‘Hidden figures’ of space race receive top honor from US Congress

(AP) – The hidden figures of the space race were recognized with Congress’s highest honor at a medal ceremony Wednesday.

The Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to the families of Katherine JohnsonDorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Christine Darden at the U.S. Capitol. Darden watched the ceremony from her home in Connecticut.

A medal was also awarded to all women who worked as mathematicians, engineers and “human computers” in the US space program from the 1930s to the 1970s.

“In honoring them, we honor the best of our country’s spirit,” said author Margot Lee Shetterly, whose book “Hidden Figures” was adapted into a film in 2016.

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a precursor to NASA, hired hundreds of women to crunch numbers for space missions. The black women hired worked on a segregated unit mathematics at what is now NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia.

Johnson’s handwritten calculations helped John Glenn become the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Vaughan became NASA’s first black female supervisor and Jackson was NASA’s first black female engineer. Darden is known for her sonic boom research.