Character List

Dorothy Vaughan
A mathematician and one of the protagonists. Through her impeccable work and leadership
skills, she climbs up the ladder of success and goes from working as a human computer at
Langley to becoming one of the organization’s first Black section heads.

Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson

A mathematician and one of the protagonists. She uses her skills and incredible intelligence
to rise within the ranks of Langley, where she quickly joins the Flight Research team. She
double checks the numbers of the electronic computer for John Glenn’s NASA mission.

Mary Jackson
An engineer and one of the protagonists. She works as a human computer at Langley and is
outspoken about the discrimination there. Her outspokenness and her skills allow her to
quickly rise as part of the team that does wind tunnel research. Eventually, she becomes
Langley’s first Black female engineer.

Christine Mann Darden

An aeronautical engineer at Langley. She is an exceptional student with unusual curiosity that
leads her to Hampton Institute and to working at Langley. She ultimately receives a doctorate
in engineering and succeeds in writing code that is still used today. Christine is younger than
the other Black women she works with, and she represents the future for which those women
pave the way.

Miriam Mann
One of the “computers” at Langley. She removes the insulting cafeteria signs that say
“COLORED COMPUTERS” until they stop appearing. She and Dorothy become close
friends.

Howard Vaughan
Dorothy Vaughn’s husband. His work as a bellman at luxury hotels is seasonal and keeps him
away from his family for much of the year.

Joshua Coleman
Katherine Coleman’s father. Joshua is brilliant and charming like Katherine, and he is one of
her main inspirations. Like Howard Vaughan, he also works as a bellman at a luxury hotel.

Levi Jackson, Jr.

Mary’s son. He is the first Black child to win the Newport News soapbox derby, and when a
reporter asks him what he wants to be when he grows up, he says that he wants to be an
engineer like his mother.
William Schieffelin Claytor
A brilliant professor at West Virginia State College. Professor Claytor, a Black man, creates
advanced classes especially for Katherine Coleman and encourages her to attend graduate
school.

Jimmy Goble
Katherine Coleman’s first husband. He is a chemistry teacher and encourages Katherine to
start a new career at Langley. Shortly after they move to Hampton Roads, Jimmy is
diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and dies.

Kazimierz “Kaz” Czarnecki

An assistant section head at Langley. He asks Mary to join his team after she speaks her mind
during a conversation with him.

Jim Johnson
Katherine’s second husband. He is a mail carrier who once served in the Navy and in the
Army.

Melvin Butler
The head of personnel at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. He oversees hiring the
human computers. He hires women for the job because they are good at it and their pay is
less than men’s. When he struggles to find enough workers, he begins hiring Black women as
mathematicians and sets up a segregated workspace for them.

Malcolm MacLean
The head of the Hampton Institute. He is more progressive than his peers at the time and
encourages the advancement of Black students.

Margery Hannah
A supervisor of West Computing at Langley. She treats her Black colleagues with respect and
as equals and socializes with them.

Blanche Spenser
A section head of Langley West Computing. After Margery transfers, Blanche becomes the
section head, but she suffers a mental breakdown while preparing for a meeting.

Thomas Byrdsong
One of just three Black male engineers at Langley. The Black male engineers are mostly
treated cordially by their white colleagues, but they often receive open hostility from white
technicians and mechanics.

Dorothy Lee
A Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD) engineer at Langley. As a white woman, she
is permitted to take part in editorial meetings and even earn authorship credits on some
reports, unlike her Black female peers.
John Glenn
A NASA astronaut. He requests that Katherine manually check the electronic computer’s
work before his Project Mercury Mission.

A. Philip Randolph
An activist in the Civil Rights Movement. He led a strike that prompted President Roosevelt
to sign two executive orders desegregating the defence industry. This led to Black women
working at Langley.

W.E.B Du Bios
Black scholar, sociologist, and writer. He coined the term “double consciousness,” which was
applied during World War II to describe white people’s expectation that Black people must
fight against the racist Nazi regime in Europe, but then endure racism at home without
resisting.

Joylette Goble
One of Katherine’s daughters. Joletta attends Hampton Institute and befriends Christine
Mann before she goes to work with Katherine.

Levi Jackson
Mary’s husband. He is supportive of Mary in her career and shares her community-minded
spirit.

Dorothy Vaughan
Dorothy Vaughan was a gifted student who grew up to be a brilliant mathematician. She is a
pioneer as one of the Black women who worked as a human computer at Langley.
Throughout Hidden Figures, Dorothy leads the way and helps other women gain success as
well. Due to a sense of obligation to her family during the Great Depression, Dorothy starts
her career as a math teacher and forgoes graduate school. She enjoys the challenge of being a
teacher because it allows her to use her creative mind and discover the best use of limited
resources, but the pay is low, and she regrets passing up the opportunity to go to graduate
school at Howard University.
In a moment of serendipity, Dorothy learns of an opportunity to put her math skills to good
use, and she applies for a job at Langley. She sees this as a rare opportunity for a second
chance. She risks taking the job even though it means she will be living too far from her
children to come home on the weekends. She knows that the money she provides will be
important for her family’s future. She has built a strong family and community that will help
care for her children in Farmville while she works in Hampton. With her impeccable work,
strong work ethic, and professional manner, Dorothy succeeds at Langley.

Dorothy takes immense financial and personal risk and when she buys an apartment at a
community in Hampton Roads and moves her children there. The risk pays off when her job
at Langley becomes permanent in 1946 and she eventually becomes a supervisor and then
head of West Computers. As head, Dorothy has a chance to display her management and
organization skills. When her role becomes unnecessary, she finds another way to make
herself relevant and learns programming. Dorothy uses her voice to stand up for equal and
fair pay for the women she manages. She celebrates twenty years of service right after the
March on Washington. She and the West Computers managed to succeed despite the
obstacles. She is proud of what they accomplished, but she knows there is still a lot of work
to be done for equality.

Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson

Katherine is a brilliant student smart enough to skip grades second through fifth in school.
Her backstory shows how smart, talented, and charming she was. By age fifteen, she was
attending West Virginia State College. Here, Katherine impresses a brilliant and demanding
professor, William Schieffelin Claytor, who creates special advanced classes for her and
urges her to go to graduate school. She is asked to be one of three Black students to integrate
West Virginia University’s graduate school. She attends the summer session but leaves the
program when she gets pregnant. Eventually, she becomes a teacher.

Katherine’s path shows her constantly balancing her education, career, and family life. At a
family wedding in 1952, a connection shares with her the promise of a career as a
mathematician at Langley. Katherine’s husband is supportive, and the couple decides to take
a risk and move with their three daughters to Newsome Park. Katherine quickly becomes
successful at Langley due to her intelligence and charming personality. Due to her lighter
skin and pragmatic attitude, Katherine has an easier time ignoring racism and getting along
with her white co-workers than some of her other Black co-workers do.

In a time where women aren’t even allowed to attend editorial meetings, through persistence
Katherine gets a report published in her name. As another example of Katherine
demonstrating her incredible talents, John Glenn requests that she personally to check the
work of the electronic computers. Katherine’s help on John Glenn’s mission has guaranteed
her respect amongst her colleagues. She continues working at NASA and helps with the
mission to get a man on the moon. She sees her career and the accomplishments of the human
computers as proof that anything is possible.
Mary Jackson
Mary Jackson was born and raised in Hampton and studied math and physical science at the
Hampton Institute. Like Dorothy and Katherine, her backstory shows her hard work and love
of family. Education along with natural gifts of intelligence are the keys to Mary’s success.
When Mary is ready to rejoint the workforce after starting a family with her husband, she
applies for a position at Langley and accepts an offer to join West Computing. She quickly
learns that even though she is talented and does a good job, she is still a Black woman in a
society that sees her as less than equal.

After her white co-workers laugh at her for not knowing where the bathroom designated for
Black women is, Mary is hurt and humiliated. Even though Mary is used to dealing with such
treatment outside of Langley, it is particularly humiliating in a professional setting alongside
co-workers. Mary is angry about continued segregation and she shares her feelings about this
openly. This leads to Mary finding her path as a future engineer. A supervisor sees that Mary
has a background in physics as well as the critical thinking skills needed to be an engineer.
He invites her to join his team and encourages Mary to continue her education. She does,
even though it involves “special permission” to take classes at a school that isn’t integrated.
This persistence pays off and Mary becomes the first Black woman engineer at Langley.
As a Hampton native, Mary’s ties to the community are incredibly strong and she makes
positive changes to it. She helps her son become the first Black child to win the Pinewood
Derby, she helps integrate the local Girl Scout troop as a troop leader, and she works with
colleagues to help Black and white girls know that they can succeed in the workforce by
focusing on science and math.