She graduated from West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University) when she was 18 years old. She started high school at the age of 10. Even as a child her abilities in math were astonishing. 26, 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
“I was not going to allow his pastor’s backward views to change my opinion of the lovely couple.Katherine Johnson was born Katherine Coleman Aug. When she moved to the South for her first job, her mother warned her about the racism she would face: “Remember, you’re going to Virginia.” But Johnson just said, “Well, tell them I’m coming!” And when a white friend told Johnson that his pastor forbade Black guests at his wedding, “I just shrugged it off,” she writes. Perhaps more striking than Johnson’s unwavering humility is how she faced segregation and discrimination with her head held high. She touts the careers of other accomplished Black scientists and astronauts, but of her own work, she writes, “I was just doing job.” That might seem like false modesty, but it rings true coming from a woman who didn’t invite her own daughters to her retirement luncheon at NASA because, as she writes in the book, she “didn’t want to make a big fuss.” It’s also clear that Johnson isn’t comfortable bragging about herself.
But Johnson doesn’t share her own reactions to this event. Ralph Abernathy - Martin Luther King Jr.’s successor as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - in objection to the taxpayer dollars spent on the space race rather than poverty relief. For instance, she describes a protest led by Rev. Readers may wish that the memoir directly offered Johnson’s unique perspective on some issues. (They protested anyway.)Īt times, however, Johnson’s historical asides seem purely expositional. She also advised her daughters not to participate in civil rights protests because she was afraid of them getting hurt or arrested. “Once I’d seen what those Negro teenagers experienced in Little Rock, I couldn’t unsee it,” she writes of the white mob violence faced by Black students integrating into a white school in Arkansas. She describes her concerns about allowing her daughters to participate in school integration. Later chapters continue zooming out from Johnson’s own experiences to historic events. These asides slow the narrative but reveal something deeper: Johnson’s immense pride in Black educational institutions and her gratitude to the Black educators who were her role models.
She frequently pivots from her story to describe her teachers’ race-based struggles and the history of the Black schools she attended or served.
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Johnson uses her own educational and work experiences as windows into broader issues. Her only job offer was a teaching gig at an all-Black elementary school. When she graduated in 1937 at age 18 with the highest GPA in her university’s history, Johnson had few employment opportunities. Readers quickly see the profound obstacles that faced educated Black people like Johnson. While in college at West Virginia State University, Johnson decided she wanted to become a mathematician. Even then, Johnson’s thirst for knowledge was palpable: She snuck out to follow her older siblings to school, peppered her parents and teachers with questions, and counted everything in sight. Her account begins with her childhood in small-town West Virginia.
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