A Story and a Song
The amazing Black women that history almost forgot
By Tamara Casey, President & Chief Technology Officer
There’s a story,
I can’t help wondering
why I wasn’t taught
About some truly amazing
women that our country forgot
They were wives, and mothers, engineers
Patriots, neighbors and volunteers
Now that I know their names I will never forget
Cause they changed the game with that one small step
February's Black History Month celebration has brought a national outpouring of recognition and joy for Black contributions across society—and rightfully so. Every year, I am more inspired, not just by the increased attention on some of our greatest Americans but also by lessons learned from heroes who, for decades, were largely overlooked.
It takes me back a few years when I found a staggeringly good book by Virginia-born author Margot Lee Shetterly—the New York Times bestseller, Hidden Figures. The story was fast-tracked into a major Hollywood motion picture of the same name, which may have taken a few liberties and lost some of the backstory, but greatly expanded the audience.
When I read the book, I thought: Seriously? Why has it taken so long for me to hear about all the accomplishments of such notable women?
In case you have not yet had a chance to read the book or see the movie, here's how Amazon explains Hidden Figures: "The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space—a powerful, revelatory history essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America."
When I was a young woman headed for STEM education and a career in aviation technology, we didn't exactly have a deep bench of role models. I very much wish I'd grown up knowing of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden. So, forgive me that, when President Obama in 2015 awarded the then 97-year-old Katherine Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, I mostly thought "well, it’s about time." And when a NASA building was named after her in 2017 (and she was 99 and did attend the dedication), I thought, great—but what about these other amazing women?
That book and the recognition that followed were not exactly some wild triumph of civil justice academia. Ms. Shetterly and her husband, who lived in Mexico at the time, were visiting her parents in her hometown outside of Langley. According to the New York Times, "The couple and Ms. Shetterly’s father were driving around in his minivan when he mentioned, very casually, that one of Ms. Shetterly’s former Sunday school teachers had worked as a mathematician at NASA, and that another woman she knew calculated rocket trajectories for famous astronauts."
And they handed us a brighter future
Never seeking any fame
Past the moon to the stars
So now, remember their names
The article continues, "Ms. Shetterly remembers her husband perking up and asking why he had never heard this tale before. 'I knew women who worked at NASA as mathematicians and engineers,' Ms. Shetterly said, 'but it took someone from the outside saying, ‘Wait a minute’ for me to see the story there.'”
The rest is history; BUT, the point is that it almost wasn't.
Okay, let me pause to confess that I have a NASA screensaver on my computer. Frankly, I always find it a bit thrilling that AURA works with NASA, and I even confess to having a prized (if dorky) quasi-selfie of me standing in front of the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility at Langley. For the record, NASA wasn't nearly as tardy to equal rights as the movie would have you believe ... you can look it up. (And today, to its credit, a street outside its Washington, D.C. location is named Hidden Figures Way, and the agency’s facilities are known as the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters.)
But here's the thing: I grew up in Berkeley, California, where we firmly believed ourselves at the leading edge of exactly this sort of thing. My elementary school classes included lessons on different cultures, including Black history, and we had NASA facilities in the Bay Area. My younger self should have known about these women. Sure, we can say "better late than never," but almost a half-century seems like a lot of "later."
Learning about the Hidden Figures prompted me to want to do something to honor these overlooked inspirations. So, I did what I do when I'm not working for a technology or aviation company. I wrote a song about the women called, "Remember Their Names." If you are interested, you can listen to it here on Apple Music or any of the other streaming platforms.
I truly believe every single STEM student interested in aeronautics should know these remarkable women, mothers, patriots and heroes the way they know other names like Sally Ride, the Wright brothers and Neil Armstrong. Taking flight means different things to different people and learning more about these women will hopefully encourage everybody to reach for their own stars. And as Black History Month 2022 goes into the history books, I'll remind myself that we can continue to appreciate these trailblazers because March is (you guessed it) Women's History Month!
Credits for Remember Their Names
Words and Music: Tamara Casey and Jay Nash
Arranger: Scott Patton and Josh Day
Producer: Todd Wright
Mix: Ethan Mentzer
Background Vocals: Tamara Casey, Josh Day, Scott Patton
Guitars: Jay Nash, Scott Patton
Drums: Josh Day