"Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson, Chapters 3–4

However, their sacrifices were also typical of the determination that Colored people exhibited so that their children could get an education during an era when many states intended to deny them one and limit their access to opportunity.

It was a desperate time during that Depression era.

What Colored schools did have going for them was a dedicated cadre of Negro educators and students hungry to learn.

What Colored schools did have going for them was a dedicated cadre of Negro educators and students hungry to learn.

The Ku Klux Klan lurked as a constant threat, and resentful Whites were ever present.

Marion was a small, idyllic town of about fifty-five hundred people set in the lush, tree-covered mountains of southwestern Virginia near the Hungry Mother State Park.

As did life in much of the area, the region’s economy centered around coal mining.

They also did other dirty, dangerous, or menial jobs.

A particularly grisly lynching took place in 1926.

Negroes both worked within the system as best they could and resisted it in ways large and small—from declining to answer when someone White called us a disparaging name, to engaging in strikes and refusing to work.

Yet the rules of segregation could also be fickle.

In some families the oldest child would forgo college in order to work so that a younger child could continue his or her education.

Like most of the other teachers who came from out of town, I became a boarder in another person’s home.

Mamá pinned a beautiful corsage on me.

Jimmie had just returned home and was still seeking a job, so we needed to be cautious.

Back then women didn’t keep their own names or hyphenate them.

“I imagine I can help you, President Lawall,” President Davis said, feeling excited about the opportunity to open doors for and showcase some of his best students, but also resentful that the all-White school had needed external pressure.

I understood that integration might not be easy.

“I’m probably going to do the same thing you do: teach,” I said nonchalantly.

Little did any of us understand how a war that was fought primarily in Europe would have such a drastic effect on all of our lives.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese kamikaze fighter planes, dive bombers, and orpedo bombers attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

More than 45 percent of women worked outside the home during the war, producing ammunition, building ships and airplanes, driving trains, and nursing the wounded.

A neighbor of Mrs. Goble’s became my midwife.

The girls and I would often wake up and walk down to Mamá’s house, where we’d join her and Daddy for a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, grits, biscuits, and a cut of pork called fatback.

Even Mr. and Mrs. Belcher’s clout couldn’t get her in until the next day.