Al Harrison: Here at NASA we all pee the same color.
Katherine Johnson: There are no colored bathrooms in this building, or any building outside the West Campus, which is half a mile away. Did you know that? I have to walk to Timbuktu just to relieve myself! And I can't use one of the handy bikes. Picture that, Mr. Harrisson. My uniform, skirt below the knees and my heels. And simple necklace pearls. Well, I don't own pearls. Lord
knows you don't pay the colored enough to afford pearls! And I work like a dog day and night, living on coffee from a pot none of you want to touch! So, excuse me if I have to go to the restroom a few times a day.
Mary Jackson: I plan on being an engineer at NASA, but I can't do that without taking them classes at that all-white high school, and I can't change the color of my skin. So I have no choice, but to be the first, which I can't do without you, sir. Your honor, out of all the cases you gon hear today, which one is gon matter hundred years from now? Which one is gon make you the
first?
Karl Zielinski: Mary, a person with an engineer's mind should be an engineer. You can't be a computer the rest of your life.
Mary Jackson: Mr. Zielinski, I'm a negro woman. I'm not gonna entertain the impossible.
Karl Zielinski: And I'm a Polish Jew whose parents died in a Nazi prison camp. Now I'm standing beneath a spaceship that's
going to carry an astronaut to the stars. I think we can say we are living the impossible. Let me ask you, if you were a white male, would you wish to be an engineer?
Mary Jackson: I wouldn't have to. I'd already be one.
Mary Jackson: Oh, I'll tell you where to begin: Three Negro women chasing a white police officer down a highway in Hampton, Virginia in 1961. Ladies, that there is a God-ordained miracle!
Colonel Jim Johnson: They let women handle that sort of...
Colonel Jim Johnson: [sees Katherine looking offended] That's not what I mean.
Katherine Johnson: What do you mean?
Colonel Jim Johnson: I'm just surprised at something so taxing.
Katherine Johnson: Oh Mr. Johnson, if I were
you, I'd quit talking right now.
Colonel Jim Johnson: I don't mean no disrespect.
Katherine Johnson: I will have you know, I was the first Negro female student at West Virginia university graduate school. On any given day, I analyze the velometer levels for air displacement, friction and velocity. And compute over ten thousand calculations by cosine,
square root and lately analytic geometry. By hand. There are twenty, bright, highly capable Negro women in the west computing group, and we're proud to be doing our part for the country. So yes, they let women do some things at NASA, Mr. Johnson. And it's not because we wear skirts. It's because we wear glasses. Have a good day.
Dorothy Vaughan: Thank you for the information, Mrs. Mitchell.
Vivian Mitchell: You're quite welcome, Mrs. Vaughan.
[respectfully calling her by her last name for the first time]