Through mature criticality and activism, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson battled race and sex discrimination in efforts to aid our space program through mathematics. Like Benjamin Banneker, these three women battled discrimination through mature criticality. Mature criticality is mastering a specific field and using that talent as a platform to make a statement in efforts of change against discrimination. As we learned in Benjamin Banneker’s “Letter to Thomas Jefferson,” Banneker used his expertise in mathematics and astrology to write a letter to the President about the injustices in slavery. In “Hidden Figures,” Katherine, Dorothy, and Mary leverage their mathematical expertise to help women, and African American’s
