Movie Monday: Hidden Figures

This weekend I went out to see the movie Hidden Figures, the true story of a team of African-American women mathematicians who served a crucial role in NASA during the early years of the United States space program.

Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) served as the intelligence behind one of the greatest operations in history, the launch of astronaut John Glenn into space. This achievement turned around the Space Race.

Virginia was a segregated state in the early 1960s so Vaughn, Johnson and Jackson all experienced their own forms of racism and segregation.  In this time period, NASA was mostly a male run organization which meant the women had to overcome two major obstacles they were faced with.

All three of the women were working just as hard and long as everyone else at NASA but still received salaries way lower than anybody else in the building.  For Johnson this was a real problem, being a single mother of 3 and working extensive hours while making lower pay than what she deserved.

Throughout the movie you start to notice that everyone at NASA begins to accept the three women and forget about skin color and gender.  Vaughn, Johnson and Jackson all receive promotions towards the end of the movie and prove that they are capable of doing the same amount of work as the men at NASA.

I enjoyed the movie and I think the cast did a amazing job but there was one problem I had. The actual story of a group of African-American employees working for NASA in early 1960s, Virginia deserved a better movie that showed how complicated their life was.

Overall I recommend going to see this movie because of the inspiring story that the three girls tell and the amazing job that the cast does in portraying the real emotions of African American woman in the 1960s.