By the mid-1950s, electronic computers are starting to replace human ones. The machines are large and noisy, but they are fast, and they can run at night instead of sleeping. Dorothy encourages her women to take courses that, in an increasingly integrated workplace, will qualify them for jobs managing the machines. Kaz Czarnecki, looking at Mary’s career options, urges her to qualify as an engineer. To do that, she must take courses on the campus of Hampton High School, through the University of Virginia’s extension program. Despite the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools are unconstitutional, Hampton High remains off-limits to Black students, like all Virginia schools. Swallowing her resentment, Mary obtains “special permission” from the City of Hampton. In 1956, she starts her coursework.

Mary and Levi Jackson are friends with Thomas Byrdsong. Thomas is one of just three Black male engineers at Langley. They are treated cordially by most of their white colleagues, but they also encounter open hostility, especially from technicians and mechanics. One mechanic deliberately sabotaged Thomas’s first wind-tunnel test. Thomas’s white supervisor gave the mechanic an angry reprimand, in front of Thomas.