203 reopening Norfolk, Charlottesville, and Front Royal schools: Lenoir Chambers, “The Year Virginia Opened the Schools,” Virginian-Pilot, December 31, 1959. Chambers, the editor-in-chief of the Virginian-Pilot, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this and the eleven other editorials he wrote over the course of 1959.
204 “The only places on earth known not to provide free public education”: Smith, They Closed Their Schools, 190. Smith’s book is perhaps the best historical account of the Prince Edward County school situation.
204 Marjorie Peddrew and Isabelle Mann: Thompson, “Change in Research Organization.”
208 aerodynamic, structural, materials, and component tests: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 60.
208 “We could have beaten them”: Kraft, Flight, 132. See also Robert Gilruth, interview with David DeVorkin and John Mauer, National Air and Space Museum, March 2, 1987, part 6, http://airandspace.si.edu/research/projects/oral-histories/TRANSCPT/GILRUTH6.HTM.
208 1.2 million tests, simulations, investigations: “Webb Receives Safety Award,” Air Scoop, June 30, 1961.
208 Have the chimpanzee: Swenson, Grimwood, and Alexander, This New Ocean, 317.
208 Forty-five million Americans: Ibid.
209 116.5 miles above Earth: Ibid., 355.
209 fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds and covered 303 miles: Ibid.
209 “I believe that this nation should commit itself”: John F. Kennedy, “Urgent National Needs: A Special Message to Congress by President Kennedy,” May 25, 1961, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8151.
209 required a team of eighteen thousand people: Swenson, Grimwood, and Alexander, This New Ocean, 508.
210 nine locations made the short list:
210 “was going to be badly understaffed”: Harold Beck, “The History of Mission Planning for Manned Spaceflight,” unpublished document in author’s possession.
210 asked to transfer to Houston: Katherine Johnson, personal interview, September 27, 2013.
210 “five qualified young women”: Beck, “History.”
CHAPTER 21: OUT OF THE PAST, THE FUTURE
213 ninety-five-foot-high, 3.5-million-horsepower: Colin Burgess, Friendship 7: The Epic Orbital Flight of John H. Glenn Jr. (New York: Springer Praxis Books, 2015).
214 “a Rube Goldberg device on top of a plumber’s nightmare”: Swenson, Grimwood, and Alexander, This New Ocean, 411.
214 running miles each day: Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 128.
214 water egress from the capsule: “Astronaut Training at Langley,” http://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/historic/Astronaut_Training.
214 hundreds of simulated missions: Kraft, Flight.
215 conspired to push the date: Swenson, Grimwood, and Alexander, This New Ocean, 273–83.
216 resisted the computers: David A. Mindell, Digital Apollo (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008), 175.
217 a black scientist named Dudley McConnell: Sylvia Doughty Fries, NASA Engineers in the Age of Apollo (Washington, DC: NASA, 1992).
218 staffed on Project Centaur: Annie Easley, interview with Sandra Johnson, JSC, August 21, 2001.
218 a Howard University graduate named Melba Roy: Alice Dunnigan, “Two Women Help Chart Way for the Astronauts,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, July 6, 1963.
218 Hoover had worked at the Weather Bureau: Ibid.
219 calculations that were used in Project Scout: Golemba, “Human Computers,” 121.
219 “mad scientists”: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 345.
221 a blazing 1 kilobyte per second: Saul Gass, “Project Mercury Real-Time Computational and Data-Flow System,” IBM, 1961.
222 proposed blaming it on the Cubans: James Bamford, Body of Secrets (New York: Anchor Books, 2001) Kindle ed., loc. 1525.
223 phone-book-thick stacks of data sheets: Johnson interview, September 27, 2013.
223 three-orbit mission: Swenson, Grimwood, and Alexander, This New Ocean.
223 It took a day and a half: Johnson interview, September 27, 2013.
223 February 20 dawned with clearing skies: Burgess, Friendship 7.
223 One hundred thirty-five million people: Ibid.
224 3,000-degree Fahrenheit temperatures: Ibid.
224 off by forty miles: Ibid.
224 “our Ace of Space”: Izzy Rowe, “Izzy Rowe’s Notebook,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 10, 1962.
224 Thirty thousand local residents: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 77.
225 fifty-car parade: Ibid.
225 traced a twenty-two-mile route: Ibid.
225 Joylette and Dorothy Vaughan’s son, Kenneth: Interviews with Joylette Goble Hylick, Kenneth Vaughan, and Christine Mann Darden.
225 sign reading SPACETOWN, USA: Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution, 80.
225 “Katherine Johnson: mother, wife, career woman!”: “Lady Mathematician Played a Key Role in Glenn Space Flight,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 10, 1962.
225 “Why No Negro Astronauts?” Pittsburgh Courier, March 10, 1962.
CHAPTER 22: AMERICA IS FOR EVERYBODY
227 “America Is for Everybody”: US Department of Labor, April 1963.
227 landed on Katherine Johnson’s desk in May 1963: John P. Scheldrup to Edward Maher, May 15, 1963, NARA Phil.
227 “occupied positions of responsibility”: Ibid.
227 “analyzing lunar trajectories”: “America Is for Everybody.”
228 in English North America in 1619: Robert Brauchle, “Virginia Changing Marker Denoting Where First Africans Arrived in 1619,” Daily Press, August 19, 2015. For years, Jamestown was thought to be the first landing place for the “twenty and odd” Africans who were brought as slaves to English-speaking North America, but recent research has revealed that they disembarked at Old Point Comfort in Hampton, site of modern-day Fort Monroe.
228 in 1963 with a twenty-two-orbit flight: Swenson, Grimwood, and Alexander, This New Ocean, 494.
228 Dorothy Height, John Lewis, Daisy Bates, and Roy Wilkins: Though the women played a critical behind-the-scenes role helping to organize the day’s events, none of them were given a prominent speaking role that day.
228 three hundred thousand people: Branch, Parting the Waters, 878.
228 “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”: Marian Anderson onstage at the March on Washington, 1963, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HfNovwcaX8.
228 W. E. B. Du Bois had died early that morning: Branch, Parting the Waters, 878.
229 “Dear Mrs. Vaughan”: Floyd L. Thompson to Dorothy J. Vaughan, July 8, 1963, Vaughan Personnel File.
229 a gold-and-enamel lapel pin: Ibid.
230 “very few Negroes”: Floyd L. Thompson to James E. Webb, December 29, 1961, NARA Phil.
230 “social and economic mobility”: Fries, NASA Engineers in the Age of Apollo, loc. 1385.
230 with “dreams of working at NASA”: Ibid.
234 fell asleep at the wheel: Warren, Black Women Scientists in the United States, 144.
CHAPTER 23: TO BOLDLY GO
235 a hundred or so black women: Johnson interview, September 27, 2013.
236 groups of them perching in front of the screen: Ibid.
236 a total of six hundred million people: Scott Christianson, “How NASA’s Flight Plan Described the Apollo 11 Moon Landing,” Smithsonian.com, November 24, 2015, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/us-history/apollo-11-flight-plan-180957225/?no-ist.
236 four hundred thousand: “NASA Langley Research Center’s Contributions to the Apollo Program,” n.d., http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Apollo.html.
237 the weekend leadership conference: “Alpha Kappa Alpha’s 39th Mid-Western Regional Conference at LU,” Langston University Gazette, July 1969.
237 96 degrees in Hampton: Weather History for Hampton, Virginia, Farmer’s Almanac (accessed via Almanac.com).
237 a car full of sorority members: Johnson interview, September 15, 2015.
237 pink-and-green-clad women: Pink and green are the official colors of Alpha Kappa Alpha.
237 the most promising young women:
237 a full-time job training center: Ibid.
237 Hillside’s thirty-three rooms: Matt Birkbeck, Deconstructing Sammy: Music, Money and Madness (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 162.
238 bought the land with his Jewish business partner: Wendy Beech, Against All Odds: Ten Entrepreneurs Who Followed Their Hearts and Found Success (New York: Wiley, 2002), 204.