Hidden Figures

A few weeks ago, it hit the big screen and now it is not a secret anymore! Number one at the box office for two weeks in a row, the new movie “Hidden Figures” reigns supreme. Why? Because people want to know the truth, and this has to be one of the best kept secrets ever. My beloved sisters, if you have not been out to see this amazing work of factual non-fiction brought to life by brilliant black women, you better get to gettin!

I went to see it over the MLK Holiday weekend with my daughter and we both left the theater in awe and wondering why we never knew of this before? This story truly needed to be told and presented in a way that would drive and motivate us to see it. To absorb it. To soak it in. To realize that there is something absolutely awesome and amazing inside each one of us. We are Hidden Treasures in earthen vessels. “Hidden Figures” speaks to all of that and more. These women were gifted with off the chart brilliance and they were born into our world at a time when being black and female was two major strikes against you. Yet this greatness within them was called upon even as they were kept segregated and tucked away so that their work could be credited to others. They were used as though they were machines and even as their superiors and Caucasian counterparts treated them as “less than” and did all they could to demean them and lower their self worth, they were fully aware that they needed them. And that’s what made the difference! They had abilities and skills that NASA, our Government and our country needed, so being black and being female had to take a backseat to being really smart!

Now that the movie has been released, I saw the book which inspired the movie while out shopping over the weekend. The book is also written by a brilliant and beautiful black woman who grew up in Hampton Virginia, Margot Lee Shetterly. Of course I bought it! Reason #1, now that I’ve seen the movie, I MUST read the book. Reason #2, we MUST support black writers.

Just a short paragraph from the book cover in description of “Hidden Figures” reads: “Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated black female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space”

Ladies, if you haven’t already been, go and see this wonderful movie! If you have seen it, go to see it again and bring your daughters, nieces, mothers, girlfriends. Our children need to see this movie! Our daughters AND sons need to see this movie! You will laugh and you will cry. You will shake your head in awesome wonder at what we sometimes don’t know about our own history because it wasn’t taught to us in school. We need to nurture and cultivate every gift that we see in our children whether math and science, the arts or sports. The world is waiting for our children with two possibilities. To keep them down if they don’t aspire to the greatness that lives inside them; or to open up doors of opportunity if given no other choice. If we’re the best at what we do, then they have no choice. So we must help our children prepare to be the best that they can be in every area of life. We will no longer be hidden figures.

We are strengthening our black females out of LOVE. We are Sobfol.