Margot Lee Shetterly

“Insatiably curious about the world.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

I'm not a scientist or a mathematician.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“a lifetime of stories”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

The Russians had got a real head-start into space; America was playing catch-up.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

Growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“For Mary Jackson, life was a long process of raising one's expectations.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

My dad worked at NASA his whole career; he's a research scientist.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Surely she had never traveled a greater emotional distance”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“...internalized the Negro theorem of needing to be twice as good to get half as far.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Future generations would take the advances for granted”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

I want to keep telling stories of ordinary people.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“They wore their professional clothes like armor. They wielded their work like weapons, warding off the presumption of inferiority because they were…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Like craftsmen in a medieval guild, NASA engineers hoped that one day their children would decide to take up the mantle of…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Not even Pearl Young, the NACA’s first female engineer and the founder of the agency’s rigorous editorial review process, left behind research…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

It has been very rare to see a black woman as a protagonist. And also as three-dimensional people - mathematicians, mothers, wives,…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Get the girl to check the numbers,' said the astronaut. If she says the numbers are good, he told them, I'm ready…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“For twelve school years, every morning, she had turned left out the front door to get to work. Now the taxi turned…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

We want the big stories, of course, of the great men, but there's as much drama and interest and lessons to be…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

You need to decide that you're going to use a story to enlighten and inspire people in the modern day.

— Margot Lee Shetterly

Our next-door neighbour taught physics at Hampton University. Our church abounded with mathematicians. Supersonics experts held leadership positions in my mother's sorority,…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

Every time you go to an airport and get on a plane, you are basically taking advantage of the work that was…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

For too long, history has imposed a binary condition on its black citizens: either nameless or renowned, menial or exceptional, passive recipients…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“But years and miles away from home could never attenuate the city's hold on my identity, and the more I explored places…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

As much as I think it is necessary and desirable for white people to have an expanded view of the black American…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Because of the overwhelmingly white public face of the space program, the black engineers, scientists, and mathematicians who were deeply involved with…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“If Mary had applied for a job as janitor, the doors to the school would swing wide open. As a professional engineer-in-training…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Just as islands—isolated places with unique, rich biodiversity—have relevance for the ecosystems everywhere, so does studying seemingly isolated or overlooked people and…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Black newspapers and their readers wasted no time in making the link between America’s inadequacy in space and the dreadful conditions facing…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Building an airplane was nothing compared to shepherding research through Langley's grueling review process. "Present your case, build, sell it,= so they…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“might be just a set of equations and eye-blearing numbers disembodied from all physical significance. She might not hear another word about…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“And while the black women are the most hidden of the mathematicians who worked at the NACA, the National Advisory Committee for…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“James Thompson, a twenty-six-year-old cafeteria worker, eloquently articulated the Negro dilemma in a letter he wrote to the Pittsburgh Courier: "Being an…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“But by leapfrogging the United States into space, the Russians turned even local racial policy into fodder for the international conflict. In…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“The jobs, the housing, the relationships, the routines --- so many aspects of life that had been cut out of the whole…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“Early in her career at Langley, Dorthy Lee was interviewed for the Daily Press, in all probability by Virginia Biggins, the female…

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“West Virgina never left Katherine's heart, but Virginia was her destiny.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“each of us should be allowed to rise as far as our talent and hard work can take us. The”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“black people frequently disqualified themselves even without the WHITES ONLY sign in view”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

“She always kept up the questioning until she received a satisfactory answer.”

— Margot Lee Shetterly

Without imagination, I don't think there's any progress.

— Margot Lee Shetterly