In fact, she has gone on record saying she did not personally feel discriminated against at NASA (via History vs Hollywood). But Katherine Johnson herself never bothered to look for a colored bathroom and just used whichever one was closest. Shetterly's book does mention Mary Jackson's frustration at having to look for a colored bathroom during her time at Langley, and it is true that, up until 1958, the Langley Research Center was heavily segregated despite the significant presence of Black staff. That didn't mean discrimination no longer existed, of course - especially considering segregation laws were still in place in Virginia at the time. And she did not watch the launch from the control room, but from her office, on television. Johnson's marriage to Jim Johnson (Mahershala Ali) also occurred much earlier.įinally, the film's climax is significantly exaggerated for impact: John Glenn did request that Johnson manually calculate his orbital trajectory to make sure it was correct, but she did it over several days, not in a few seconds right before the launch that would have been humanly impossible (via collectSPACE).

The timeline is also a little off by 1961, the year the film is set, Johnson had already transferred to the Space Task Group along with the rest of the Flight Research Division, Vaughan was already a supervisor, and Jackson was, by that time, an engineer.

Per the NASA website, the characters of Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst), and Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) are all composites, meant to represent attitudes of the time - and, in Harrison's case, the NASA hierarchy at large - rather than any specific historical figures.

Hidden figures book