NASA has renamed its Washington headquarters after “hidden figures” of Mary Jackson, the administration’s first African American female engineer.
At a ceremony, NASA formally named the group’s main building in Washington on Friday in honor of Jackson.
Jackson joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) – NASA’s forerunner – in April 1951.
Jackson worked at NASA for 34 years, starting as a research mathematician, eventually becoming the group’s first Black female engineer. Jackson’s positive efforts and commitment to helping others have inspired generations – both at NASA and beyond, NASA said in a statement.
The work of Jackson and others in the Langley West Area Computing Unit received widespread national attention in Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.”
In 2019, Jackson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civil honor in the country, under the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act.
“With the official announcement of NASA Headquarters Mary W. Jackson today, we will ensure that she is no longer a hidden image,” said NASA Executive Administrator Steve Jurczyk.
“Jackson’s story is one of remarkable proof. She expressed NASA’s spirit of continuing to go against all odds, inspiring and advancing science and study,” Jurczyk said.
As well as unveiling a building sign with Jackson’s name, Friday’s event featured a video tribute reflecting on Jackson’s career and legacy from a variety of people, including family and friends, regular and former employees at NASA and astronauts, celebrities, elected officials, and others.
Also at the event was a video of poet Nikki Giovanni reading an excerpt from her poem “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea,” which is about space and civil rights.
Jackson was born and raised in Hampton, Virginia. She first worked as a math teacher in Calvert County, Maryland, and held positions as a bookkeeper and secretary of the U.S. Army before beginning her aerospace career.
In 1942, she received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and physical science from the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University).
Looking to progress from mathematician to engineer, Jackson had to complete math and physics degree courses at a then segregated high school. Jackson completed the courses, won the promotion, and in 1958 became NASA ‘s first African American female engineer.
For nearly two decades during her engineering career, she was the author or co-author of several research reports, most of which focused on the behavior of the boundary level of air around planes.
In 1979, she entered the Langley Women’s Federal Program, where she worked hard to address the recruitment and advancement of the next generation of female mathematicians, engineers and scientists.
She retired to Langley in 1985 and died in Hampton on February 11, 2005, aged 83. Before the death of her husband, Levi Jackson Sr., her son, Levi Jackson Jr., and her living son of her daughter, Carolyn Marie Lewis.