The hidden figures of the space race were recognized with Congress’ highest honor at a medal ceremony on Wednesday. The Congressional Gold Medal was presented to the families of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Christine Darden at the U.S. Capitol. Darden watched the ceremony from her Connecticut home.
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00:00Ms. Margaret Lee Shetterly, Ms. Andrea Mosey, and the families of Katherine Johnson,
00:07Dr. Kristen Darden, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughn.
00:12The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest honor that Congress can bestow upon any group or individual,
00:19and we give it to show our national appreciation for the achievements and contributions of great Americans.
00:26Today, pursuant to H.R. 1396, we have the great pleasure of finally awarding this medal to the Hidden Figures.
00:34As you all know, this has been a long time coming.
00:39It was now many decades after these women began working for our nation's space agencies
00:45that we finally get to do appropriate honor for their work.
00:50You know these names well, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, Mary Jackson, and Dr. Kristen Darden.
00:58In the history of Congress, we've only had a few occasions where we've been able to recognize those who've helped us explore what is the final frontier.
01:06At a time in America when our nation was divided by color and often by gender,
01:10these women dared to step into the fields where they had previously been unwelcomed.
01:16They excelled in science and math and made groundbreaking contributions in aeronautics.
01:22But these women didn't just crunch numbers and solve equations for the space program.
01:27They actually laid the very foundation upon which our rockets launched and our astronauts flew and our nation soared.
01:34And although we call them hidden figures, we shouldn't think of them merely as supporting characters in the American story of space exploration.
01:44They were the engineers and mathematicians who actually wrote the story itself.
01:49The pioneers that we honor today, these hidden figures, their courage and imagination brought us to the moon.
02:01And their lessons, their legacy will send us back to the moon.
02:08And then imagine, just imagine when we leave our footprints on the red sands of Mars.
02:19Thanks to these people who are part of our NASA family, we will continue to sail on the cosmic sea to far off cosmic shores.
02:33This gold medal ceremony celebrates the heroic contributions of four pioneering,
02:40patriotic, and powerful engineers, mathematicians,
02:46researchers, and other women who stand on their shoulders,
02:51whose collective intellect, ingenuity, and
02:55innovation helped America orbit the Earth and land a man on the moon,
03:04accelerating the pace of space exploration and aiding our nation's triumph in the space race.