Black Women Math Heroes at NASA

Helped or Hindered T-Chart

As you listen to the story, take notes on the different factors that helped and hindered women and African American women who found employment at Langley Research Center. Write what helped them in the left column, and what hindered them in the right column. Consider all elements including the time period, social attitudes and beliefs, and the current events at the time.

Language Identification

Listen closely and check off each phrase as you hear it.

• might know the names of the pioneering pilots and astronauts
• Hampton, Virginia native and daughter of a former Langley scientist
• they did just tremendous amount of fundamental research
• Why is it that so many people were there?
• not just those women but my hometown in a very different way
• She was originally working on airplanes
• co-author a report writing the trajectory equations for putting a craft
• necessary for these increasingly complex missions
• hero looked to this Black woman in the still-segregated South
• Didn't they have segregated restrooms?
• women were the mathematicians or the computers
• not valuing that work that was done by women

Fact, Question, Response

Use this worksheet to keep track of your thoughts as you listen to the audio story. In the "Fact" column, record interesting or useful factual information you learn about the topic. In the "Question" column, write questions that occur to you as you listen. Finally, in the "Response" column, make a list of responses to the story, either as they occur to you or in relation to one of the facts or questions you’ve listed.

Fill in the Blank

As you listen to the story, fill in the blank in each sentence below with the word or phrase that fits best.

• Would it shock you to know that many of the researchers who helped the technological advances that made possible were women and they were black women who played critical roles in the aeronautics industry even as Jim Crow was alive and well?
• She's the most recognized of all the NASA , black or white.
• So the astronaut who became a hero looked to this black woman in the still South at the time as one of the key parts of making sure his mission would be a success.
• If you ask Katherine Johnson, how did it feel to be a trailblazer and do this very , groundbreaking work, you know, just as often she'll say, "Well, I was just doing my job."
• And so I think that it really does have to do with us over the course of time sort of not that work that was done by women, however necessary, as much as we might.