Annie Easley was frustrated. Here was yet ANOTHER obstacle. The newlywed had just left her pharmacy program to be with her husband - then the program she was going to enter closed. Now what?
While reading the newspaper, she noticed an article about twins hired to be “human computers” for a space commission that would later become NASA. Easley was a stellar mathematician, so she applied - and got the job!
But her struggles weren’t over.
She performed amazingly, learned to program computers, and even created prototypes for today’s electric cars. Most famously, she worked on rockets that flew to the moon and Saturn!
You would think this would bring her recognition and fame, right?
WRONG. She was cropped from photos and denied opportunity after opportunity. She faced extraordinary racism, but she still earned a degree in Mathematics, becoming one of the first Black women to do so.
There was something else, too.
Even in the face of racism, she paved the way for Black women at NASA and in the sciences. Society is set against us, so we must persist even when it seems we have tried everything to succeed.