Monday, February 6, 2017: Hidden Figures

Women's Magazine kicks off Black History month by celebrating unsung Black women sheroes. We listen to an interview with Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the book HIDDEN FIGURES, the basis for the hit movie about Black women mathematicians who worked in the space program.

You've heard the names John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong. What about Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith or Barbara Holley? Most Americans have no idea that from the 1940s through the 1960s, a cadre of African-American women formed part of the country’s space work force, or that this group—mathematical ground troops in the Cold War—helped provide NASA with the raw computing power it needed to dominate the heavens.

HIDDEN FIGURES: THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE BLACK WOMEN MATHEMATICIANS WHO HELPED WIN THE SPACE RACE recovers the history of these pioneering women and situates it in the intersection of the defining movements of the American century: the Cold War, the Space Race, the Civil Rights movement and the quest for gender equality.

Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min


Also on today's show:
Pauli Murray
When Abortion Was Illegal