We saw the movie Hidden Figures today and it was a terrific film. Nominated for an Academy Award this is the story of African-American women who were hired to be “computers” meaning they crunched the numbers for the early space program. I thought the cast was awesome with Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae and Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer.

The thing about a movie based on real events is you get to go back in time and in America during this time racism and segregation in the south made life hard for minorities. The women of this story persisted to do their work under hard circumstances. The results of what they did for our country are written in the history books. We see these gifted, incredible women doing what they have to do to better their place in the program and to advance the mission of putting men into space.

It is my hope that the lessons and success of these women will inspire us to be better people and most importantly to be a better nation when people of all races, genders and sexuality will have a spot in the continued building of the country.

Without Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson among others we would not have the space program we have today.