NOW talks to filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain

NYT: Uncovering a Tale of Rocket Science, Race and the ’60s

Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/movies/taraji-p-henson-octavia-spencer-hidden-figures-rocket-science-and-race.html?_r=1

Uncovering a Tale of Rocket Science, Race and the '60s

By CARA BUCKLEYMAY 20, 2016

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Janelle Monáe, left, Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer in "Hidden Figures," which is slated for release in January. CreditHopper Stone/20th Century Fox

ATLANTA — Taraji P. Henson hates math, and Octavia Spencer has a paralyzing fear of calculus, but that didn't stop either actress from playing two of the most important mathematicians the world hasn't ever known.

Both women are starring in "Hidden Figures," a forthcoming film that tells the astonishing true story of female African-American mathematicians who were invaluable to NASA's space program in the Jim Crow South in the early 1960s.

Ms. Henson plays Katherine Johnson, a math savant who calculated rocket trajectories for, among other spaceflights, the Apollo trips to the moon. Ms. Spencer plays her supervisor, Dorothy Vaughan, and the R&B star Janelle Monáe plays Mary Jackson, a trailblazing engineer who worked at the agency, too.

Slated for wide release in January, the film is based on the book of the same title, to be published this fall, by Margot Lee Shetterly. The author grew up knowing Ms. Johnson in Hampton, Va., but only recently learned about her outsize impact on America's space race.

"I thought, oh my God, what is this we're hearing here?" Ms. Shetterly said, recalling the moment a few years back when her father, a retired research scientist, casually mentioned Ms. Johnson's life work. Her next thought: Why haven't we heard about it before?

"Hidden Figures" comes as Hollywood is under mounting pressure to diversify its offerings after this year's much criticized largely all-white Oscars race. And, while this picture has been in the works for several years, and the corresponding book for years before that, its filmmakers know it will invariably be lumped into post-#OscarsSoWhite chatter.

"It's not a reactionary movie," said Ted Melfi, the film's director, "but it will be seen as one, which is unfortunate."

Continue reading the main story

Its evolution began two years ago, when the producer Donna Gigliotti, who won an Academy Award for "Shakespeare in Love," made an offer on the book's rights a day after reading Ms. Shetterly's proposal.

For Ms. Gigliotti, the "Hidden Figures" story line had everything and more: the Cold War, the space race, the damages of segregation and racial and gender inequality, all set against the country's burgeoning civil rights struggles.

Desperate to get ahead of the Russians, the nation's space agency had hired the brainiest people it could find, among them Ms. Johnson, who, in 1937, graduated from college in West Virginia summa cum laude at 18. But, for years at the agency, women often worked in separate rooms from men, and the white women were segregated from the black women, who were known as "colored computers." Ms. Johnson's push to be heard by the men — her calculations, once they heeded her, proved invaluable — lies at the film's narrative core.

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A scene from the film "Hidden Figures." CreditHopper Stone/20th Century Fox

"I knew the story was gold," Ms. Gigliotti said.

As did, it seems, most everyone involved in the film.

Ms. Spencer said yes without pause, despite having initially mistaken the script as a work of too-good-to-be-true fiction.

Mr. Melfi ("St. Vincent") heard about the plotline and cursed. At the time, he was deep in talks to direct the next "Spider-Man," and knew he would have to back out because "Hidden Figures" was too good to pass up.

Ms. Monáe found the story a thrilling revelation, albeit a slightly troubling one. "Just think about how many other stories are hidden that we don't know about," she said, speaking from her Atlanta home.

And the hip-hop impresario Pharrell Williams, who grew up near Hampton, and was obsessed by space, clambered aboard, partly by sheer will, after learning about the story from his producing partner.

"She knew I was going to lose my mind upon hearing about it," Mr. Williams said. "And when I did, we got on the phone with everybody, and we begged." He became a producer on the film (other producers on the project include Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping and Mr. Melfi), has written songs for it and is working with Hans Zimmer on the score.

Earlier this month, days before the production wrapped here, Ms. Gigliotti along with the principal cast members squeezed in time between takes to talk about the film.

They were shooting downtown, in the old Georgia Archives building, a looming marble block, nicknamed the White Ice Cube, that was built in the '60s and shuttered after engineers determined it was steadily sinking into the ground. For this film, which also stars Kevin Costner and Jim Parsons, the building was standing in for the Langley Research Center in Virginia. In the fusty air inside, amid snaking cables and extras dressed like squares from 1961, portable air-conditioners fought a mighty and futile battle with Atlanta's wilting heat.

Ms. Gigliotti sat before a monitor, headphones on, glued to a scene being shot in an adjacent room. Kirsten Dunst, who plays a NASA supervisor, was fixing Ms. Henson with an acid stare. "They've never had a colored in here before Katherine," she said coolly, "Don't embarrass me."

Ms. Henson blanched, turned and was about to walk through a nearby door when her handbag got stuck on the doorknob. Mr. Melfi called cut.

"Did I steal that or what?" Ms. Henson asked sarcastically, throwing an expletive in.

The role of Ms. Johnson is a meaty one, as well as a departure, for Ms. Henson, who is coming off the most dazzling year of her career. In January, she collected a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Cookie, the brazen, razor-tongued matriarch on Fox's nighttime soap "Empire."

As grateful as Ms. Henson is for pop culture's adulation of Cookie, she's somewhat weary of being constantly associated with her. (Mr. Melfi has wanted to work with her since her Oscar-nominated turn in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" in 2008.)

"All of a sudden, it's the Cookie takeover," Ms. Henson said, sitting in a corner-office set piece. "And that's all anyone wants to remember."

She was dressed as un-Cookie-like as could be, wearing a largely shapeless plaid midcentury dress, with her hair set in pin curls. It's hard to imagine a character more different from Cookie than Ms. Johnson, whom Ms. Henson met not long after the mathematician, now 97, received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in November for her contributions to rocket science.

Ms. Johnson, Ms. Henson found, was regal, inward and resolute. "A quiet storm, that's what I call her," Ms. Henson said.

The part challenged Ms. Henson in unexpected ways. She fizzes with energy, and containing it all to play Ms. Johnson left her exhausted at day's end. She used moments between takes as release valves, breaking into impromptu dances and letting her wit rip.

She also labored, fruitlessly, to understand Ms. Johnson's intricate calculations, going so far as to skip Beyoncé's May 1 concert at the Georgia Dome to do her math homework. "It makes my heart palpitate, the math," she said.

It was an aversion she shared, to a degree, with Ms. Spencer, who happens to like basic math but goes blank when it comes to calculus. Luckily for all, Mr. Melfi said, the film is "math lite."

The two women, along with Ms. Monáe, developed deeper bonds during production and know they will all invariably be repeatedly asked about how "Hidden Figures" plays into the broader conversation around diversity in Hollywood. That question caused something close to resignation to come over both Ms. Henson and Ms. Spencer.

"I hate when I do a film, and it has a lot of African-Americans and they call it a black film," Ms. Henson said. "I don't wake up and go, 'Let's see, this weekend, I'm going to see a Chinese film, I'm going see a black film, no I'm going see a white film with a black person in it.' Who does that?"

Ms. Spencer said that labeling the film was not just a turnoff for some audiences, but also unfairly reductive. NASA's largely unrecognized female mathematicians were black and white, she said, and this story, told from the perspective of three black women, paid homage to them all.

"This is a female-driven movie about contributions that women really made, to our world, not just our society," Ms. Spencer said. "That's a big statement."

Democracy Now: 103-Year-Old Civil Rights Pioneer Joins Original Foot Soldiers, Jesse Jackson to Mark Bloody Sunday | Democracy Now!

Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/9/103_year_old_civil_rights_pioneer

03-Year-Old Civil Rights Pioneer Joins Original Foot Soldiers, Jesse Jackson to Mark Bloody Sunday

    

Amy Goodman interviewed civil rights luminaries at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, including 103-year-old Amelia Boynton Robinson, who held President Obama’s hand as they marched on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Robinson played a key role in organizing the march and invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Selma in 1965. "If you are not a registered voter and you are 18 years of age, you are a hopeless people. Definitely hopeless, because you have nothing to say about your county, your city, your state," Robinson says. Other women honored this weekend as original "foot soldiers" who marched in 1965 include then 13-year-old Mae Taylor Richmond. "As we knelt down to pray," she recalls, "the state troopers threw tear gas besides us, and we proceeded to run back to the church." We also speak with Rev. Jesse Jackson; Theresa Burroughs, who was 21 years old when she marched in Selma; comedian Dick Gregory; Clarence B. Jones, the attorney for Martin Luther King Jr.; and Susannah Heschel, daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re here. It’s Saturday of March 7th, 50 years of Bloody Sunday. And we’re at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Many luminaries are walking by. Reverend Jackson, Amy over here from Democracy Now!

REV. JESSE JACKSON: Amy, there is—today there is no sense of the danger that was here 50 years ago, open season on anybody with out-of-state tags—activists, young black people, blacks and Jews in coalition. That’s why Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were killed, targeted and killed, an act of terrorism. Viola Liuzzo, a white woman from Detroit, brains shot out, point-blank range, called "nigger lover." That was killing, a bound and killing—Reverend James Reeb, Jimmie Lee Jackson.

And we celebrate it because, against those odds, we overcame. We won the protected right to vote, where you could not move boundaries and you could not gerrymander, annexation, at-large schemes. But the Supreme Court took that away two years ago, and there is not the drama attached to gutting the bill as there was achieving the bill. The Congress is here today with the president. They must go back to Washington, not as demonstrators, but as legislators, to restore the protected right to vote and to address the issue of poverty in a meaningful way.

Everybody will say, "Selma made me possible. Selma helped me." Well, help Selma—40 percent unemployment among adults, 60 percent of that among young people, people living in trailers, living in huts without running water, without indoor toilets. This is a time Selma should be a model city for restoration of urban poverty—property, dealing with both legislation and poverty.

Amy, this is Ms. Boynton, [ 103 ] years old.

AMY GOODMAN: Ms. Boynton.

REV. JESSE JACKSON: She invited Dr. King to Selma. She was head of the Dallas Voters League. And along the highway is the letter she wrote to Dr. King. At Christmas time, she came to Atlanta, inviting Dr. King here. He came on the strength of her invitation.

AMY GOODMAN: Your thoughts about what happened 50 years ago today? You were in that first protest. You were beaten.

AMELIA BOYNTON ROBINSON: Well, it was something that I figured that I could not resist, because we were trying to get people to register and voted, long before Dr. King was born. And we were working to get them to know that. And I say today, if you’re not a registered voter and you’re 18 years of age, you are a hopeless people, definitely hopeless, because you have nothing to say about your county, your city, your state, your nothing. So don’t be hopeless. Be a human being, a city, a citizen of the city of Selma, of the state, of Selma.

AMY GOODMAN: What gave you the courage that day to face those state troopers?

AMELIA BOYNTON ROBINSON: I was born that way. My mother was a civil rights activist back then, when I was born. And I worked with her at 11 years old. I worked with her when women’s suffrage became reality.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much.

Hi. Can I ask your name and where you were 50 years ago today?

THERESA BURROUGHS: My name is Theresa Burroughs, and I’m from Greensboro, Alabama. And 50 years ago today, I was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

AMY GOODMAN: Right where you are today.

THERESA BURROUGHS: Right where I am today.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened? How old were you at the time?

THERESA BURROUGHS: I was 21.

AMY GOODMAN: Twenty-one.

THERESA BURROUGHS: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You were facing off against state troopers?

THERESA BURROUGHS: Yes. Yes, we were beaten on that bridge.

AMY GOODMAN: What gave you the courage to do that?

THERESA BURROUGHS: The courage—of the treatment, how they were treating us. They were treating us like we were foreigners, like we—in a strange country, and that we had no rights at all. And I was determined to do something to let this generation of young men and women not to have to go through what we had to go through with. Fifty years ago, we had no rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell me your name? And tell me about the medal that you’re wearing.

MAE TAYLOR RICHMOND: Mae Richmond. This is a medal for foot soldiers who participated in the 1965 voting rights movement.

AMY GOODMAN: How old were you on March 7, 1965?

MAE TAYLOR RICHMOND: Thirteen. I was 13. Many of the youth were between the ages of about nine, eight or nine, to about 16.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you march that day?

MAE TAYLOR RICHMOND: I did. I participated in all three marches—the Bloody Sunday, the Turnaround Tuesday, the Selma to Montgomery March.

AMY GOODMAN: And Bloody Sunday, where were you in the march, and what happened to you?

MAE TAYLOR RICHMOND: On the bridge. We were on the bridge, and we confronted the sea of blue. We ran into the sea of blue, which were the state troopers. And after we—John Lewis and—

AMY GOODMAN: Hosea Williams?

MAE TAYLOR RICHMOND: —Hosea Williams told us to kneel down and pray, after they would not—the state troopers would not let us through. And as we knelt down to pray, the state troopers threw tear gas beside us, and we proceeded to run back to the church and to other areas, trying to get in security.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Mae Taylor Richmond, Theresa Burroughs and, before that, Amelia Boynton Robinson, who is now 103 years old—some of the civil rights foot soldiers who gathered in Selma this weekend for the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. We’ll have more from Selma, Alabama, in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: John Legend and Common performing "Glory" at the Oscars. They won best original song for the movie Selma. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from Montgomery. We have just returned from Selma, Alabama, where this weekend tens of thousands of people gathered to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

AMY GOODMAN: Mr. Dick Gregory, how are you? Can you tell me your thoughts today?

DICK GREGORY: Fear is gone. Fear. And we won’t lose it all 'til the women get free. Fear. We were here 50 years ago, and we knew we could all die. We don't even expect a cop to slap you. But it ain’t the cop [inaudible]. It’s fear.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your most vivid memory of marching with Dr. King and that final march from Selma to Montgomery?

DICK GREGORY: It’s over. That phrase of it: "It’s over." We made it. And that’s the day I realized that the greatest fighters in the world are not soldiers. It’s turtles. And that’s what we’d become—hard on the outside, soft on the inside, and willing to stick your neck out. That’s all. Harvard don’t teach that.NBC don’t know nothing about that.

CLARENCE B. JONES: My name is Dr. Clarence B. Jones. I am here, along with so many others, to commemorate the 50th anniversary—different than, except for a small number of people, I was actually here 50 years ago. But eventually what happened was that we marched under federal—

AMY GOODMAN: Protection?

CLARENCE B. JONES: —and state escort, yeah. We marched from Selma to Montgomery. And what is often obscured and forgotten is, when we got to Montgomery, the speech that Martin Luther King Jr. gave across the street from the state Capitol was one of the greatest speeches he ever gave. Somebody in the audience said to him, "Dr. King, how long?" And Dr. King turned to him and gave the most eloquent response, part of which he says, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice." And then he went on to say, "Not long."

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: My name is Susannah Heschel. I’m a professor of religion at Dartmouth College. And my father marched with Dr. King 50 years ago. He was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what you know from his stories about that moment when they marched over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, March 23rd, 1965.

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: I grew up—my father was immersed in the civil rights movement, and it shaped my entire childhood. And it was the most inspiring experience for me. When my father left to come to Selma that night, it was after Shabbat. I remember vividly kissing him goodbye and wondering if he would ever come back, if I would ever see him again. So it’s very much ingrained in my memory. And then he came back, and he said that he felt it was a holy—a holy moment. He said it reminded him of marching with Hasidic rebbes being in Europe, being here. He told me that Martin Luther King said to him that this was the greatest day of his life. And my father said that he felt that it was worship, this march. He said, "I felt my legs were praying."

Source: http://mic.com/articles/110702/9-influential-women-in-black-history-you-won-t-hear-about-in-school

Image Credit: AP

9 Influential Women in Black History You Won't Hear About in School

 By Derrick Clifton February 18, 2015

The conversation surrounding influential moments and people in black history often focuses on the contributions of men — leaving the vital efforts of black women by the wayside. 

Before Selma premiered nationwide earlier this year, for example, many mainstream discussions about the titular city's voting rights marches focused on leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rep. John Lewis. But Selma also introduced many Americans to black women who directly influenced organizing efforts at the time, like Annie Lee Cooper, Diane Nash, Amelia Boynton and Viola Jackson. Before the movie, most people would've been hard-pressed to recall any of these women — and there are so many others whose names won't ever be known. 

That's why it's important to make sure black women's contributions are always part of our conversations about history. While some are more well-known than others, lack of mainstream recognition doesn't make these women's efforts any less significant to our country's progress. 

Here are just a few of the many black women whose work helped change America, and the world, as we know it. 

Fannie Lou Hamer

Source: ANONYMOUS/AP

Hamer is best known for championing black voting rights, especially in her home state of Mississippi, one of many hotbeds for racially motivated voter suppression. She worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to drive black voter registration, despite encountering violence and threats from white supremacists who often worked to intimidate or violently attack blacks attempting to vote. 

Hamer brought the issue to the national spotlight during the 1964 Democratic National Convention, pointedly calling out Mississippi's all-white delegation. Hamer's eventual, televised testimony of the struggle was so powerful that President Lyndon Johnson called an impromptu press conference to get it off the air. 

Marsha P. Johnson

Video still from the documentary "Pay It No Mind: The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson."Source: Michael Kasino via YouTube

Johnson was a leader during the standoff that culminated in the infamous Stonewall Riots, a rallying cry against police surveillance and harassment of people in New York's LGBT community during the 1960s. Today, the anniversary of Stonewall is commemorated annually via pride parades held across the U.S.

A black transgender activist, Johnson's efforts also including mentoring and helping to provide housing for homeless LGBT youth, AIDS activism with the organization Act Up and founding organizations to serve trans communities. Her work is chronicled in the documentary Pay It No Mind: The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson. 

Madam C.J. Walker

Source: Brian Kersey/AP

Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, is widely regarded as one of the first American women to become a self-made millionaire. Prompted by her experience with early hair loss during the 1890s, Walker created hair care remedies primarily with black women in mind. A brilliant and tenacious businesswoman (deemed a "marketing magician" by Henry Louis Gates Jr.), Walker began by selling door-to-door. 

Early successes allowed Walker to more widely manufacture her products and cultivate a team of around 40,000 brand ambassadors — a recipe that bolstered her name-recognition and her wealth and, according to Gates, provided her "Walker Agents" with "with avenues up out of poverty." Her philanthropic efforts included sizable donations to the YMCA, the NAACP and other black cultural organizations.

Mary McLeod Bethune

Source: HARVEY GEORGES/AP

After struggling to balance school with working on a plantation to help support her family, Bethune went on to become an educator herself, founding the Daytona Educational and Industrial Institute for girls in 1904. Bethune's successful stewardship and fundraising for the school eventually gave way to a 1932 merger with the Cookman Institute to form what's now known as Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black college.

Bethune's educational leadership and advocacy efforts also positioned her as a civic leader and political activist, earning a number of presidential appointments. According to the National Council of Negro Women, which Bethune also founded, Bethune was "was the first African-American woman to be involved in the White House" and "served as the informal 'race leader at large'" under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Her Daytona Beach home is now aNational Historic Landmark.

Ruby Bridges

Source: Uncredited/AP

Although she lived mere blocks away from an all-white elementary school, segregation forced Ruby Bridges to travel for miles every day to attend an all-black kindergarten. Then, in 1960, Bridges was thrust into the national spotlight at the tender age of 6, as the first black child to racially integrate an all-white elementary school in the South. The move came less than a decade after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling struck down school segregation. 

Reactions to her presence, and to the idea of school desegregation generally, precipitated protests that came with threats of violence. Bridges and her mother had to be escorted to the school by federal marshals because other officials in the area weren't willing to protect her. Despite the racist backlash, Bridges and her family held firm, helping pave the way for other students who would follow in her path. Now, decades later, she still publicly speaksabout her experience. 

Dorothy Height

Source: Getty

Height spent decades working for racial equality and women's rights, and her work often centered the ways in which racism and sexism were inextricably linked struggles for black women. As one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, Height was the only woman seated on the speaker's platform. But, as Height told NPR in 2003, the male-dominated planning and programming didn't schedule any women, including her, with time to speak.

Height was instrumental during the YWCA's integration efforts and acted as the first director of its Center for Racial Justice. She also co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus and served on the boards of several national civic organizations, including as national president of the historically black service sorority Delta Sigma Theta. Among her many accolades, Height received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.

Audre Lorde

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Lorde's identity as a black lesbian unquestionably shaped her poetry, scholarship and activism in relation to the struggles of women, blacks, LGBT people and various marginalized groups. Lorde's writings and speeches addressed the need for solidarity across struggles against oppression and, in particular, why an awareness of intersectionality is paramount. Her 1973 poetry collection, From a Land Where Other People Live, was alsonominated for a National Book Award. 

Ella Baker

Source: JACK HARRIS/AP

Baker's decades of work included an array of both racial and economic justice efforts. She held posts with some of the most influential groups during the Civil Rights Movement, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP. Shortly after black college students organized a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, Baker set up a meeting with the young activists that culminated in the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. 

The group helped organize the 1961 Freedom Rides to fight segregation in interstate bus and train systems. SNCC also heavily drove black voter registration in the South during the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964.

Shirley Chisholm

Source: Richard Drew/AP

Chisholm was the first black woman elected to Congress in 1969 from her district in New York City, and she served for 14 years. 

She began her career in education administration, having earned a master's degree in elementary education from Columbia University, and went on to serve as a consultant to the New York City Bureau of Child Welfare. In the years following, her experience led her into political arena, where she served as a state legislator for three years before heading to the U.S. House of Representatives. Chisholm was one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus shortly after her election. After roughly two terms in Congress, Chisholm entered the 1972 presidential race in the Democratic primary, making her the first black candidate to run for a major party nomination.