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NASA officially named its headquarters in the nation’s
capital after Mary W. Jackson, the agency’s first Black woman engineer,
with a ceremony honoring her legacy.
The
NASA Headquarters building in Washington, D.C has been renamed to
reflect the space agency’s first African American female engineer Mary
W. Jackson. The decision was announced last year. The event was attended
by members of her family and the acting NASA Administrator Steve
Jurczyk.
“With the official naming of the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters
today, we ensure that she is a ‘Hidden Figure’ no longer,” Jurczyk
announced during the virtual ceremony. Agency administrators also spoke
of the systemic racial inequalities that Black people faced while
employed at NASA, as well as the prejudiced barriers that still exist
for people of color.
Jackson
started her career in 1951 during the height of the segregation as a
research mathematician and eventually become NASA’s first Black female
engineer. Jackson was amongst other African American mathematicians at
NASA who were instrumental in getting the U.S. into outer space.
“Her work with other human computers, many of them Black women, not
only turned around the space race but also galvanized imaginations
around the world as to what we Americans can achieve,” Jurczyk
proclaimed.
After earning the senior engineering title available, Jackson
accepted a demotion to manage and oversee programs that influenced the
hiring and promotion of female scientists, engineers and mathematicians.
She tirelessly worked to highlight the accomplished work of women and
other minorities in the field. She retired in 1985. Jackson was awarded
the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 2019.
“May
her name, as well as her legacy, forever be a reminder to all those who
enter these mighty doors that we, as a people, have only been able to
touch the stars because of ancestors like her,” historian Henry Louis
Gates Jr. said in a video that was played during the ceremony. Jackson
was portrayed by Janelle Monae in the Oscar-nominated film “Hidden
Figures” (2016).
via: Revolt
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