Chapter 20 Summary: Degrees of Freedom

Civil Rights Movement and Integration

Four students from North Carolina A&T (David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeil) sat at a whites-only lunch counter in Woolworth, Greensboro, NC, and were refused service.
This act of nonviolent protest sparked a new phase in the Civil Rights Movement.
The protest grew rapidly: 20 activists on day two, 60 on day three, and 300 on day four.
Sit-ins spread to other cities in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Arrests and jail sentences did not deter the activists; they remained committed to defeating segregation.
Hampton Institute (Mary Jackson's alma mater) organized the first sit-in outside of North Carolina, linking the college to the Civil Rights Movement.

Five years prior to the sit-ins, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL, leading to a bus boycott led by Martin Luther King Jr.
Parks faced death threats and job loss, prompting the president of Hampton Institute to offer her a job as a hostess at the university faculty dining room (1957-1958).

Christine Mann, a junior at Hampton Institute, participated in sit-ins at the local drugstore.
Students marched and sat at lunch counters, attempting to order food but were refused service, leading to quiet protests through reading and homework.
Store owners shut down the store in response to the protests.
500 students staged a peaceful protest in downtown Hampton the following month, advocating for equal rights as American citizens.
Christine Mann also participated in voter registration drives in black neighborhoods.

A rumor circulated that astronauts supported the student protests, inspiring activists.
Dorothy Vaughan closed the West Area Computing office, leading to the integration of female mathematicians into other divisions at Langley.
West Computing, a separate division for African American women, was disbanded.
Dorothy Vaughan was assigned to the new computer complex on Langley's West Side.
Langley centralized computing operations into the Analysis and Computation Division, serving all research operations and outside contractors.
The division included West Computers, women from East Computing, and men, marking the racial and gender integration of the computing teams.
Computing transitioned from an all-female service to a respected co-ed division.

The early 1960s marked a transition from human computers to machine computers.
Older women who primarily used mechanical calculators risked falling behind due to the increasing use of computer technology.
Dorothy Vaughan reinvented herself as a computer programmer to adapt to the changing landscape.
Engineers sought Dorothy's help, and she programmed calculations into an IBM computer instead of assigning them to staff or doing them manually.

Dorothy Vaughan converted equations into Fortran by using a machine to punch holes into cards (7 3/8 by 1 3/4 inches), where each card represented a set of instructions.
Complex programs required hundreds or thousands of cards in the correct order.

Project Mercury required more computing power than Langley possessed.
NASA purchased two IBM 7090 computers, installed in a facility at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.
A third computer data center was established in Bermuda.
These computers monitored and analyzed all aspects of space flights, from launch to splashdown.

Orbital flights presented communication challenges due to periods of lost contact with mission control.
NASA aimed for constant contact with astronauts during every minute of every orbit.
Engineers at Langley developed a worldwide communication network with 18 communication stations to maintain continuous contact.
Computers were programmed to detect deviations from projected flight paths, malfunctions, or abnormal vital signs.

The launch date for Project Mercury slipped from 1960 to 1961.
On April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space and to orbit Earth.
NASA engineers responded with renewed passion after the Soviet success.
Project Mercury required 1,200,000 tests, simulations, and investigations to send the first American into space.
Failed rocket tests and a suborbital flight with a chimpanzee (HAM) preceded the manned mission.

NASA broadcast the launch of Mercury Redstone 3 live on television.
Astronaut Alan Shepard's suborbital flight in Freedom 7 reached an altitude of 116.5 miles and covered 303 miles in approximately 15 minutes and 22 seconds.

President John F. Kennedy promised to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade.
NASA employees worked tirelessly to prepare for upcoming Mercury flights and the lunar mission.
The orbital flight and global tracking network required a team of 18,000 people.

Rumors spread about the space task group leaving Hampton, Virginia.
NASA considered multiple sites, ultimately choosing Houston, TX, due to political influence.
The new center in Houston was named the Manned Spacecraft Center.
Katherine Johnson declined to transfer to Houston, choosing to remain in Virginia with her family.
Langley remained a hub for space activity, with Katherine Johnson and her colleagues laying the groundwork for the lunar mission.