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The Current Transcript for July 4, 2017

Host: Mike Finnerty

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: People who are cautious are here and people who are not cautious are usually the ones that get in trouble, reight?

VOICE 2: Yes

VOICE 1: And so, we all want to be safe, right?

MIKE FINNERTY: In line at Shambhala B.C., some music festival goers there are getting their party drugs tested. Few festivals offer it and calls to institute drug testing are meeting resistance. Critics say it sends the wrong message. Proponents say people should know what they're taking especially in the age of Fentanyl. Plus, in Sweden the country's largest music festival is cancelled after sexual assault allegations. Coming up: Keeping Canada's summer music festivals safe. Also today, the human computers at the heart of a space race.

SOUNDCLIP

John Glenn asked Catherine Johnson to basically check the computer outlet. Let's make sure that these numbers are correct. Get the girl to do it. That's what he said.

MF: How NASA's black female mathematicians won respect. I'm Mike Finnerty. Welcome to the summer edition of The Current.

Harm reduction experts call for more drug testing at music festivals

Guest: Chloe Sage, Kira-Lynn Ferderber

SOUNDCLIP

To get back to the warning that I've received., you might take it with however many grains of salt you wish. That the brown acid that they are circulating around this is not specifically too good. It's suggested that you just you do stay away from that, because it is your own trip, so be my guest. But please be advised that there is a warning on that one, okay?

MF: Watch the brown acid; a warning at Woodstock forty eight years ago this month, just in case you thought today's youth were inventing something. With potentially deadly drugs such as fentanyl showing up in party drugs, the issue of drug safety is front of mind at music festivals across the country this summer something that has changed since Woodstock is the technology available quickly to test pills and other substances before they are ingested, to give some indication what you're getting. But it's a controversial practice. Last week a non-profit group in Montreal caused a stir by calling for drug testing analysis to be available at Quebec music festivals to guard against fentanyl exposure. Critics say that drug testing only promotes drug taking. Our first guest today sees it differently. Chloe Sage wants to make it safer for people who are planning on using drugs at the Shambhala music festival and to others in B.C. She's with the , AIDS Network Kootenay Outreach and Support Society, that's also known as ANKORS and it's an organization dedicated to harm reduction including for people who use drugs and Chloe’s in Slocan, B.C. Chloe, hello.

CHLOE SAGE: Good morning.

MF: Why does your organization offer drug testing at Shambhala?

CHLOE SAGE: Well we're going to wear our 50th year offering drug testing at Shambhala. So we've been doing it for quite a long time and we really believe that an educated society is a healthy society. So drug taking is part of education and we really believe that people need to understand the risks associated with drugs and the risks around what is in the drugs they are taking before they choose to use it.

MF: How does it or how does it work exactly? What are you able to test for?

CHLOE SAGE: Well we had quite a long list of substances that we are able to test for. We use a multi faceted level of testing so we started out by using chemical reagents which is a really basic type of testing but it's also fast and cheap. So we were able to tell people one ingredient in what they had or we were able to tell whether drugs were misrepresented. And we had about between 20 and 30 percent of substances coming into the tent came back unknown, or not what people thought they were. So we had a really large number of substances being misrepresented. We added some technologies this year and last year we added a Roman spectrometer. So we can tell two ingredients, the two main ingredients in the substance. And now we've also added panthenol testing as well with panthenol test strips.

MF: Okay, so if something is, for instance cut with a small amount of fentanyl, is that something you'd pick up?

CHLOE SAGE: We will be able to with the panthenol test strips. Absolutely. But up until this year we couldn't test for that at all. And so the conversations that we were having with each person that came into the tent were around the possibility that other substances could be adulterating their substances, that the positive result of that test does not mean that it's pure. These are conversations we have with every single person that comes. So we're not just testing their substances we're actually doing education with them as well on harm reduction tips, right dosage and mixing drugs and the risks around that as well.

MF: Okay. And in your experience how often have people been sold something or [unintelligible] misrepresented or something altogether different?

CHLOE SAGE: Yeah that's where, it's between 20 and 30 percent that we're finding. It's quite a high number.

MF: That is quite high, isn't it?

CHLOE SAGE: Yes.

MF: How many people avail themselves of the drug testing?

CHLOE SAGE: So last year we've had about 500 noon test being done every year, over the year. So we've really raised up, you know, from a couple of hundred. Last year we did three thousand seven hundred ninety five tests over five days. And but also that's a small number compared to the amount of people that come to our booth for other things as well. Last year we had over 12000 visitors to our booth for other information and including the testing. So people are not just coming for with a test, they're coming for other information as well and [unintelligible] reduction supplies. But the testing is very popular.

MF: Yes, it does sound like they're a bit hesitant though. The numbers are probably not as high as I'd like them.

CHLOE SAGE: There is actually as many as we can do. We're maxed out for our amount of volunteers and the space that we have. People are waiting for an hour and a half to get their tests and that line up does not get shorter for 12 hours straight. So it's a very high number. I mean the festival is only 15000 people.

MF: How many festivals across Canada are doing this?

CHLOE SAGE: Well there's very few right now. Many would like to do more but they're finding that it's very restrictive. I think people would like to see it happen more but there's a reluctance on some fast because they're just worried about getting into trouble. So, we need to change some of the policies to allow for this to be easier for festivals to embrace.

MF: Okay, let's talk about that specifically and some of the resistance that there is out there. I'd like you to have a listen to Diane Colley-Urquhart. She's been a healthcare professional for 45 years. She's a former Calgary police commissioner and she's currently a Calgary city councillor. Here's her view.

SOUNDCLIP

The best approach with this is to have EMS on site, fire because they know how to resuscitate people as well, and in order to reduce harm. So you know when it comes to harm reduction at these concerts you can't be spending a lot of time thinking that drug testing kits are going to make all the difference in the world. The other point here is that you have young people that come there, that already have taken something. So what we have to do in these cases with more and more of these larger concerts happening is to just make sure that we got all of the health care professionals on board to try to save lives.

MF: So the best approach according to her is to have more emergency medical technicians on site.

CHLOE SAGE: Oh, I agree with her completely. We of course need all facets of support on site, and drug checking is not the silver bullet here. Drug checking in one of the pillars of the response to this crisis that we're in right now, which we're dealing with, many many deaths from overdoses, and of course at Shambhala we have a stellar medical team that is like a field hospital and it's a massive team, but we also have outreach teams wandering the site. We also women’s safe space for women who experience being unsafe. We have sober camps for people who want to do the festival sober. We have drug checking and information. So, we do an integrated service when it comes to supporting our guests that includes many facets. So I would never suggest that someone just set up a drug checking booth and [unintelligible] that that is the only thing they need to support our festival guests. Absolutely.

MF: And what about her suggestion that drug testing may end up giving party goers a false sense of security in that… Sure you know what the drug is and say it is what you are sold. You still have to take it responsibly and not take too much of it. For instance not mix it with the wrong thing.

CHLOE SAGE: And that's the conversations we have with every single person that comes in to the booth. When you think about it, the false sense of security, if we were not there to talk about these risks that are associated with the drugs that they're taking, then who's going to talk to them about it? The drug dealer is the only information that they are going to be given. So a false sense of security coming from a drug dealer, probably they are going to get a lot more false sense of security from them than they are from us.

MF: Chloe, there are going to be a lot of people listening to you, thinking just don't take the drugs and that solves a problem.

CHLOE SAGE: Sure. That will be so much easier for all of us, wouldn’t it? We've been saying don't do drugs for a really long time. We have a very abstinent based approach in our society and it's not working. It hasn't worked. So let's try something different. Let's be real about the fact that people are going to choose to use drugs, whether we like it or not. And try to mitigate the risks around the use.

MF: So how should the law change in your view to facilitate safer party going?

CHLOE SAGE: Well I think for a starter, I think when you criminalize the people who use drugs then you create an environment where they can't talk about what they do and that puts them at a greater risk. Most of the people that have died from fentanyl overdoses have died because they use it wrong. So, with stigma and the criminalization that are associated with drug use is actually a huge factor in the deaths of people. So, if we take that away and treat it as a health issue, and we respect the fact that people can make choices about their own lives, and we just without judgment help them be educated around what they are taking, I think we have a much healthier society.

MF: Is there a reason why this happens more often at European festivals than it does here in Canada?

CHLOE SAGE: Well, I think it happens because they have a really great approach to drug use. They see it as something that happens in society. They accept the fact that happens and they look at how they can mitigate those risks. So they've been doing drug checking in the Netherlands since the early 1990s. And the reason why they started doing drug checking is because they wanted to monitor drug trends in the streets. So they actually set up facilities across the country to offer drug checking to people. And then, they wrote reports. And they accepted drugs from not only people on the streets, but also from police and border security and then they put all those together and then they would actually share this information. So they could [unintelligible] harm reduction strategies around drugs very before people started dying from them.

MF: Chloe, thanks very much for speaking to us, appreciate your time.

CHLOE SAGE: Thank you very much for having me.

MF: Chloe Sage. She is Prevention and Education Coordinator, AIDS Network Kootenay Outreach and Support Society. They offer drug testing at music festivals and she was in Slocan, British Columbia. When it comes to drug safety at music festivals bad doses of recreational drugs are not the only concern. Sometimes drugs are ingested without consent.

SOUNDCLIP

I had a drink in my hand and then all of a sudden I went from being super happy and having a great time to not being able to control my own body or speak properly so I knew right away something had happened. I immediately decided to try to leave because I knew it was not an option to find my friends. They were lost in the crowd and I was also afraid that whoever did it to me was going to try to follow me out and try to pretend he was my friend because that's usually what happens.

MF: That is Melanie Dousette, describing the frightening moments she knew her drink had been spiked at Montreal’s Osheaga music festival last summer. Melanie Doucette made it home safely but an alarming number of patrons attending festivals around the world have been victims of sexual violence. In Sweden the largest music festival has been cancelled for next year. Police say four rapes were reported and 23 sexual assaults between last Thursday and Sunday at the Bravalla festival. Kira-Lynn Ferderber is a sexual violence prevention educator. She worked with festival organizers to create safe areas for attendees. And she says an anti-sexual violence strategy is essential to any major event, as essential as a fire evacuation plan. She's in Sarasota Florida. Kira-Lynn good morning.

KIRA-LYNN FERDERBER : Thanks for having me.

MF: How big of a problem do you think this is, and what do you make of that news from Sweden?

KIRA-LYNN FERDERBER : Well sexual violence at festivals is a major problem and women and girls especially have been talking about it for years. And now the research is in and science is backing up what firsthand accounts have been telling us. I mean canceling festival is one thing you can do. My approach comes around more trying to improve the festival experience with education and programs. But I guess if in Sweden people are deciding they can't take those steps and just cancelling is a good stopgap measure. But in the long term I'd like there to be great exciting fun festivals that everyone can enjoy safely.

MF: What are the factors at play at a music festival that can lead to it being the kind of place where you see sexual violence?

KIRA-LYNN FERDERBER : So one is just that there's so many people together. So, sexual violence happens in all kinds of different spaces and areas, not always in crowds and not usually by strangers. But in a festival, it's a huge crowd of people. There's also the fact that drugs and alcohol are present so frequently people that experience sexual violence at a festival experience drug or alcohol facilitated assault. So that somebody being slipped a drug like you mentioned or like Melanie's story or it's somebody taking advantage of someone who's already under the influence. And another factor is bystander apathy, which means in a big crowd people see something it doesn't look great and they don't do anything because they think it's not their responsibility.

MF: I want to talk about the in fact some of your strongest advice is about bystanders. But just before we do that Melanie was talking about how she found it difficult to get support from the security personnel. How confident are you that they're getting the type of training they need to handle cases like this?

KIRA-LYNN FERDERBER : Yes. Melanie is a real hero to me and she put a face to a story that we've all been talking about for a long time. And she's turned something awful that happened to or into an opportunity for advocacy. And what she says is that the experience she had soured her on that possible not just because one person showed up at it and slipped her a drug but because nobody that she passed helped her and the security didn't give her a satisfactory response. I'm not confident that security is across the board well-trained. Security forces at festivals they vary widely. They are sometimes they're very well-trained and sometimes they're not. And unfortunately it is seen as more important sometimes to train in other areas. But we're seeing a change. We're seeing more awareness around that issue and some security people are taking it upon themselves to become more educated whether they're getting that from their employer or not.

MF: And so a big part of your advice is to lean on your friends but also to I guess enlist bystanders to help make festival safer. Can you explain your advice?

KIRA-LYNN FERDERBER : Yes so I think that as we talk about these issues at festivals it can seem like we're kind of scare people off going. I actually believe festivals can be an amazing safe and supportive place because there so many people there who could look out for you. But what we need is for people to actually do something if they see something that isn't right. So bystander intervention is one safety strategy. It basically means paying attention to what's going on around you whether you're an artist, just an attendee, a security person, somebody who's a vendor and if you see something that doesn't look okay if you see somebody that's in trouble, approaching them asking them if they're all right or letting security know or staying with them. Or if you see someone who is treating someone wrong calling them out on it directly or distracting them to interrupt the behavior.

MF: Well what's the best approach? Say you are there and you see someone doing something that really they shouldn't be doing. Should you go to confrontation mode or what's your advice?

KIRA-LYNN FERDERBER : Well by saying intervention it's great because it's very adaptable. It's personal. It's a safety strategy that you can use however you're comfortable. So the best approach is whatever makes you feel safe and keeps everyone else's safety in mind as well. So, not starting that confrontation not escalating. Sometimes especially men that I speak to their only idea they have is to start a big fight or call the cops. We recommend something that is more low key. So it could be like you said doing something direct. Walking up to someone and saying hey I don't think that girl wants to talk to you. Maybe you should leave her alone. And if that's not your personality style or you don't feel comfortable doing that in that moment, you could choose to distract someone. Walk up to two people and say: “Hey how's your day going? You know what band is on next? You know where the beer tent is?” And you might distract them long enough to get someone who's uncomfortable a chance get it away or to give yourself a chance to get more information about what's going on.

MF: So it's funny when we talk about this on the Montreal Morning Show where I'm the host, we had a lot of pushback strangely about it from instant feedback on say the text messages line and things like that. How open are festival organizers to making changes and to changing the way things occur or roll out at festivals?

KIRA-LYNN FERDERBER : Some festival organizers are really progressive and open and they want to make their festival as safe as possible. Some are more resistant. I think it used to be that some of them had never thought about this issue. They didn't know sexual violence was happening. Or they say they did not know. I don't think that excuse can be used anymore because we are talking about it in the media all the time. People are talking about on social media as well. So festivals are getting onboard. I would say more and more every year. And the few that are not talking about sexual violence prevention are going to be the hold outs, that's I think will see an fact to their bottom line because young women are sharing their stories like Melanie, and talking about where something happened to them. And if the festival make them feel safe, and where they're going to spend their money in the future.

MF: Kira-Lynn, thanks for speaking to us.

KIRA-LYNN FERDERBER : Thank you so much for having me.

MF: Kira-Lynn Ferderber. She's a sexual violence prevention educator. She was in Sarasota Florida and now over to you. How safe do you feel when you attend music festivals? And do you think festival organizers should for instance provide drug testing sites, safe spaces? Do you think they're doing enough? What's your own experience, where you are? You can find us on Facebook to make a comment and post or you can tweet us over @thecurrentCBC and you can send us an e-mail. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link. The actual music is also a big part of the country's music festivals, don't forget. So we're going to go out this half hour with what some young Canadians will be listening to at music festivals this summer. The DJ and producer A-Trak, originally from Montreal. He's going to be one of the headliners at Shambhala playing on the from the fractal forest stage. And here he is with his 2012 song Money Making.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: Song]

Money making.

Hey.

Money, money making.

Let’s go.

I love that money.

Money making.

Hey.

Money, money making.

Let’s go.

I love that money.

Ha.

MF: A track for Montreal song’s Money Making. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio 1. Coming up next, hidden figures. NASA and black female mathematicians.

ENCORE | Meet the black women who broke ground in NASA space race

Guests: Margot Lee Shatterly, Christine Darden

MF: Hello I'm Mike Finnerty. You're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Musci: Theme]

MF: Up next. The unsung women behind that one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

SOUNDCLIP

Oh we just love. It was hard to do, but when you got it, you got it. There was a right and wrong. I see in history there was no right and wrong. There was a visible objective in mathematics and you knew when you got there.

MF: Katherine Goble Johnson at 98 years old they are reflecting on how her love of mathematics led her to a remarkable career. Remarkable especially for a black woman of her era, Katherine Goble Johnson worked for NASA, making critical calculations that helped American astronauts return safely from space. She was helping the U.S. advance in the space race even as the advance for civil rights was still being fought for at home and she was not alone. She was among a group of black women at NASA known as the West area computers. Author Margot Lee Shetterly set out to shed more light on their contributions in her book Hidden Figures. That's the book that was adapted to a film of the same name released earlier this year. Margot Lee Shetterly spoke with Anna Maria from Charlottesville, Virginia in October.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Before we start, I just want to make one thing clear. When we talk about computers in “West Area Computers,” we're not talking about machines, are we?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: We are not talking about machines. It's easy for us to think that in this day and age—when a computer is ubiquitous on our desktops and in our phones and even our toasters—that a computer always has been an appliance, when in fact a computer was a job category meaning somebody who computed, somebody whose profession was to do calculations, a professional mathematician. For many years, this person was usually a woman.

AMT: What types of work then, were the human computers doing?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: In the particular case of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, what they were working on is aeronautical research: helping planes fly faster, higher, more efficiently and safer. A lot of the work that's done today by electronic computers—long calculations you know everything from simple but necessary arithmetic to differential equations, calculus, higher order math—that was done by women. This group of black women who came in and were working as computers were actually part of a larger group of black and white women.

AMT: And what was the relationship like between the women and the primarily white male engineers?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: It varied depending on the engineer, but generally speaking, the engineer was the person who decided what problems there were to be solved, set up the research, whether it was in a wind tunnel or a plane that was flying you know an actual test flight or even space flight later on. But the engineer was the one who kind of set up the research and the problems and would give the mathematical work to the computer, to the woman who worked with them. Over time, a number of the women were able to do work more akin to engineering. Even if they had the title of computer or mathematician, they became partners in this work and even got their name on research reports. But it really did depend on the engineer and the engineer’s ability to see the talent in the person he was working with regardless of her gender or her colour.

AMT: Did the women always know what they were calculating for?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Frequently they didn't know. You know a woman might be working on a slice of that problem and might not actually know whether she was testing a bomber or a fighter plane or something else altogether. So very frequently, the women who were sort of the aeronautical ground troops didn't get the same picture that the generals you know the division chiefs and the people higher up and those engineers had of the work that they were doing.

AMT: And we heard Katherine Johnson off the top there. Despite being in a lower position as a mathematician than the engineers, she played a key role in America's race to space. In fact, there was a special request for her from John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. What's the story there?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: In 19—early 1960s, Project Mercury was in full bloom. This was America's first manned space program. Two successful missions had happened: Alan Shepard and then Gus Grissom. These were suborbital flights, so basically the capsule kind of goes into space, something like—imagine a champagne cork being popped and then just you know following a parabola and falling back to the earth. Well, John Glenn's flight was going to be a real ground-breaking mission because he was leaving the Earth's atmosphere, orbiting around the earth and coming back safely. This was a really interesting moment in space history because it was also a time when computers—electronic computers, not the female computers—were starting to take over from their human counterparts. Now you can imagine going into space is a risky endeavour and there's so many things to check and one of the things to do was to understand that the computer was functioning properly. So John Glenn asked Katherine Johnson to basically check the computer output, let's make sure that these numbers are correct. Get the girl to do it, that’s what he said. The girl being Katherine Johnson and girl being the name for basically all of the human computers at that time, they were called girls.

AMT: Of course they were.

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Ask the girl to do it. You know these were the 19 you know 40s and 50s and 60s. Times have changed significantly. But get the girl to do it. If her calculations match those of the computers, well then, you know I'm satisfied and you know I'm ready to go into space.

AMT: That is a great story. So you make the point that women were doing this job and that there were white women and black women. They were actually segregated under the original system of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the NACA.

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Yes. This was in Virginia, starting in the 1940s when the Jim Crow segregation laws were still very much in effect.

AMT: And so how did black women start getting those jobs?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: It wasn't until World War II, you know a time of all hands on deck labour. And in 1941, a labour leader named A. Phillip Randolph essentially pressured President Roosevelt to open the federal government jobs, the civil service defense industry jobs to African-Americans. Two years after an executive order signed by Roosevelt, five black women walked through the door at the Langley Memorial Laboratory.

AMT: There were black men working there in a professional capacity at the time as well?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: There were not actually. So the first black professionals to work at what became NASA were actually women. There were black men working there as groundskeepers, as mechanics, as janitors, all of that kind of thing. That is true. But it wasn't until the 1950s that the first black male engineers started taking jobs at Langley. So really, when we think about the first black Americans in the space program, we're talking about women.

AMT: Now millions of American women lost their jobs as the men came home after the war ended. How did the West Area Computers keep their jobs?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: In fact, they did you know lay off a few employees, but the thing is the aeronautics industry was very strong you know and the airplane had played a very important role in the victory, of the Allied victory, in World War II. As soon as World War II ended, we kind of moved into the Cold War and the Cold War really ushered in a new era of airplanes and aeronautics and flying higher and you know even looking towards space flight.

AMT: Now there was segregation at the time. What was it like for those women at work?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Because of Virginia laws which required segregation, they worked in their own office. There is actually a sign that said “Coloured Computers” in the cafeteria and that was where they were required to sit during lunch. They had coloured bathrooms. One of the women that I profile in my book is named Mary Jackson, and Mary Jackson has the distinction of being the first black woman to be an engineer at NASA. She was promoted in 1958 to become a full aeronautical engineer. And it happened that one day she was working with a group of white computers and she asked them well, can you tell me where the bathroom is? And they kind of snickered because you know well, they said well, we don't know where your bathroom is, meaning the coloured bathroom. And you can imagine this was a real moment where this woman Mary Jackson— well-educated professional doing very well in her job—was confronted with the ugly realities of Jim Crow segregation there in this very professional workplace. So you know it took a lot. I mean this—I think a lot of times we think about the courage that it takes to protest and to make changes. There are so many different ways to do that. And I think to go into a workplace like that every day—a segregated workplace—and to still do absolutely top notch professional work, it really takes a lot of guts and I think that you know the everyday courage of these women definitely created opportunities for women of all colours and for African-American men.

AMT: Why was a job there worth putting up with that kind of treatment?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Well, I think you know a lot of jobs required you know confronting that kind of treatment. You know I mean for most black—

AMT: It’s not like you could escape it at that time, is it?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: You couldn’t escape it. This was a part of everyday life. Many black women worked in laundries. They worked in white people's homes. They did a lot of very difficult, dirty, often you know underpaid, underappreciated work. Having a job like this—a professional mathematician—for most of these women, you know and for women in general, not just black women but for all women who were talented mathematicians, who had studied math in school, the primary option was to become a math teacher. And so having a job as a professional mathematician and in one of the highest level scientific organizations in the world, well, I mean you know that truly was a door opening on an entirely new way of living and working. I mean this was a huge opportunity for these women and you know they were determined to do anything they could to keep those jobs.

AMT: A few years later, Mary Jackson has a confrontation with a white male boss, John Becker, who tells her that some calculations she has done are incorrect. What happens then?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Mary Jackson’s division chief John Becker had given her a set of numbers to compute. She did the work and she got the results and he questioned the numbers. They just didn't look right to him. So they went back and forth over the numbers and it turned out that he had actually given her the wrong data as input so her output was correct based on the input that he had given her. To his credit, you know he apologized to her and needless to say, Mary Jackson enjoyed an increase in status among all the female computers for you know basically facing down the big boss you know and someone who's very, very well known in the aeronautical research world and sticking to her guns. You know African-American woman in the still segregated South, and yet you know she had the soul of an engineer. That's one of the things that her immediate boss recognized about her and really supported her in terms of getting into an engineer and training program.

AMT: Margot Lee Shetterly, stay with us. We have someone else with us who has firsthand experience working at NASA. Christine Darden is African-American. She joined NASA in 1967. She worked primarily as a researcher and project manager, mostly in the field of sonic boom minimization. She is now retired. She's with us from Norfolk, Virginia. Hello. Hello.

CHRISTINE DARDEN: Hello. How are you today?

AMT: Well, I'm well. It's good to talk to you. Does listening to this bring back memories?

CHRISTINE DARDEN: It absolutely does. And I've actually learned a lot since Margot did her research and wrote her book.

AMT: Because you were the next, the next generation to come in.

CHRISTINE DARDEN: I was always much later than most of those ladies, yes.

AMT: Well, we were just talking about John Becker, the boss. You also had an encounter with Mr. Becker. What issue did you bring up with him?

CHRISTINE DARDEN: Well, I brought up the issue of a female coming in with a certain background—and when I went there, I had a master's degree in applied mathematics—being put into the computer pool which tended to be a fairly dead end as far as job progression, rather than in an engineering section where men with identical backgrounds were put and they began to work on their own projects and write reports and move ahead. And it turned out that a young black mathematician and I had been hired at the same time and he had come in at a lower grade than I had and had been promoted twice and I had not been promoted at all. I was doing pretty much work for someone else and I think my name only went on one report while I was in the computer office. And so when I found that out, I really got enough energy to go approach Mr. Becker and ask because I had actually said things to some of the other bosses and they told me you know I couldn't move out, I couldn't do this. And he was supportive. I actually got a pretty fast promotion after my visit with him.

AMT: Now you also began studying for a doctorate in mechanical engineering while you were working there. What do you remember most about that?

CHRISTINE DARDEN: I didn't really know much when I went to Langley about what engineers did. And as they came into the office and I saw what they were working on, you know I said gosh, I ought to be able to do this. I had a physics minor, so I did start taking classes. One of the frightening things about it was that I knew I would be in school with primarily all-white males. That was frightening for me because I had grown up, all of my education had been in a segregated environment. As I was growing up, we always heard we were going to have to run really fast, faster than everybody else. We always heard that I guess white men were smarter than we were. That was sort of the attitude that was in the community. And so the idea of going into a class with them was sort of frightening but I said I'm going to do it. And sure enough when I went into my first class, there were about seven white males and me and I don't think anybody really spoke to me.

AMT: What year was that?

CHRISTINE DARDEN: That would have probably been about 1973.

AMT: Wow.

CHRISTINE DARDEN: ’73 or four, yeah. And so after the first test, I had done very well. And I guess we could see each other's papers sometimes. [chuckles] And so, a couple of the guys in the class came over and said hey, you know we were wondering if you'd be interested in joining our study group. And so I said sure, you know that would be great. And I very much felt a part of the class after that.

AMT: Wow. You should see me smiling as you tell that story. Looking at it now, how big of an impact do you feel you and your black female colleagues were able to have on breaking the colour and gender barriers in math and science and engineering?

CHRISTINE DARDEN: Well, I absolutely think it's been tremendous and as I have heard and learned some recently about some of the things that they went through, I think it changed the attitude of the males. Most of the males that were there when we went there had not been in school with women. They certainly hadn't been in school with blacks. And so they just had an attitude of the capabilities of both the women and the blacks. And that came through in the environment. And so we did see that attitude change especially in the engineering areas itself.

AMT: And you were really—you were so much a part then, of that whole change in attitudes of being able to show people why their attitudes needed to change.

CHRISTINE DARDEN: I was very much a part of it. I think in my own little area, sonic boom was one of the key environmental impediments to having supersonic airplanes. And so working in that area was fairly high profile, I developed one of the codes that was used to actually show us how maybe we could reduce that sonic boom and then I actually became a technical lead in that area leading the research that we were going to do. And ultimately, I sort of led a national group which included all the NASA centres, a lot of university professors.

AMT: Hmm. Christine Darden, it's really interesting to hear your story. Thank you for sharing it with us and thank you for your work.

CHRISTINE DARDEN: And thank you so much for having me.

AMT: That's Christine Darden. She's a retired NASA researcher and project manager. She joined us from Norfolk, Virginia. Margot Lee Shetterly is still with us. She is the author of Hidden Figures. I have to ask you Margot, how did black Americans view the link between the fight for civil rights and the space race?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: You know for the people who knew about this and you know were close to this, they really saw this as a great thing. You know this is an area where you're either right or you're wrong. You can be technically excellent and use that as a way to advance in a job where you might not be able to do so when the criteria are more subjective. So you know I certainly grew up with that ethos of you know technical fields are a great thing for women, for you know, for everyone. You know but there was—certainly during the height of the space program—a lot of people questioned the expenditure on space and said you know we should be focusing on helping poor people, on helping African-Americans. Why are we spending you know all of this money to send a handful of men to the moon when we have so many problems on Earth?

AMT: And meanwhile, race and space were linked in the public imagination in another way. How did the Soviet Union use race relations in America as a propaganda tool?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Well, you know it is interesting because you know the civil rights movement and the space race happened at very much the same time: the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviet Union reflected all of those images of Little Rock and Selma to the world and said listen. Here is a country, the United States of America, that professes to be a democracy and to believe in equality for all of its citizens and yet, it does not practice what it preaches. And you need look no further than the pages of the newspapers and showing black Americans being denied education, being beaten in the streets. The United States—you know obviously very sensitive to its international image—did try to make some strides. But you know for some reason, these black women who had been there for so many years and then the black men who joined them in the 1950s, in a lot of ways they could have been the best antidote to those charges by the Soviet Union. And yet they sort of stayed in the shadows for many years.

AMT: Your book Hidden Figures is on the best sellers list. There's a movie version coming out next year with high-profile stars like Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer. Why do you think this story is striking a chord right now?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Well, this issue of inclusion and our science workforce, it's something that's top of mind, you know? And it's really interesting for me because you know I dig into these documents in the National Archives and you know NASA memos from the 50s and 60s and we were having many of the same conversations about how do we get more black engineers? How do we get more female engineers? How will America be competitive if we don't take advantage of all of the talent in our country?

AMT: And throughout your research, how many black women did you discover who worked at the NACA or NASA in the middle of the 20th century?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: I'm still doing that research. You know I think for me, you know I grew up in Hampton, Virginia so I knew a lot of these people growing up. You know I saw Christine Darden, I, you know went to school with her daughter. So I knew that they worked at NASA.

AMT: Your dad worked there too, didn’t he?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Exactly. My dad is a retired research scientist. So he spent his entire career there at NASA Langley. You know I was familiar with many of their names and faces but the biggest surprise to me was just how many women there were. I think that over the years, from you know 1943 through 1980, you know there may have been as many as 80 black women who had come and gone and spent time working as mathematicians at Langley and that they were part of a much larger cohort of black and white women that was several hundred and maybe more than a thousand. You know I think because a lot of these women were just doing their job, like if you ask Katherine Johnson how it felt to be a trailblazer and you know to do this very important work, she usually says you know I was just doing my job.

AMT: She liked math. [laughs]

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: She loved her job. She loved math. But you know I think that—that very sort of either you know humble or self-effacing or just normal-life aspect of these women and their relationship with the work that they did—because of that, it's only through the distance of years that we see what a significant impact that they had and you know that we see that there were so many more of them than we ever thought.

AMT: They were invisible, really.

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Yeah. They were unseen.

AMT: To many. Yeah. To many.

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Even in the black community in Hampton, you know people knew these women, knew the work that they were doing. But you know now we're sort of looking at each other and saying wow. You know now we get to sort of step back and take in the fullness of everything that they did.

AMT: Do you think that what you have documented will inspire a new generation of girls and young black women—in a way that maybe they hadn't thought about—the potential and opportunities?

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: I hope so and I really think so. The thing is there are people doing this work. You know we obviously are having this discussion about how to have more women, how to have more African-Americans, more people of colour taking these careers. But you know I think one of the first things that we have to do, all of us, is to see the people who were there instead of looking past them. You know make them visible and say hey, this is what an engineer looks like. You know this is what a scientist looks like. This is what a mathematician looks like. And I think it's important, you know it's not just for the little black girls who need role models, but for little white boys who can see that you know this person likes science like me, you know? She likes Star Trek. And just because we look different or think we're from different backgrounds, we've got a lot in common, you know? So I think it really is about deconstructing these preconceived notions that we have about who gets to be a scientist.

AMT: Lots of layers to your book. Thank you for your work.

MARGOT LEE SHETTERLY: Thank you so much for having me on.

MF: Anna Maria Tremonti is conversation with the author of Hidden figures. Margolese Shetterly of course the film adaptation of her book also called hidden figures was released earlier this year nominated for best picture. That interview first aired in October and that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for the summer show on drugs. This week how history, religion and even mythology complicate the medication of pain. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. Browse through past episodes our show start listening in just a few seconds you can search for stories you missed or want to hear again or listen live to your local CBC station from your smartphone or tablet. For a summer walk, for a road trip for a lounge chair, make your own playlist. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. I am Mike Finnerty thanks for listening to some rendition of The Current. And we'll see you tomorrow.

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July 4, 2017 Full Episode Transcript

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