For Immediate Release
September 18, 2024
Contact: Taylor Haulsee
WASHINGTON — This afternoon, Speaker Johnson hosted a bipartisan Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony to honor Katherine Johnson, Dr. Christine Darden, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, all the women who served as computers, mathematicians, and engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and NASA between the 1930s and the 1970s. These women, known as “The Hidden Figures,” were crucial to America’s success in the space race, including the first orbit of man around Earth and the Apollo 11 mission.
The ceremony was held in Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol and was widely attended by bipartisan Members of Congress. The ceremony featured remarks from Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, Senator Coons (D-DE), Senator Capito (R-WV), Rep. Lucas (OK-03), NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, and Margot Lee Shetterly, author of Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.
Watch Speaker Johnson’s remarks here.
Read Speaker Johnson’s remarks below:
As Speaker of the House, I have the great privilege of welcoming you to the Capitol today. The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest honor that Congress can bestow upon any group or individual, and we give it to show our national appreciation for the achievements and contributions of great Americans. Today, pursuant to HR 1396, we have the great pleasure of finally awarding this medal to the Hidden Figures.
As you all know, this has been a long time coming. It was now many decades after these women began working for our nation space agencies that we finally get to do appropriate honor for their work. You know these names well, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Dr. Christine Darden.
In the history of Congress, we’ve only had a few occasions where we’ve been able to recognize those who’ve helped us explore what is the final frontier. In 1959, we awarded this very medal to Dr. Robert Goddard for his research on space rockets, missiles, and jet propulsion. In 1969, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins addressed a joint session of Congress following their moon landing, and they also received this medal. In 1997, the state of Colorado gave us a statue of of Jack Swigert for his time as an astronaut on Apollo 13, and as a staff director of the House Committee on Science and Technology. And now in 2024, we have the honor to bring honor that is due to the giants on whose shoulders all of those astronauts actually stood.
At a time in America when our nation was divided by color and often by gender, these women dared to step into the fields where they had previously been unwelcomed. They excelled in science and math and made groundbreaking contributions in aeronautics. But these women didn’t just crunch numbers and solve equations for the space program. They actually laid the very foundation upon which our rockets launched, and our astronauts flew, and our nation soared.
And although we call them Hidden Figures, we shouldn’t think of them merely as supporting characters in the American story of space exploration. They were the engineers and mathematicians who actually wrote the story itself. And their work proved that our strength as a nation lies in our ability to harness the talents of all of our citizens and to look beyond divisions and into new frontiers where we all work together. It’s my great honor on behalf of our nation to say thank you.
We’re so happy to have you here. What a great day this has been. For all of human history, we have speculated about what is above us. When we are young, the more we learn about the universe and our magnificent creator, the more blessed and the more small we realize that we really are. And until the launching of the first rockets, the only contact physically that we had with outer space were the meteorites that happened to reach us here on the Earth.
But things began to change in 1946, when America began to bounce radar signals off the moon. Then in 1957, we sent the small science lab into orbit. And in 1958, we launched our first satellite. By 1961, when President Kennedy challenged us to put a man on the moon, we were deep into the space race. At that time, the question was not just about wonder and amazement, it was about American leadership and security.
With space serving as the final frontier, we were forced into a competition. Would space and by proxy, our collective future, be defined by American freedom or Soviet communism? To answer that question, we enlisted the help of hundreds of thousands of patriotic Americans. Americans across the country began to study math and science and engineering, and they began writing equations and solving problems we had never previously considered, all so that our country could continue to be the pioneering people we had always been. So, when our rockets carrying man launched into orbit in 1962, they did so with the fuel of American willpower and determination and with the faith that we could do what no one had done and go where no one had had gone before.
Looking back and with this crowd before us today, we can see that we only progressed into space because we progressed here at home. Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson and Christine Darden all helped us to get there. They worked to understand airflow and thrust and drag force, and they taught themselves and other women computer code and they published groundbreaking research, and they put man onto the moon. And they walked right through every barrier put in their way, and they did it with incredible grace and integrity. That’s what they did.
So, for their amazing work, they won many awards. They’ve had buildings and streets named after them. They were even part of that box office hit that we all love. But as I’ve learned more about these women, it’s clear that it never was about titles and accolades for them.
What they wanted was to teach others that it’s always possible to achieve your dreams, even those that are out of this world. These four women and all those who worked at NASA and its predecessor, helped us look both ways to the future we can create in the frontiers that are still ahead and to the people who need our care and attention right here at home.
The hidden figures helped us venture ahead into the heavens where we learned more about ourselves. And we began to look at the earth from a different angle. When we did, we saw ourselves from God’s heavenly vantage point, as humans made in his image, endowed with inestimable dignity and value, regardless of the color of our skin, our gender, or where we came from. So today, for all their contributions to the space program and to society, it is my great honor to award these women with a Congressional Gold Medal.
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