In a Nov. 24, 2015 file photo, Willie Mays, right, applauds NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, after she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Image: AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File
WASHINGTON — The street outside of NASA’s headquarters has been renamed “Hidden Figures Way” to honor the African American women who served as “human computers” in the effort to send humans to the moon.
News outlets report dignitaries gathered Wednesday in Washington, D.C., to unveil the new street sign, including district officials, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and others.
“Hidden Figures” author Margot Lee Shetterly and the families of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson also attended. Shetterly’s 2016 book details the women’s struggles as they crunched numbers at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, in the pre-computer age. Johnson is now 100 years old and is the last of the three women still living.
Cruz sponsored the Hidden Figures Way Designation Act. NVG
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