight path to the moon
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  Speaker 1: without a computer. And your third useless facts. When Apollo
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  Speaker 1: thirteen nearly killed three astronauts, that same black woman's backup
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  Speaker 1: calculations brought them back home alive. Now, would you like
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  Speaker 1: to meet such a phenomenal woman? Do you know what
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  Speaker 1: her name is? Because I didn't. I didn't know. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. So, Dickie,
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  Speaker 1: when people talk about NASA desegregating, they love to make
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  Speaker 1: it sound clean, like they had a memo and had
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  Speaker 1: a meeting. Somebody stood up and said, hey, we choose.
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  Speaker 1: That's not how it happened. NASA's integration was messy, quiet,
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  Speaker 1: and unintentional. I introduced to you Catherine Johnson. She was
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  Speaker 1: born in nineteen eighteen in White soft for Springs, West Virginia,
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  Speaker 1: and she was so good at math that she started
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  Speaker 1: high school at ten years old. This story made me
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  Speaker 1: look at my thirteen year old daughter in shake my head.
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  Speaker 1: The problem was her county didn't offer public school for
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  Speaker 1: black children past eighth grade, so her pop moved the
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  Speaker 1: entire family one hundred and twenty five miles so that
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  Speaker 1: baby could go to school. She graduated college at eighteen,
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  Speaker 1: summa cum laude with degrees in mathematics and French. That
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  Speaker 1: made me look at my nineteen year old freshman at
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  Speaker 1: Livingstone College and shake my head. Later, Catherine would become
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  Speaker 1: one of three students and the only woman that was
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  Speaker 1: chosen to desegregate West Virginia University's graduate program. In nineteen
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  Speaker 1: fifty three, she heard that NAKA, which was the precursor
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  Speaker 1: to NASA, was hiring black women as computers. He applied
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  Speaker 1: and got the job. But here's the thing. She was
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  Speaker 1: hired to be invisible. See, black women worked in the
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  Speaker 1: segregated West Area computing section. Separate bathrooms, separate cafeteria, separate office.
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  Speaker 1: They were even called colored computers. And Catherine Johnson decided,
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  Speaker 1: you know what, that wasn't gonna work for her. She
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  Speaker 1: started asking questions and meetings where women wouldn't even allow.
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  Speaker 1: When somebody told her, excuse me, women can't attend briefings,
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  Speaker 1: she responded, is there a law against it? Where there
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  Speaker 1: was it? So she walked in anyway. In nineteen sixty
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  Speaker 1: she became the first woman to receive credit as an
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  Speaker 1: author on a research report at NASA, unheard of. But
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  Speaker 1: the moment that changed everything came two years later. In
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two. See, NASA was preparing to send John
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  Speaker 1: Glenn in the orbit, the first American to circle the Earth.
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  Speaker 1: They had these brand new, fancy IBM computers. Those was
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  Speaker 1: calculating his trajectory for Glenn didn't trust them. IBM computers.
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  Speaker 1: They were new ed glitches, they froze. So Glenn made
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  Speaker 1: a request get the colored computer to check the numbers.
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  Speaker 1: And he was talking specifically about Catherine Johnson. He wanted
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  Speaker 1: her to run the same calculations as the IBM, but
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  Speaker 1: by hand on a desktop calculator. And she did it.
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  Speaker 1: And that's when Glenn said, if she says they're good,
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  Speaker 1: then I'm ready to go. Let that sink in. The
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  Speaker 1: astronaut who became a national hero, trusted a black woman
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  Speaker 1: and the segregated South more than he trusted a million
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  Speaker 1: dollar computer. Glenn flew, he orbited, and he came home safe.
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  Speaker 1: And Catherine Johnson, she kept calculating. She calculated the trajectory
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  Speaker 1: for Apollo eleven. She told them where to send the
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  Speaker 1: rocket so it would land on the Moon. In nineteen seventy,
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  Speaker 1: when Apollo thirteen's oxygen tank exploded and three astronauts were
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  Speaker 1: stranded in space, her backup procedures and return path calculations
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  Speaker 1: helped bring them right on home alive. She later said,
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  Speaker 1: everybody was concerned about them getting there, we were concerned
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  Speaker 1: about them getting back. In twenty fifteen, President Obama gave
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  Speaker 1: her the presidential Medal of Freedom. At the ceremony, he says,
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  Speaker 1: no one knows that John Glenn wouldn't fly unless Catherine
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  Speaker 1: Johnson checked the math. She died in twenty twenty at
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  Speaker 1: one hundred and one years old. NASA didn't integrate because
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  Speaker 1: it was ready. It integrated because excellence made segregation impractical.
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  Speaker 1: Katherine Johnson didn't ask permission. She calculated, and I didn't know.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't either. I didn't know, Jo. Yeah,