Shetterly's visit is the culminating event
celebrating this year's
Rappahannock Reads, Central Rappahannock Regional Library's (CRRL) month-long community read of
Hidden Figures. Her book is about the African American female mathematicians who worked for NASA's Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, during the early days of the space program.
Margot Lee Shetterly grew up in Hampton, Virginia, where she knew many of the women featured in her book. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, the recipient of a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grant, and the founder of The Human Computer Project, an organization recognizing the women who worked at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and NASA from the 1930s through the 1980s.
The
Hidden Figures
movie, starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner,
just won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture and
has received two Oscar nominations: Best Picture and Octavia Spencer for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
This event is sponsored by the University of Mary Washington Libraries (Platinum sponsor), the
Stafford County Branch NAACP (Silver sponsor),
CTI Real Estate (Bronze sponsor), Holeman Enterprises, LLC (Bronze sponsor),
Fredericksburg Area Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta (Copper sponsor),
Singleton Enterprises, LLC (Copper sponsor), and Nathaniel Singleton, Jr. (Copper sponsor).
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