Girls, Girls, Girls – Annie Easley

Hi everyone. Happy Monday. I hope you're all doing very, very well today. I am feeling particularly festive at the moment. Halloween is just around the corner, so I hope you're already thinking up your costumes. Please do let me know what you're planning to dress up as. I hope there are some female inspiration characters going on there. And do remember, if you have planned something that you think might be easier, even vaguely racist or sexist in your costume, you have a few weeks still to sit yourself down and think about why that might not be a good idea and come up with something better. I'm sure you have creativity inside you, so just remember that it's always good to remind people every now and again. Today we're going to be talking about the so called human computer, Annie Easley. But first let's start off as always with the cell hybrration, which is on a slight more sombre note than usual. I want to celebrate, and just celebrate in general, to be honest, the awe inspiring, powerful, tenacious Dr. Christine Blaseley Ford. I'm sure you've all heard this name, but if not, very brief update. Dr. Ford has accused Brett Kavanaugh, who is Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, of sexual assault. She is a university, so it's appropriate for her to be celebrated in her own right. But last week she went to the hearing of Kavanagh to give her testimony and she was so poised and composed throughout, which, you know, obviously she doesn't. She shouldn't have had to be, but it was incredible that she was. She was the complete polar opposite, basically of him, who was emotionally all over the place. And one quote that really stood out to me was when she said, I'm here today, not because I want to be, I'm terrified. I'm here because I believe it is my civic duty. I'm frankly disgusted that someone like this has even been nominated for the highest court pretty much in the world. Although I put nothing past Trump at this point and I think it just goes to show, really the status quo at the moment in our society. If Kavanaugh was not and was not a man, I know for sure that he wouldn't have got this far, basically. I mean, he would have been taken away at the first sign of anger. And I'd quite like to know where all the people are who came for Serena Williams, where they are right now, because, I mean, you've got someone genuinely displaying a lot of anger and emotion. But I just want to celebrate and normally, to be honest, Dr. Ford and all Women who have had to deal with this rubbish for far too long. She had to recount the details of her sexual assault and in front of the assaulter himself. With the whole world watching on, I'd also just very briefly like to celebrate the photojournalist who snapped that photo that's been going around Twitter of the women looking on at Kavanagh with all these absolutely incredible faces. That photo is for sure gonna go down in the history books. So, yes, that is who I'm celebrating, and I think I want to celebrate. Yeah, all women, basically. So let's just get into the Woman for today, and hopefully we can cheer ourselves up a little bit. If you have seen Hidden Figures, the film that was out a few years ago, then you will know that there were many, many black women who worked for NASA that were essentially written out of history. And I want to talk about Annie Easley, who was one of the women that didn't even make it into the film. That's how out of history she is. She was born in April 20, 1933, in Birmingham, Alabama, not the UK, and she was raised by a single mother who she cites as her biggest inspiration, which is very sweet. And her mother told her that she could be anything that she wanted to be as long as she worked hard for it. This was, I mean, technically not necessarily true in Annie's time because obviously there were several invisible forces and visible forces even that were working against her doing whatever she wanted. But the advice still worked out quite well for Annie. Educational and career opportunities for black children at this time were extremely limited, as I'm sure you can imagine. There was a lot of segregation, and in pretty much every instance, the schools for the black children were not as good as the schools for the white children. Annie was the valedictorian of Holy Family High School, and she followed up by going to Xavier University in Louisiana, which sounds like a uni for X Men, but it isn't. It was, at the time a Roman Catholic university specifically for black students, and she worked to major in pharmacy for two years, but she left the course without graduating so that she could go and get married, and she moved back to Birmingham. While she was there, she became a substitute teacher in school in Jefferson County. And at this time, because of the Jim Crow laws, black people were being forced to take literacy tests and also pay a tax in order to vote. And so she used her education to teach other black people to study for the test, for the literacy test, so that even more people could be enfranchised and have their Vote. She only stayed in Birmingham for a little while and quite shortly afterwards she decided to move to Cleveland with her husband. That was where he was from. And so she also decided to go back into education, but unfortunately the local university stopped its pharmacy program basically right after she moved back and there was nowhere else close by that she could go. So she gave up on that dream a little bit. But everything changed in 1955. She made a bit of a breakthrough. She read a story in the local, local newspaper which was about two twin sisters who were working for naca. Naca, I'm going to call it the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. They were working as human computers. Annie said that she'd always found maths and calculations came naturally to her. She just found it very, very easy and frankly, I'm very jealous about that because maths does not come easily to me at all. All. And so she applied the very next day and within two weeks she was hired. She was one of four black people amongst, I could hardly believe this, 2,500 employees. So, yeah, one of four. And she started out as a mathematician and computer engineer at NACA in the Flight Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland. This was obviously in the early stages before eventually it became NASA. I think just going to call it NASA from now on because that rolls a bit more off the tongue. She was not given many opportunities for promotion, even though she was kind of. She was quite qualified and she was doing well. So she decided to go back into education to try and become even more qualified and earn those promotions. And so she managed to earn her Bachelor in Science in 1977 from Cleveland State University. NASA refused to pay for it, obviously, despite male colleagues being able to get their undergraduate degrees paid for. So she paid for it all with her own money and she worked for her degree alongside full time work. And I'm sure anyone who has a full time job can attest to it's hard enough as it is and I'm sure especially if you're working for NASA. So the fact she was doing that next to a degree is ridiculous. Luckily, once she completed the degree, NASA did decide that she deserved a little bit more training and they did pay for her extra courses to kind of teach her a little bit of more specialised things. In the early days she was known as a human computer, which is less creepy than it sounds. Basically what it means is because there were no calculators or anything like that, she was doing all the calculations necessary for the researchers by hand. So she was sitting there doing her calculations all basically on a pad of paper. And that was how they were using, how they were getting rockets into the sky, which is bizarre to think about it now. But eventually, once real computers obviously started coming into play, she became a programmer. She was particularly skilled at Fortran, which is a language apparently used to support many of NASA's programs. And Annie particularly focused on different types of code that was involved in alternative power. And she was working on research to help lengthen the battery life of hybrid vehicles. And these are the batteries that actually we still use in hybrid vehicles today. She made huge strides in a project in the 70s as well about the damage to the ozone layer, and that included her doing some research into solar power and wind power. So she was very ahead of her time, I must say. She was also heavily involved in developing software for Centaur, which was known as America's workhorse in space. It's essentially a high energy rocket that launches space shuttles. And her contributions to Centaur helped the launch of the Cassini spacecraft expedition to Saturn. And if it wasn't for Easley, in her calculations, her development, her research that she did for Centaur spaceflight at all, even today, probably wouldn't be possible. So she really did make her mark on a lot of things at NASA. She also dedicated her time to tutoring students at schools. And she did eventually actually become a recruiter for NASA. She worked as the officer for Equal Employment Opportunities, which meant that she would often give speeches about the work that NASA was doing and encourage especially female and minority students to consider an education or job in STEM subjects. And she was also there to kind of address complaints or to help supervisors through issues of gender, race, age, disability, etc. And I'm sure, as you know, representation is so important. And so to have somebody like Easley, a black woman, standing up to represent NASA and to recruit for NASA is really, really incredible. We're going to take a very, very short break. We are going to come back shortly after this. But don't forget that if you head over to Women's Radio Station on the Web, you can catch up with all the programs, my own and everyone else's as well. WRS women's radio station, Voice of Women Worldwide, Sarah's Universal Soul Show. What does your soul or spirituality mean to you? Welcome to future Classical Woman Awards with me, Stefania Pasamonte on Women's Radio Station. Welcome back. I'm Russ Cain. You're listening to In Conversation with on Women's Radio Station. I'm Angie. And I'm Patsy. 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Supporting women is our passion. We're currently welcoming donations to help towards our running costs to keep this important initiative alive. To donate, simply head to our website. Every little will help. You're listening to Girls, Girls Girls, the podcast rewriting history one episode at a time. I'm Bea Duncan. Welcome back to Girls, Girls Girls with me, Bea Duncan here on Women's Radio Station. Don't forget. As always, if you want to get in touch, you can email presentersomensradiostation.com but let's just launch straight back into it. We're talking today about Annie Easley, the human computer, or so she was called, and kind of getting into the juicy stuff. She'd been at NASA for a while now, so she was getting into. Getting into the swing of things and she was being listened to, which is always nice. Her and her room supervisor once made a pact to wear pantsuits. Pantsuits or just suits, you know, but suits with legs, basically, which for a woman, I guess that was mind blowing. And in an interview in 2011, she said it did cause quite a stir. But there was one woman who said, I was just waiting for the first one to wear pants. So, you know, we took the emphasis off what you're wearing. It's more like what you're actually producing, which is incredibly true. And I think if anyone's going to have a problem with what you're wearing and think that that's going to distract them from something, they're probably not very good at it in the first place. Because wearing pants or trousers, I mean, you should always buy pants, but wearing trousers, it really shouldn't make much of a difference. Just because your legs have two holes in them rather than just one. She also said, if I can't work with you, I will work around you. Which again, is relevant to the. The suit thing, because she's saying, you know, if I want to wear a suit and you don't like it, it's really not my problem because I'm gonna do it anyway. Which I think is very cool. So as you can see from that, she always was fighting discrimination at work, but it wasn't always easy. She recalls once she got a photo taken, all of the work is in the lab, and it got blown up and hung on the wall during an open tour of the lab. So everyone's sitting there smiling, looking lovely, the employees. But when it actually came to the day, she went to have a look at the huge photo on the wall, and what do you know, she had been deliberately cut out of it completely. So it was essentially like they were saying, we like your work, we like your brain. We just don't like the way you look because you are a black woman. That can be a real blow to somebody. I mean, literally anyone would be upset by that. I know I personally would be. But it didn't really seem to faze her, or at least not outwardly. She was the co author for heaps and heaps of papers, for ones about nuclear rocket engine systems to ones about the economics of combined cycle congregation power plants. Please don't ask me what either of those mean because I'm not a scientist. And it's just a lot of letters jumbled up. Her career spanned for 34 years. And not only was she incredible brain for maths and science, but she was also a founding member and the president of the NASA Ski Club, which is kind of random, and I didn't really expect that, but she was. So she was a multi talented woman. She retired at some point between 1989, but she remained an active participant in the Speakers Bureau and the Business and Professional Women's Association. And she was essentially trying to show women, especially women of color, that there were opportunities out there and kind of teach them how to approach certain things. Obviously, she'd been through the wringer. She'd seen it all from the discrimination point of view in the workplace. So she probably had some great tips on how to deal with it, which is fantastic. So Annie died in Cleveland in 2011, on June 25th. And despite being involved in so many programs and being such a trailblazer, you know, president of the NASA Ski Club, which I'm sure was her greatest accomplishment, she didn't really, really ever progress much in her career, which seems weird to say. She was transferred within NASA three different times, but she never really received a promotion of any kind, which is sad because she clearly really knew what she was doing and made a lot of changes within NASA, but they didn't really see fit to give her a bit of a promotion, which says a lot about them. I think what I found quite frustrating about this episode is that even though Annie was a founding member of the space program before it even became NASA, and was clearly an incredible brain, incredible mind, there wasn't very much information about her when I went looking. And it was much, much more of a struggle to research this episode than I ever would have expected. If I'm honest, for somebody like her, I just thought it would be easier. But I guess that makes me think how important representation is. Because I feel sure that the women who were featured in Hidden Figures, the film would have had the same lack of information on them if it hadn't been for that film. And it just shows. These stories really do demand to be told. So Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Catherine Johnson, they were all from the film. They may now have a higher profile, but there are still women, especially women of color out there, who haven't had films made about them and haven't been celebrated the way that they should be. Annie being one of them, she invented space flight. Eventually. Emika. It's a bit of exaggeration, but it wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been there. Or at least it wouldn't have happened as Quickly as it did. And who knows, it might not have been Neil Armstrong walking around the moon. It could have been somebody completely different. And that, I'm going to say, was down to Annie, because if you take one cog out of a machine, it's not going to work properly. So, yes, tell these stories, promote these stories, and let's get some more films like Hidden Figures, because that one was really, really great. I'm going to leave you with a little bit of some quotes from Annie, who was talking about how to make your way in a field which isn't necessarily open for you. So she said, don't give up on it, just stick with it. Don't listen to people who always tell you it's hard and walk away from it. I'd like to just throw in here at this time that I tell people that it doesn't matter what your age is or what you decide to do when you're 18 or 16, it doesn't matter if you change your mind later on and change fields, because we need to be flexible, which is a very, very important point. She said all of this kind of came from her mother, but I think a lot of people think that if they choose a career at one point, I mean, here in the UK, you're basically sat on a path when you're 16 that you can't change your mind and you can't move on or move to a different place. That's not true. She proves that that's not true. You can change your mind and you can still get to the top of your industry and your career, despite being older or despite not having done that in the first place. And even with certain barriers visible, invisible barriers, you can do it, just stick with it, like Annie said. So I know that last week I didn't actually do one of these little drop some clues about who I'm going to do next week. So I thought I would do one this week. So she is a sailor. Next week I'm going to be talking about sailor. 200 years ago she was. So you're going to have to really yank out those history books and blow off the dust if you want to guess who it is. And she was living in France, but she did go a little bit further afield than France. She ended up there after a lot of time, but she didn't stay there her whole life and she did jump about quite a few different places. So, yes, 200 years ago, a sailor from France, if you know who I am talking about, please do let me know. I had one Person who managed to guess Claudette Colvin from last week on Twitter. I was very impressed with with that. Although I did give out quite a few clues. So I'm giving a few left this time. That's all you're gonna get, but if you know who it is, I would be very impressed. So drop me a tweet. Gggpod. And before I go, you've heard my celebration, but I think you've heard enough of my voice. So let's have a listen to a couple of people who are gonna be telling you their own celebrations. So we're getting a couple of extra opinions in there. People that they just wanna shout out wanna celebrate all of that of stuff. So let's give them a listen. Hello, my name's Natalie and today I wanted to talk about or do a cell herberation for a person in my life who I know is going through a bit of a rough time today. So just wanted to kind of share that love for somebody. So I'm going to give a shout out to Jessica Brady. Jess is somebody I know through auditions and friends and really is just an incredible human being who is really open and honest and always there for me if I'm having a bad moment. The reason I'm doing this, her story for her today is we've just been for coffee and I think we're both going through a bit of a frustrating time and it's really sad to know that somebody I find someone so inspiring can be suffering with anxiety or, you know, with rough times. She's been a really, well, outspoken human being for things like sexual assault and I find her so inspiring. So to know that she's having a bit of a tough time actually humbles me a little bit, to be honest, because I just, I can't. Sometimes you don't understand how amazing somebody is until you realize that they're also suffering. So yeah, I basically wanted my cell celebration to be about Jess and what she's going through. So I'm really inspired by her and I wanted to give her that shout out. So thanks so much for listening and sharing my her story Celebration cel her bration on women's radio station today. So thank you so much for listening. You have all been fantastic and you've been listening to Girls Girls girls on women's radio station. Don't forget to head over to womensradiostation.com as always, catch up on all of the shows including my own and I will see you guys next time. Sam. Welcome to women's radio station the Voice of women worldwide hungry. An average woman eats about 2 to 3 kilos of lipstick in her lifetime. Women's Radio Station, we want to hear from you. This is Women's Radio Station. You're listening to Avril Price with Kitchen Sink Spirituality. It's Anna Kennedy talking all things autism. 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We're currently welcoming donations to help towards our running costs to keep this important initiative alive. To donate, simply head to our website. Every little will help.