By Sis. Shirley Tarpley, NDG Religion Editor
The 2017 Theme for National Women’s History Month is “Honoring Trailblazing Women in Labor and Business” – This theme also honors Black women who have successfully challenged the role of Black women in both business and the paid labor force.
Dedicating the whole month of March in honor of Black women’s achievements by North Dallas Gazette and Sister Tarpley’s Column may seem irrelevant today. However, at the time of the conception of Women’s History Week, activists saw the designation as a way to revise a written and social American history that had largely ignored women’s contributions; especially, Black women.
First, we will spotlight, Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson. AKA “The Human Computer”) was born in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, Greenbrier County, West Virginia, the daughter of Joshua and Joylette Coleman. She is one of four women who became the inspiration for the 2016 Oscar-winning movie Hidden Figures.
These Black women that I will highlight in my column this month, all successfully challenged the social and legal structures that have kept women’s labor underpaid. and underappreciated.
Facing stark inequalities in the workplace (lower wages, poor working conditions, and limited opportunities), they fought to make the workplace a less hostile environment for women.
They succeeded in expanding Black women’s participation in commerce and their power in the paid labor force.
They proved that women could succeed in every field. While these Black women are extraordinary, each is also ordinary in her own way, proving that Black women business and labor leaders can and should be considered the norm.
Most importantly, these ladies paved the way for generations of Black women labor and business leaders to follow.
She was the youngest of four children. Her father was a lumberman, farmer, and handyman and worked at the Greenbrier Hotel. Her mother was a former teacher.
Johnson is a Black physicist and mathematician who made contributions to the United States‘ aeronautics and space programs with the early application of digital electronic computers at NASA.
Known for accuracy in computerized celestial navigation, she conducted technical work at NASA that spanned decades.
During this time, she calculated the trajectories, launch windows, and emergency back-up return paths for many flights from Project Mercury, including the early NASA missions of John Glenn and Alan Shepard, and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon.
Her calculations were critical to the success of these missions. Johnson also did calculations for plans for a mission to Mars.
In 2015, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was included in the BBC series 100 Women the next year.
On February 26, 2017, she was honored on the 89th Academy Awards program, appearing with the stars of the movie Hidden Figures which is about the mathematicians working in the background at NASA during the Space Race.
Coleman showed a talent for math from an early age. Because Greenbrier County did not offer public schooling for Black students past the eighth grade, the Coleman parents arranged for their children to attend high school in Institute, West Virginia when she was only 10 years old.
This school was on the campus of West Virginia State College. The family split their time between Institute during the school year and White Sulphur Springs in the summer.
She graduated from high school at 14, and entered West Virginia State College, a historically Black college. As a student, Coleman took every math course offered by the college.
Multiple professors took Coleman under their wings, including chemist and mathematician Angie Turner King, who had mentored the girl throughout high school, and, W.W. Schiefflin Claytor, the third Black person to receive a PhD in math.
This article was originally published the week of March 2, 2017.
