Hidden Figures: Young Readers Edition

On her first day at the laboratory, Dorothy filled out her paperwork, took the civil service oath of office, and received her identification badge. Then, she took a campus shuttle bus to the West Side of the complex, where the Black computers worked. The complex was a “strange landscape” of office buildings, construction projects, and structures like the “gigantic three-story-high ribbed-metal pipe” wind tunnel (39), where engineers conducted experiments on airplanes. 

Dorothy worked in a building called the Warehouse Building. It was filled with women sitting at desks and the sound of the large mechanical calculating machines that took up the desktops. The West Area Warehouse Building held a pool of 20 workers who could be assigned any mathematical task that arose. Many problems were large and complex, so they would be broken down into smaller parts and assigned to multiple women. Dorothy sat down and began to meet her coworkers. She realized that she was part of “one of the world’s most exclusive groups” (40). Very few Black women had college degrees, and most of them who did worked as teachers. Being in a room with so many college-educated Black women working for an elite American laboratory was a unique experience.