"Hidden" No Longer: NASA's DC HQ Bears Her Name... And Her Likeness, In The Lobby.

We will close out Black History Month in fitting fashion -- by noting that the DC Headquarters building of NASA is now the Mary W. Jackson building. We are grinning, ear to ear -- "hidden" no more, indeed.

Here's the story, as told by NASA press offices -- from Friday:

. . .On Friday, NASA celebrated the agency’s first African American female engineer, Mary W. Jackson, with a ceremony to formally name the agency’s headquarters building in Washington in her honor.

Jackson began working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) – the forerunner of NASA – in April 1951. From her initial role as a “human computer” within the segregated West Area Computing Unit of what would become NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, to becoming an engineer, to managing Langley’s Federal Women’s Program and championing equal employment opportunity efforts at the center toward the end of her career, Jackson’s pioneering efforts and commitment to helping others have inspired generations – both at NASA and beyond.

“With the official naming of the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters today, we ensure that she is a hidden figure no longer,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “Jackson’s story is one of incredible determination. She personified NASA’s spirit of persevering against all odds, providing inspiration and advancing science and exploration.”

The work of Jackson and others in Langley’s West Area Computing Unit caught widespread national attention in the 2016 Margot Lee Shetterly book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.” The book was made into a popular movie that same year, with award-winning actress Janelle Monáe playing Jackson’s character. . . .

Onward, to a better, more just. . . tomorrow.

नमस्ते