Hidden Figures: Thesis Statement

To first answer the question to me a Hidden Figure is someone who does something really important but doesn’t get any part of the credit or reward. It was honestly the best title they could have gave this movie. Three African-American women Katherine Johnson, Dorthy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson contributed to sending men up to space but to be honest with you I had never heard of these ladies before this movie. That's what it means by hidden figures important people that work in the shadows and don’t get any of the glory that they deserve. 

In Hidden Figures, there were plenty of courageous acts. The three that stuck out to me the most had to be when Mary Jackson went to the courthouse to go to school, Katherine going into the top-secret meeting, and when Katherine told all of her co-workers what she was going through after coming back from the bathroom.

Mary Jackson dreamed of becoming a NASA engineer and she couldn’t become one if she didn’t go to a class. But the thing was that the class was only for white people and most of them were male. She didn’t care she just wanted to become an engineer and complete her goals. She walked up to the judge and asked him “Out of all the cases you hear today which one will matter in 100 years.” That's was a really good question because she then became the first African-American to go to that segregated class. She was courageous enough to even go to the courthouse and ask but she did exactly what she had wanted to do and it all paid off.

Another act of courage was when Katherine worked day and night trying to figure out all the calculations in order for the rocket to function. She was the only person out of all the people that worked at NASA to figure out how to do the math problems and after all that hard work she was not even allowed to attend the meeting so she could explain how she got her answers. After she had run to bring her work to Mr. Harrison she had the door slammed in her face. She was courageous enough to speak out against her own boss and told him “You are the boss. You just have to start acting like one.” With that extra push, Mr. Harrison decided to let her at the table with all the white men. This was honestly a courageous act by Mr. Harrison too as he didn’t have to let her in and have all the white men look at him like he was crazy but he did it anyway and lived with that decision.

The most courageous act to me was when Katherine had come back from the bathroom and just went off. So, Katherine had to run half a mile just to go use the bathroom which is honestly crazy that she had to go through that every time she had to take a piss. One day it was raining and she had to run all the way to the bathroom just to have to run all the way back and obviously when she came back she was soaking wet. She was already on edge for being wet and then when she comes back Mr, Harrison tries to get on her about being gone all the time. That was obviously the last straw and she stood up and told all the people there straight up that she had to go half a mile just to use a “colored” bathroom. She went on to talk about how there was a coffee pot just for her but it was always empty and nobody even wanted to touch it. She got her point across and she stood up for herself if that isn’t the most courageous act in the movie I don’t know what is. 

The three ladies in this movie were all courageous in their own ways. Each one of them had an agenda that they wanted to follow in order for them to feel like they were successful. The three women in this movie were very courageous in everything that they did. Without these three ladies, women of color felt like they could do so much in this world and they continued to do so as it shows now in 2019 all women feel empowered in society.