NASA Names Headquarters After ‘Hidden Figure’ Mary W. via @abcnews/Instagram

The movie Hidden Figures showed the world the black women in NASA behind some of its most important findings and research.

This week, NASA announced that it has named its headquarters in Washington D.C. after one of the women who inspired the film, Mary W. Jackson, the first Black American female engineer at NASA.

“Mary W. Jackson was part of a group of very important women who helped NASA succeed in getting American astronauts into space,” said Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a statement.

Jackson started her career at NASA in a segregated West Area Computing Unit of the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Today we announced that our headquarters building in Washington, DC, will be named after engineer Mary W. Jackson, who overcame barriers to become NASA’s first Black woman engineer.