Mary Winston Jackson, the first female African American engineer at NASA. (NASA)
NASA will name its headquarters building Mary W. Jackson, the first female African American engineer at the space agency, who as one of the “Hidden Figures” overcame rampant racial discrimination and gender bias to help propel the agency at the dawn of the Space Age, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Wednesday.
Jackson began her career in the 1950s in a segregated computing unit at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., that recently drew national attention as the setting for the 2016 movie “Hidden Figures,” based on a book by the same name.
Last year, the portion of E St. SW in front of NASA’s D.C. headquarters was renamed “Hidden Figures Way” in recognition of the African American women who worked at NASA in its early days.