I needed Hidden Figures
Black women on the screen. Beautiful Black women with families. Amazing Black Women that made the space program possible. Cue...tears. I sat in the movie theatre the day after Christmas in an audience filled with Black women of all ages. The theatre was packed and once Hidden Figures started we were all on the journey together. Watching Black women in Jim Crow south in 1961 despite the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case and the bus boycott. Virginia was still Virginia. And in the midst of this racist program, there was power on that screen. And that power did not wear pants. They wore skirts and glasses, and carried mechanical pencils. And they brought the power of numbers to the space race. Remember no shuttle can land nor enter the atmosphere without the calculations. The audience cheered and laughed. We all cried when one of characters spoke in fits of breathlessness about the half mile hike she had to take several times each day just to use the facilities. The story was als...