{"id":97162,"date":"2025-08-25T18:01:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T22:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackgirlnerds.com\/?p=97162"},"modified":"2025-08-25T18:01:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T22:01:32","slug":"hidden-figures-debunked-the-fact-vs-fiction-in-the-movie-based-on-the-true-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackgirlnerds.com\/hidden-figures-debunked-the-fact-vs-fiction-in-the-movie-based-on-the-true-story\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Hidden Figures’ Debunked: The Fact vs. Fiction in the Movie Based on the True Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the most celebrated Black movies<\/a> of 2016, Hidden Figures<\/em> profiled three trailblazing Black women who helped Neil Armstrong\u2019s journey to the moon. This includes: mathematician Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. These women made John Glenn\u2019s orbit of Earth possible. Hidden Figures<\/em> starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Mon\u00e1e, became both a critical and commercial success. Although it was one of the most successful studio films of the past decade<\/a>, there are moments that were completely conceptualized in an effort to make it more entertaining. In honor of National Moon Day, let’s separate the real life history from the Hollywood embellishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

National Moon Day on July 20<\/a> commemorates the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. NASA reported this event as being \u201c\u2026the single greatest technological achievement of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a lot of work involved to make this happen. Three of the people who did that work were Black women scientists: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson. They are truly unsung heroes, as most Americans were unaware that these women existed, let alone carved out space for themselves at NASA during the height of racial segregation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like to think of the film industry as that one friend we all have who exaggerates everything. Film adaptations of books or real-life events help bring stories to the public eye; however, how much of the history depicted in it is actually true? There are usually embellishments made in the process of adapting the source material to make it more compelling for the big screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hidden Figures<\/em><\/a> is set mostly in 1961 and 1962, in Virginia, where a central NASA research center is still based. The film doesn\u2019t shy away from the insults, indignities, and discriminatory laws that Black people of Virginia, as well as Black employees of NASA, relentlessly endured, and it is an integral part to the movie. Those segregationist rules and norms \u2014 and the personal attitudes and actions that sustained them \u2014 are unfolded with a clear specificity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The three women at the heart of Hidden Figures<\/em> were all real people who worked at NASA\u2019s Langley Research Center in Virginia, formerly known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n