Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Katherine G. Johnson (born August 26, 1918) is an American physicist, space scientist, and mathematician who contributed to America's aeronautics and space programs with the early application of digital electronic computers at NASA. Known for accuracy in computerized celestial navigation, she calculated the trajectory for Project Mercury and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon.
Dissatisfied with teaching, Johnson decided on a career in mathematics. At a family gathering, a relative mentioned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), later to become NASA, was looking for new people. They especially wanted African American women for their Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson was offered a job in 1953, and she immediately accepted.
According to oral history archived by the National Visionary Leadership Project:
"At first she worked in a pool of women performing math calculations. Katherine has referred to the women in the pool as virtual 'computers who wore skirts.' Their main job was to read the data from the black boxes of planes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. Katherine's knowledge of analytic geometry helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues to the extent that,'they forgot to return me to the pool.' While the racial and gender barriers were always there, Katherine says she ignored them. Katherine was assertive, asking to be included in editorial meetings (where no women had gone before.) She simply told people she had done the work and that she belonged."
[She is also a Medal of Freedom Recipient. Below is NASA statement:]
“Katherine Johnson once remarked that even though she grew up in the height of segregation, she didn’t think much about it because ‘I didn’t have time for that… don’t have a feeling of inferiority. Never had. I’m as good as anybody, but no better.’
“The truth in fact, is that Katherine is indeed better. She’s one of the greatest minds ever to grace our agency or our country, and because of the trail she blazed, young Americans like my granddaughters can pursue their own dreams without a feeling of inferiority.
“Katherine’s legacy is a big part of the reason that my fellow astronauts and I were able to get to space; it’s also a big part of the reason that today there is space for women and African-Americans in the leadership of our nation, including the White House.
“The entire NASA family is both proud of and grateful to Katherine Johnson, a true American pioneer who helped our space program advance to new heights, while advancing humanity’s march of progress ever forward.”
The following is a statement from NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman:
“The reach of Katherine Johnson’s leadership and impact extends from classrooms across America all the way to the moon. Katherine once remarked that while many of her colleagues refrained from asking questions or taking tasks further than merely ‘what they were told to do,’ she chose instead to ask questions because she ‘wanted to know why.’
“For Katherine, finding the ‘why’ meant enrolling in high school at the age of 10; calculating the trajectory of Alan Shepard’s trip to space and the Apollo 11’s mission to the moon; and providing the foundation that will someday allow NASA to send our astronauts to Mars. She literally wrote the textbook on rocket science.
“We are all so fortunate that Katherine insisted on asking questions, and insisted on relentlessly pursing the answers. We are fortunate that when faced with the adversity of racial and gender barriers, she found the courage to say ‘tell them I’m coming.’ We are also fortunate that Katherine has chosen to take a leading role in encouraging young people to pursue education in the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math.
“Katherine was born on National Equality Day. Few Americans have embodied the true spirit of equity as profoundly or impacted the cause of human exploration so extensively. At NASA, we are proud to stand on Katherine Johnson’s shoulders.”
From 1953 through 1958, Johnson worked as a "computer", doing analysis for topics such as gust alleviation for aircraft. Originally assigned to the West Area Computers section which was supervised by mathematician Dorothy Vaughan, she was reassigned to the Guidance and Control Division of Langley's Flight Research Division. From 1958 until she retired in 1983, she worked as an aerospace technologist. She later moved to the Spacecraft Controls Branch. She calculated the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard,[3] the first American in space, in 1959......Read More
The first pan African award for reportage on female genital mutilation was awarded in Abuja, Nigeria, on Tuesday for a powerful film made by two Kenyan journalists about five young women who sought to flee mutilation in western Kenya.
The winning team – Diana Kendi, 29 and Jane Gatwiri, 24 who worked for the Nation media group – made the nine-minute film for the UNFPA/Guardian awarddespite hostility from some local people. “The villages elders even refused to speak to us because we were uncut women”, Kendi said.
The film features five survivors whose faces were covered because they did not want to be identified. The five girls had fled to a rescue centre to avoid being cut – but two had already been mutilated, Kendi said.
“I’ve known girls in some communities who have died because of this – that’s why I am doing this, to stop it”, she said.
Female genital mutilation was banned in Kenya in 2011 but there have been only two prosecutions, with one of those prosecuted serving a seven-year prison sentence.
FGM is the mutilation of the female genitalia – it can range from the cutting off of the clitoris with a razor blade, scissors to the use of a traditional “cutting” knife to remove the entire labia and the sewing of the vagina, leaving only a small hole to pass urine. It is estimated that at least 200 million girls and women alive in the world today have been cut.
An increasing number of Haitians are at risk of being driven deeper into poverty and hunger as Haiti faces its worst food crisis in 15 years, the United Nations World Food Program said Tuesday. Miami Herald: Haiti faces worst food insecurity crisis since 2001.
The U.N. agency, which is launching an $84 million appeal to help stave off extreme malnutrition and deaths in an already fragile Haiti, is blaming the emerging crisis on the El Niño weather phenomenon. Already blamed for some of the worst drought conditions around the globe, the weather event has left some Haitian farmers facing up to 70 percent crop losses and has doubled the number of food insecure people in the country since September.
“We are seeing the malnutrition rates dramatically increased,” said Wendy Bigham, WFP deputy country director. “This is really a severe food crisis.”
The crisis couldn’t come at a worse time for Haiti, which is facing a power vacuum after its president left office Sunday without an elected successor. A 120-day provisional government has yet to be installed, and some in the opposition are accusing the country’s only sworn-in elected officials, the parliament, of staging “a coup d’etat” after the leaders of both chambers signed a last-minute deal with outgoing President Michel Martelly. The accordoutlines the steps for putting in an interim president and consensus prime minister in the coming days.
Add to the ongoing power vacuum, the country’s domestic currency, the gourde, continues to depreciate against the U.S. dollar. Before the devastating Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, it cost 43 gourdes to buy one greenback. Today, it’s 61.25 gourdes.
The rampantly depreciating gourde, combined with the drought, have created inflationary pressures, said economist Kesner Pharel.
The presidential nomination battle between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton moved decisively Wednesday to a fight for African Americans’ votes, as the two candidates touted dueling endorsements to bolster their standing within the community.
Clinton sought to bounce back in the upcoming contest in South Carolina, where she will likely find friendlier turf.
As Trump made the rounds on television, Sanders was welcomed in Harlem by the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose backing could potentially boost the Vermont senator’s standing in the Democratic Party’s base. Sharpton embraced Sanders before they headed to a soul food restaurant for breakfast, but afterward he said he would not make an immediate endorsement in the presidential race.
Candidates now are retooling their pitches for the contests ahead for the GOP: the Feb. 20 primary in South Carolina, a state dominated by staunch conservatives. Then come the party’s Nevada caucuses on Feb. 23.
The Democrats’ calendar is reversed — the Nevada caucuses are on Feb. 20, followed by the Feb. 27 primary in South Carolina, with its strong African American voter base.
After Sanders defeated Clinton by the widest margin in the history of New Hampshire primaries — garnering 60.3 percent compared to her 38 percent, with 97.7 percent of precincts reporting — he wasted no time in capitalizing on his New Hampshire surge. The senator flew to New York with his wife, Jane, to court Sharpton with former NAACP leader Benjamin Jealous, who recently endorsed him.
“If people loved Black people as much as they love Black culture, everything would be fine.” ColorLines: This Video Asks: 'What Would the World Look Like Without Black People?'
“World Without Black People,” a video from Jubilee Project, hits streets around the country to ask people what the world would be like if Black people didn’t exist. What starts as a surface conversation about a universe without hip-hop and how Hollywood already reflects that alternate reality, quickly morphs into a meditation on what it’s like to be Black in America. From Black families talking about the particular difficulties of raising their children in a society that is not built for them, to White people admitting to the racist thoughts that creep in, the video provides raw insight into how Black people are viewed in by others—and how they view themselves.
In a statement about the video, director Eric I. Lu talked about his hopes for the project and how it impacted him:
Making this film has changed my life. Growing up I hung out primarily with Asians. Whenever families gathered for potlucks, they were all Asian. My best friends were Asian. Maybe I was just more comfortable within my own ethnicity. Sure I knew people from other ethnicities, but did I really know them that well? You could say my world did not really have black people. It was only when I got to medical school, 23 years into my life, that I became close friends with African Americans and other ethnicities. But even still, I had not really sought to understand what it was like to be a black person living in this society. Through making this film, I reflected and confronted my own racist thoughts.
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