Features
The Untold Stories of Black History
The Knightly News is highlighting nine Black and African Americans across various fields who have broken barriers and distinguished themselves through their lives and careers.
Katherine Johnson
Most know the name after Taraji P. Henson’s performance in the Oscar-winning film Hidden Figures, but the legacy of NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson goes farther than the movie screen. Her role during the 20th century Space Race made for numerous breakthroughs in her career, including the trajectory calculations of the 1961 Mercury, Apollo 11, and Apollo 13 missions. Without Johnson’s math and analyses, several of the most pivotal moments of the Space Race would cease to exist. Although she faced several gender and racial barriers in her profession, Johnson became the first woman to coauthor a NASA research report in the Flight Research Division; before her retirement, she would go on to coauthor 25 more. Today, we honor her for her vital contributions to space science and proving that women — especially women in color — can work through overt sexism and racism in their workplaces to reach great accomplishments.
The Knightly News 