View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What were the segregation laws called?

2. How did Margery Hannah treat the black computers?

3. What event made Dorothy Vaughan decide that going to graduate school would be economically irresponsible?

4. In 1970, what percentage of engineers in America were black?

5. What song did Mary Jackson tell her Girl Scouts that they would never sing again after she thought about the stereotypes the song promoted?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did Howard Vaughan refuse to move from Farmville to live with his family in Newport News?

2. What does Shetterly want for the women she writes about in Hidden Figures?

3. Why was Margery Hannah considered a pariah by some of her white coworkers?

4. What was the goal of NACA during World War II?

5. Why were Howard and Dorothy Vaughan an uneven match for one another?

6. Why did millions of American women lose their jobs after V-J Day?

7. How did the white professors and students treat Katherine Goble Johnson when she was one of three students chosen to integrate West Virginia University?

8. Why did Miriam Mann object to the "colored computers" sign in the cafeteria?

9. What observation did black leaders make concerning the events occurring in Europe during World War II?

10. Why did Dorothy Vaughan work in the laundry at Camp Pickett in the summers?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Shetterly writes that black Americans often put limitations on themselves. What does Shetterly mean by this? What limitations did black Americans place on themselves? What was the cause? How did some of the characters in Hidden Figures fight against this self-limitation?

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay comparing advances in aeronautics to advances in the civil rights movement. How do the two interconnect? Do the two advance at the same rate? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 3

Shetterly periodically introduces a new individual in the book, which helps to move the story forward into the future. Write an essay describing the way in which Shetterly introduces individuals and how that keeps the timeline of the book moving forward. Why does Shetterly introduce individuals in the way she does? How does her introduction of new individuals show the way in which the work one woman did helped the next woman to succeed?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 861 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample