In The Presence of Greatness
that can take us to the stars
Growing up in the rural south the church like schools serve as crucial anchors in the community. Churches are often a beacon for community-building activities that foster unity, support, and outreach. I remember my early church experience being a source of learning, not just the spiritual teachings of the Bible but also an extension of my formal schoolhouse learning. Many of my Sunday School Teachers were actual teachers by profession in a public school, usually a black school because segregation was still being confronted. Once desegregation became law most of those teachers lost their jobs.
In the black community churches played a role in founding several colleges, like Savannah State University and Morehouse College. My good friend, Dr. Mary Marshall, grew up in this church that created Morehouse College. Many of the early schools began in churches. Churches played a role in the Underground Railroad which had a profound influence on shaping their identity as a beacon of freedom and social justice.
These churches not only provided spiritual guidance but also acted as pillars of support for the African American community during segregation, civil rights movement, fostering leadership, education, and social progress. I was one of three black kids on the frontline of that integration process in our hometown. It was at church that I continued to learn black history because they discarded our black history like they discarded our black educators.
Imagine being a child in the presence of Katherine Johnson, one of the remarkable women portrayed in Hidden Figures. What if you didn’t recognize her remarkable brilliance, even as she was helping you to understand and grasp Algebra in a way your teachers had not. Years later you learn this amazing woman was considered a human computer and her work was critical to NASA in their early space missions.
This is the experience of AJ Young, Jr. whose mom belonged to their Hampton, VA Church Circle Group that also included people like Katherine Johnson. Your mom simply asks Mrs. Kathy to help you because you’re struggling with Algebra, and it would be decades later that you learned who Mrs. Kathy really was. We all stand on the shoulders of greatness –some are famous, well known, and others are everyday hidden heroes lending a hand where they can help others in their community.
What a rich childhood experience to have it filled with men and women exuding black excellence from an array of professions, people like Katherine Johnson, Dr. Christine Mann Darden and Hazel O’Leary and the district’s current serving Congressman Bobby C. Scott. Their persistence and resilience in the face of challenges, including systemic racial injustice provide valuable life lessons. That work always included a focus on community.
Katherine Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Johnson—to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine.
One of her biggest accomplishments at NASA was helping calculate the trajectory, or path, of the country’s first human spaceflight in 1961, making sure astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., had a safe trip. A year later she helped figure out John Glenn’s orbit of the planet, another American first. In 1969, she calculated the trajectories of Neil Armstrong’s historic mission to the moon on Apollo 11.
Yet unlike the white male astronauts she helped launch into space, no one knew of the groundbreaking work Johnson and dozens of other Black women did for NASA and space exploration. It wasn’t until the 2016 release of the movie Hidden Figures that these women received widespread recognition.
Johnson died on February 24, 2020, at the age of 101. In her honor, NASA had dedicated the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility at the Langley Research Center to commemorate the hard work she did to help take them to the stars.
Dr. Christine Mann Darden (1942-) is internationally known for her research into supersonic aircraft noise, especially sonic boom reduction, and recognized for her groundbreaking achievement as the first African American woman at NASA Langley to be appointed to the top management rank of Senior Executive Service. She is equally known for her efforts to inspire and educate generations of aerospace scientists and engineers.
Born in Monroe, North Carolina, Darden graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1962 from Hampton University. Darden is one of the researchers featured in the book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016), a history of some of the influential African-American women mathematicians and engineers at NASA in the mid-20th century, by Margot Lee Shetterl
Hazel Reid O'Leary (born May 17, 1937) is an American lawyer, politician, and university administrator who served as the 7th United States Secretary of Energy from 1993 to 1997. O'Leary was the first woman and first African American to hold that post. She also served as the 14th president of Fisk University from 2004 to 2013, a historically black college and her alma mater. O'Leary's tenure at Fisk came amid financial difficulty for the school, during which time she increased enrollment and contentiously used the school's art collection to raise funds.
You don’t have to be a brilliant mathematician or well educated to make a difference in your community, of course it doesn’t hurt. But all it takes is seeing a need and doing what you can to meet it.
“Accept the help you’re given, and help others when you can.” ~Katherine Johnson
AJ and his wife, Adrienne saw a need in their community during the pandemic to empower their neighbors with practical support. That work blossomed into The Life Works Project, a growing nonprofit. I invite you to join them in uplifting neighbors through volunteerism and sponsorship. Listen to “Connections & Conversations” Episode 4, my fascinating interview with AJ Young, Jr., Executive Director of Outreach, The Life Works Project. It’ll make you smile.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/NASA
https://www.nasa.gov/people-of-nasa/katherine-johnson-biography/
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/katherine-johnson-a-lifetime-of-stem/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Darden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_R._O%27Leary
https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/honorable-hazel-oleary