Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

by Margot Lee Shetterly

Nine black teenagers trying to integrate all-white Central High School had turned the state’s capital city into a military battleground. At the command of the governor, Orval Faubus, the Arkansas National Guard had been called out to prevent the black students from entering the school. Three days later President Eisenhower trumped the state, federalizing the state’s guard and sending in US Army troops to escort the nine through the school’s doors. The crisis unfolded over days, each morning a new installment, and always accompanied by photos that were as difficult to look at as they were to look away from: images of black students Christine’s age, their arms heavy with books, struggling to maintain composure as a phalanx of military men protected them from the screaming, spitting, bottle-throwing white crowd that surrounded them. All for wanting the key to what Central High School and the all-white schools across the South had kept locked away from black students like her.