Hidden Figures Characters

Blanche Sponsler is Margerey Hannah’s assistant who takes over for Margery when Margery is promoted. She suffers a mental breakdown at work, and is taken to an asylum, where she passes away. When she dies, Dorothy Vaughan takes over the role of West Area computing’s acting section head.

Charles Hamilton Houston is a black lawyer and former military officer who leads the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund in fighting several discrimination and segregation cases that make it to the Supreme Court, including Brown vs. Board of Education, which leads to the desegregation of public schools nationwide.

Howard Vaughan is Dorothy Vaughan’s husband. She leaves him behind when she moves to Hampton, VA to take a job as a computer at Langley.

Woodrow Wilson was the President of the United States from 1913-1921 and a native Virginian. Although he is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian efforts in founding the League of Nations, he is dedicated to reinstating and preserving segregation in the Civil Service after Reconstruction.

Virginia Tucker is Langley’s head female mathematician and Margerey Hannah’s boss.

Harry Byrd is Virginia’s Democratic Senator who mounts a major resistance effort to federally mandated integration of schools.

R.T. Jones is one of the most brilliant engineers on Langley’s staff, and a progressive scientist who supports equal rights for African-Americans.

Henry Reid is the engineering director of the Langley laboratory.

Miriam Mann is one of the first black female mathematicians to take a job at Langley. She steals the “Colored Computers” sign that marks the table where black computers are supposed to sit, and keeps stealing it until it disappears.

Joshua Coleman is Katherine Johnson’ father and a brilliant mathematician who encourages Katherine’s educational pursuits.

Dorothy Hoover is a black aeronautical research scientist in Langley’s Stability Analysis Division and one of the first women at Langley to publish research papers.

Doris Cohen is a female mathematician and the first woman at the NACA to publish a research paper. Between 1941 and 1945, she publishes nine reports on high-speed aeronautical research, five as sole author and four coauthored with R.T. Jones whom she eventually marries.

James Williams is a black engineer and former Tuskegee airman who graduates from the University of Michigan before joining Langley in the early 1950s.

John Becker is the chief of the NACA’s Compressibility Division. He inadvertently helps Mary Jackson make a name for herself at Langley when he challenges her numbers, and she proves that the error is his fault, not hers.

Kazimeirz Czarnecki is an aeronautical engineer and assistant section head in the NACA’s Four-by-Four-Foot Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. He offers Mary Jackson a job on his team and helps her become an engineer.

Thomas Byrdsong is a black engineer who joins Langley in 1952 and becomes friends with Mary Jackson.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower is the 34th president of the United States. He presides over a portion of the Cold War and passes measures to increase U.S. proficiency in science and engineering.

Levi Jackson Jr. is Mary Jackson’s son. She helps him become the first black winner of the soap box derby race.

J. Lindsay Almond is a Virginia governor who opposes integration and forces the closing of Virginia’s public schools after the Supreme Court outlaws segregation.

John F. Kennedy was the President of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. In Hidden Figures, Kennedy signs an Executive Order to ensure equal opportunity for all job applicants regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin.

Alan Shepard is an American astronaut and the first American to travel into space. Katherine Johnson plays a major role in calculating his flight trajectory.

Gloria Champine is a female mathematician at Langley who advances from a clerical position in the Dynamic Loads Division to a job as Technical Assistant to the Division Chief of Space Systems, a role that had previously only been held by men.

Pearl Young is the NACA’s first female engineer and the founder of the organization’s rigorous editorial review process for research reports.

Yuri Gargarin is a Russian cosmonaut who becomes the first human in space and the first human to orbit Earth.

Melvin Butler is the personnel officer at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory who opens the doors to the facility’s earliest black female mathematicians.

Emma Jean Landrum is a female engineer at Langley. She is close friends with Mary Jackson and teams up with her to advocate for the advancement of women engineers of all colors.