If you’ve seen the film “Hidden Figures,” then you’re familiar with the name Katherine Johnson.
Born in 1918, in the city of White Sulphur Springs, Johnson spent her life breaking barriers and achieving things once thought impossible.
From a young age, Johnson displayed a computer-like understanding of numbers. In fact, Johnson’s mathematical gifts were so impressive that she skipped several grade-levels in school. By age 10, Johnson began taking high school classes.
Johnson’s mathematical skill-set grew with her into adulthood. Johnson spent time under the tutelage of W.W. Schieffelin Clayton, the third African American in the nation’s history to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, before graduating in 1937 from West Virginia State College (now known as West Virginia University, or WVU) in mathematics and French with the school’s highest academic honors.
In 1939, West Virginia integrated its graduate programs. Johnson, along with two men, was selected as the first black students to be offered a place at the newly re-christened West Virginia University. Although she accepted the offer to attend WVU, Johnson did not complete the graduate program, choosing instead to leave school early to wed her first husband, James Goble. Johnson and Goble remained married until his death in 1956.
In 1952, Johnson accepted a position at the all-black West Area Computing division of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA) Langley, Virginia laboratory, where she worked alongside fellow West Virginian, Dorothy Vaughan. The NACA was the predecessor to what we now know as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, more commonly referred to as NASA. Johnson played a key role in 1961’s celebrated “Freedom 7” mission by providing trajectory analysis for Astronaut Alan Shepard’s historic flight.
In total, Johnson spent 33-years with NASA, providing pivotal scientific and mathematical contributions for many of the most groundbreaking missions in the agency’s history. Johnson retired in 1986.
In 2015, nearly 30 years after her retirement, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by then-President Barack Obama.
Sadly, on February 24, 2020, Kathryne Johnson would pass away at the age of 101.
Despite being an integral part of America’s quest to touch the stars, most people were unfamiliar with Katherine Johnson prior to her receiving the Medal of Freedom. The biography film “Hidden Figure” was released in 2016.
In 2017, the White Sulphur Springs Library building was renamed in honor of Johnson.
According to Tom Ambrose, a former NASA engineer, the idea to rename the building began several years earlier when he was having a conversation with friends about the people that they found to be remarkable. Interestingly enough, it was not Johnson that came up in that conversation, it was her father, Joshua McKinley Coleman, a custodian at the White Sulphur Springs Library.
Ambrose would eventually go on to facilitate the renaming, as well as set up a celebration ceremony for the event to commemorate Johnson’s 99th birthday. She was so pleased with this that she invited Ambrose to sit beside her at the head table, along with her family members and White Sulphur Springs Mayor Bruce Bowling.
A representative of the White Sulphur Springs Library, Joanne Hartzell said, “We are honored to be able to carry on a little bit of White Sulphur Springs history and I hope that the library always lives up to the proud tradition of working hard that Katherine Johnson set.”
