Answer: Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan were African American women who worked for NASA during the era of segregation in the United States. They faced numerous challenges due to their race and gender, including being forced to work in separate areas from white colleagues, using separate bathrooms and dining facilities, and being excluded from professional development opportunities. They were also paid less than their white counterparts, despite doing similar work. Despite these challenges, they made significant contributions to NASA's space program, including calculating trajectories for the first manned spaceflight and developing computer programming techniques. Their efforts helped to break down barriers for future generations of women and people of color in the field of science and engineering.
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