The film, set at NASA Langley Research Center in 1961, depicts segregated facilities such as the West Area Computing unit, where an all-Black group of female mathematicians were originally required to use separate dining and bathroom facilities. However, in reality, Dorothy Vaughan was promoted to supervisor of West Computing much earlier, in 1949, becoming the first Black supervisor at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and one of its few female supervisors. In 1958, when NACA became NASA, segregated facilities, including the West Computing office, were abolished.[20] Vaughan and many of the former West computers transferred to the new Analysis and Computation Division (ACD), a racially and gender-integrated group.[21]
It was Mary Jackson, not Katherine Johnson, who had difficulty finding a colored bathroom — in a 1953 incident she experienced while on temporary assignment in the East Area, a region of Langley unfamiliar to her and where few Blacks worked.[22] Katherine Johnson, for her part, was initially unaware that the bathrooms at Langley were segregated (in both its East and West areas during the NACA era), and used the "whites-only" bathrooms (many were not explicitly labeled as such) for years before anyone complained. She ignored the complaint, and the issue was dropped.[23][24]
In an interview with WHRO-TV, Johnson denied the feelings of segregation. "I didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research. You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job ... and play bridge at lunch. I didn't feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it."[25]
Mary Jackson did not have to get a court order to attend night classes at the whites-only high school. She asked the city of Hampton for an exception, and it was granted. The school turned out to be run down and dilapidated, a hidden cost of running two parallel school systems.[26] She completed her engineering courses and earned a promotion to engineer in 1958.[27]
Katherine Johnson worked mostly in Langley's West Area, not the East Area — working mainly in Building 1244 starting in mid-1953, and remaining in 1244 even after joining the Space Task Group, through at least the early 1960s and John Glenn's historic flight.[28][29][30]
The scene where a coffeepot labeled "colored" appears in Katherine Johnson's workplace did not happen in real life, and the book on which the film is based mentions no such incident.
Katherine Johnson carpooled with Eunice Smith, a nine-year West Area computer veteran at the time Johnson joined NACA. Smith was her neighbor and friend from her sorority and church choir.[31] The three Goble children were teenagers at the time of Katherine's marriage to Jim Johnson.[32]
Katherine Johnson was assigned to the Flight Research Division in 1953, a move that soon became permanent. When the Space Task Group was created in 1958, engineers from the Flight Research Division formed the core of the group, and Johnson was included. She coauthored a research report published by NASA in 1960, the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.[33] Johnson gained access to editorial meetings as of 1958 simply through persistence, not because one particular meeting was critical.[34][35]
The Space Task Group was led by Robert Gilruth, not the fictional character Al Harrison, who was created to simplify a more complex management structure. The scene where Harrison smashes the Colored Ladies Room sign never happened, as in real life Johnson refused to walk the extra distance to use the colored bathroom and, in her words, "just went to the white one."[36] Harrison also lets her into Mission Control to witness the launch. Neither scene happened in real life, and screenwriter Theodore Melfi said he saw no problem with adding the scenes, saying, "There needs to be white people who do the right thing, there needs to be Black people who do the right thing, and someone does the right thing. And so who cares who does the right thing, as long as the right thing is achieved?"[36]
Dexter Thomas of Vice News criticized Melfi's additions as creating the white savior trope: "In this case, it means that a white person doesn't have to think about the possibility that, were they around back in the 1960s South, they might have been one of the bad ones."[37] The Atlantic's Megan Garber said that the film's "narrative trajectory" involved "thematic elements of the white savior".[38] Melfi said he found "hurtful" the "accusations of a 'white savior' storyline", saying:
It was very upsetting to me because I am at a place where I've lived my life colorless and I grew up in Brooklyn. I walked to school with people of all shapes, sizes, and colors, and that's how I've lived my life. So it's very upsetting that we still have to have this conversation. I get upset when I hear 'Black film,' and so does Taraji P. Henson ... It's just a film. And if we keep labeling something 'a Black film,' or 'a white film'— basically it's modern day segregation. We're all humans. Any human can tell any human's story. I don't want to have this conversation about Black film or white film anymore. I wanna have conversations about film.
The Huffington Post's Zeba Blay said of Melfi's frustration:
His frustration is also a perfect example of how, when it comes to open dialogue about depictions of people of color on screen, it behooves white people (especially those who position themselves as 'allies') to listen ... the inclusion of the bathroom scene doesn't make Melfi a bad filmmaker, or a bad person, or a racist. But his suggestion that a feel-good scene like that was needed for the marketability and overall appeal of the film speaks to the fact that Hollywood at large still has a long way to go in telling Black stories, no matter how many strides have been made.[39]
The fictional characters Vivian Mitchell and Paul Stafford are composites of several team members and reflect common social views and attitudes of the time. Karl Zielinski is based on Mary Jackson's mentor, Kazimierz "Kaz" Czarnecki.[40]
John Glenn, who was about a decade older than depicted at the time of launch, did ask specifically for Johnson[41] to verify the IBM calculations, although she had several days before the launch date to complete the process.[42]
Author Margot Lee Shetterly has agreed that there are differences between her book and the movie, but found that to be understandable.
For better or for worse, there is history, there is the book and then there's the movie. Timelines had to be conflated and [there were] composite characters, and for most people [who have seen the movie] have already taken that as the literal fact. ... You might get the indication in the movie that these were the only people doing those jobs, when in reality we know they worked in teams, and those teams had other teams. There were sections, branches, divisions, and they all went up to a director. There were so many people required to make this happen. ... It would be great for people to understand that there were so many more people. Even though Katherine Johnson, in this role, was a hero, there were so many others that were required to do other kinds of tests and checks to make [Glenn's] mission come to fruition. But I understand you can't make a movie with 300 characters. It is simply not possible.[43]
John Glenn's flight was not terminated early as stated in the movie's closing subtitles. The MA-6 mission was planned for three orbits and landed at the expected time. The press kit published before launch states that "The Mercury Operations Director may elect a one, two or three orbit mission."[44] The post-mission report also shows that retrofire was scheduled to occur on the third orbit.[45] Scott Carpenter's subsequent flight in May was also scheduled and flew for three orbits, and Wally Schirra's planned six-orbit flight in October required extensive modifications to the Mercury capsule's life-support system to allow him to fly a nine-hour mission.[46] The phrase "go for at least seven orbits" that is in the mission transcript refers to the fact that the Atlas booster had placed Glenn's capsule into an orbit that would be stable for at least seven orbits, not that he had permission to stay up that long.
The Mercury Control Center was located at Cape Canaveral in Florida, not at the Langley Research Center in Virginia. The orbit plots displayed in the front of the room incorrectly show a six-orbit mission, which did not happen until Wally Schirra's MA-8 mission in October 1962. The movie also incorrectly shows NASA flight controllers monitoring live telemetry from the Soviet Vostok launch, which the Soviet Union would not have been sharing with NASA in 1961.
Katherine Johnson's Technical Note D-233, co-written with T.H. Skopinski, can be found on the NASA Technical Reports Server.[47]
The movie depicts the IBM 7090 as the first computer at Langley, but there were actually earlier[48]: 138 computers there, and Dorothy Vaughan had previously[48]: 205–206 been programming for the IBM 704 in FORTRAN.
Actual IBM 7090 consoleIBM 7094 operator's console shown in the movie, with additional index register displays in a distinctive extra box on top. Note "Multiple Tag Mode" light in the top center.The movie refers to an IBM 7090, but the console shown is for an IBM 7094, which came later.
