excerpt from Hidden Figures + a few questions...

 

An extract from Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly, 2016

 

Langley’s first female computing pool, started in 1935, had caused an uproar among the men of the laboratory. How could a female mind process something so rigorous and precise as math? The very idea, investing $500 on a calculating machine so it could be used by a girl! But the “girls” had been good, very good—better at computing, in fact, than many of the engineers, the men themselves grudgingly admitted. With only a handful of girls winning the title “mathematician”—a professional designation that put them on equal footing with entry-level male employees—the fact that most computers were designated as lower-paid “subprofessionals” provided a boost to the laboratory’s bottom line.

[In 1943]  as the laboratory’s personnel needs reached the Civil Service, applications of qualified Negro female candidates began filtering in to the Service Building, presenting themselves for consideration by the laboratory’s Personnel staff. No photo advised as to the applicant’s color—that requirement, instituted by the administration of Woodrow Wilson, had been stricken down the year as the Roosevelt administration tried to dismantle discrimination in hiring practices…

They would need a separate space for them, Melvin Butler knew. Then they would have to appoint someone to head the new group, an experienced girl—white, obviously—someone whose disposition suited the sensitivity of the assignment. The Warehouse Building, a brand new space on the West Side of the laboratory, a part of the campus that was still more wilderness than anything resembling a workplace, could be just the thing…

Melvin Butler himself hailed from Portsmouth, just across the bay from Hampton. It required no imagination on his part to guess what some of his fellow Virginians might think of the idea of integrating Negro women into Langley’s offices, the “come-heres” (as the Virginians called the newcomers to the state) and their strange ways be damned. There had always been Negro employees in the lab—janitors, cafeteria workers, mechanic’s assistants, groundskeepers. But opening the door to Negroes who would be considered professional peers, that was something new.

Butler proceeded with discretion: no big announcement in the Daily Press, no fanfare in Air Scoop. But he also proceeded with direction: nothing to herald the arrival of the Negro women to the laboratory, but nothing to derail their arrival either. Maybe Melvin Butler was progressive for his time and place, or maybe he was just a functionary carrying out his duty. Maybe he was both. State law—and Virginia custom—kept him from truly progressive action, but perhaps the promise of a segregated office was just the cover he needed to get the black women in the door, a trojan horse of segregation opening the door to integration. Whatever his personal feelings on race, one thing was clear: Butler was a Langley man through and through, loyal to the laboratory, to its mission, to its worldview, and to its charge during the war…

 

 

Questions

A)  Main facts

 sort of text? narrator? main ideas?

 

B) Focus on Butler

  his job ?  his qualities?

 

C)  other characters mentioned? Why?

 

D) explain:

- the first sentence, the reason why there was an uproar

- the different ways sexism is denounced by the narrator

- why  a “separate” place is necessary

- the “Troyan horse”