The Breakfast Club - IDKMYDE: The Woman Who Integrated NASA... Accidentally

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

One Black woman didn't plan to desegregate NASA—she simply went to work. Herpresence alone dismantled segregation inside one of America's most powerfulinstitutions.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BreakfastClubPower1051FMSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. It seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics. And now we're heading to Milan for the 26 Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers and we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 26 Milan-Crotina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free IHart Radio app. Did we mention it's free?

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Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The woman who integrated NASA accidentally. Welcome back, No. At All's, to another episode of the most anticipated podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network, especially in February. Entitled, I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. I'm your host, B.DOTS.

And I do the football PA announcing for Winston-Salem State, my alma mater, and for FAMU. So go Rams and go rap. We'll kick off today's episode as we do every episode with three of the most useless facts you'll never need,

not a day in life. Up first, John Glenn, a white man, the first American to orbit Earth. He refused to fly until a black woman check the computer's math by hand. Your second useless fact, that same black woman calculated the trajectory for Apollo 11's moon landing, the flight path to the moon without a computer.

And your third useless fact when Apollo 13 nearly killed three astronauts, that same black woman's backup calculations brought them back home alive. Now would you like to meet such a phenomenal woman? Do you know what her name is? Because I didn't. I didn't know. So dig it, when people talk about. talk about NASA desegregating, they love to make it sound clean.

Like they had a memo and had a meeting. Somebody stood up and said, today we choose equality. That's not how it happened. NASA's integration was messy, quiet, and unintentional. I introduced to you, Catherine Johnson. She were born in 1918 in White Sofer Springs, West Virginia. And she was so good at math that she started high school at 10 years old. This story made me look at my 13-year-old daughter and shake my head.

Problem was, her county didn't offer public school for black children past eighth grade, so her pop moved the entire family 125 miles so that baby could go to school. She graduated college at 18, summa cum laude, with degrees in mathematics and French. That made me look at my 19-year-old freshman at Livingstone College and shake my head. Later, Catherine would become one of three students and the only woman that was chosen to desegregate West Virginia University's graduate program. In 1953, she heard that NACA, which was the precursor to NASA, was hiring black women as computers. He applied and got the job. But here's the thing, she was hired to be invisible.

See, black women worked in the segregated West Area Computing section. separate bathrooms, separate cafeteria, separate office. They were even called colored computers. And Catherine Johnson decided, you know what, that wasn't going to work for her. She started asking questions and meetings where women wasn't even allowed. When somebody told her, excuse me, women can't attend briefings. She responded, is there a law against it? Well, there wasn't.

So she walked in anyway. In 1960, she became the first woman to receive credit as an author on a research report at NASA. of. But the moment that changed everything came two years later in 1962. See, NASA was preparing to send John Glenn in the orbit, the first American to circle the Earth. They had these brand new fancy IBM computers. Those was calculating his trajectory. But Glenn didn't trust them IBM computers. They were new. They had glitches. They froze. So Glenn made a request. Uh, get the color computer to check the numbers. And he was talking specifically about Catherine Johnson. He wanted her to run the same calculations as the IBM, but by hand, on a desktop calculator.

And she did it. And that's when Glenn said, if she says they're good, then I'm ready to go. Let that sink in. The astronaut who became a national hero trusted a black woman in the segregated South more than he trusted a million dollar computer. Glenn flew, he orbited, and he came home safe. And Catherine Johnson, she kept calculating. She calculated the trajectory for Apollo 11.

she told them where to send a rocket so it would land on the moon. In 1970, when Apollo 13's oxygen tank exploded and three astronauts were stranded in space, her backup procedures and return path calculations helped bring them right on home, alive. She later said, everybody was concerned about them getting there. We were concerned about them getting back. In 2015, President Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. At the ceremony, he says, No one knows that John Glenn wouldn't fly unless Catherine Johnson checked the math.

She died in 2020 at 101 years old. NASA didn't integrate because it was ready. It integrated because excellence made segregation impractical. Catherine Johnson didn't ask permission. She calculated. And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. It seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys' Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics.

And now we're heading to Milan for the 20. 2016 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers, and we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 26 Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free IHartRadio app. Do we mention it's free?

Search Two Guys' Five Rings. And listen now. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King's senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles.

I'm Minnick Lemoombo. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to... buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka Neurilingualistic Programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast.

On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. I went blank. I hit a bad note, and then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I?

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the IHeart Radio app. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.