Mary Winston Jackson
NASA's first Black female engineer
At a glance
- Inventor
- Mary Winston Jackson
- Life
- 1921–2005
- Birthplace
- Hampton, Virginia
- Country
- United States
- Region
- United States
- Era
- 1950–2000
- Fields
- Space & Aerospace, Science & Engineering
- Evidence
- Documented
- Records
- 0 in this archive
What they did
Jackson worked in Langley's supersonic pressure tunnel on boundary-layer behaviour, and in 1958 became NASA's first Black woman engineer — after petitioning a court for permission to attend segregated night classes.
Historical context
The graduate courses she needed for promotion were taught at an all-white high school in Hampton, Virginia.
The legacy
She later left engineering deliberately to run Langley's Federal Women's Program, working on the hiring and promotion of women across the centre. NASA headquarters was named for her in 2021.
The evidence
Mary W. Jackson personnel record and Langley technical reports
Primary recordNASA Headquarters naming record, 2021
Primary record
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 2
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.