A simple turn of phrase was all it took for U.S. Sen.
Shelley Moore Capito of Katherine Johnson’s home state of West Virginia to capture the feeling in Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
“It’s been said that Katherine Johnson counted everything,” she said. “But today we’re here to celebrate the one thing even she couldn’t count, and that’s the impact that she and her colleagues have had on the lives of students, teachers, and explorers.” That sense of admiration and awe toward the legacy and impact of NASA’s Hidden Figures was palpable Wednesday during a Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony to honor the women’s work and achievements during the space race.
The ceremony, hosted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, honored Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Dr. Christine Darden of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, along with all the other women who served at the agency and its precursor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or the NACA, as computers, mathematicians, and engineers. “The pioneers we honor today, these Hidden Figures — their courage and imagination brought us to the Moon.
And their lessons, their legacy, will send us back to the Moon,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. Author Margot Lee Shetterly detailed the stories of the women from NASA Langley in her 2016 nonfiction book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race.”.