KARE 11: Minnesotan's grandmother part of 'Hidden Figures' story
Excerpt courtesy KARE 11
"Even before the Oscar nomination, it was clear audiences loved "Hidden Figures."But did you know a Minnesotan's grandmother was right among those historic women?The movie, based on a true story, is about African-American women who were behind some of NASA's first successful space missions. The women were mathematicians, double-checking the male engineers' work.One of the women, not portrayed in the movie, was Miriam Mann.Her granddaughter, Macalester College American Studies Professor Duchess Harris, wrote a book about her grandmother. NASA recruited Mann in 1943 at a historically black school in Virginia now called Hampton University.
