In “From Protest to Community Plan” by Tom Angotti, he talks about We Stay! ¡Nos Quedamos!, a very famous committee of local homeowners, store owners and others created in Melrose Avenue in the Bronx. It was created to combat a plan to build housing that only the middle class could afford, which would displace the lower class residents, workers and business owners that are there (Angotti 124). The organization became so famous that it’s now a non-profit that helps combat issues of housing and economic development. Yet, not many people know that a major influential figure in that organization was a woman of color. Yolanda García a woman originally from Puerto Rico was actually the one who spearheaded We Stay! ¡Nos Quedamos! and she isn’t as well-known compared to people we studied in class such as Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. This is very similar to the plot of the 2016 movie Hidden Figures.
Hidden Figures is about black mathematicians who worked at NASA just when the Space Race began heating up. Despite them being extremely talented and making great strides in their field, they are very unknown because they were not allowed to put their names on the work done even though they put in the most effort. That is because they were discriminated against immensely because they were women of color. One example is that one of the ladies wanted to formally apply to NASA as an engineer yet she couldn’t because she needed to take an engineering class only being held at a segregated white school. She had to resort to going to a judge in order to be legally allowed to go to the segregated white school, and even know the judge ruled in her favor, she can only take the class at night. Though it seemed like a win to her, in our eyes we realize that this solution isn’t acceptable and she should be allowed to go at normal times. In these kinds of situations there can’t be any middle ground. There needs to be full on change. Another example is that every day they had to walk half a mile just to use the segregated colored bathroom, and that only changed when the National Guard Lieutenant realized how awful that was.
If it weren’t for Hidden Figures, the feats of these women probably would have been lost to time and despite the time period where Yolanda Garcia was head of the organization was decades after the discrimination the ladies experienced at NASA, she still never gotten the recognition she deserved. If things don’t change soon, then there will be less people of color who are willing to change their community for the better, because of such little recognition.
Questions:
- Would you still do something even if someone else gets all the credit?
- Do you think someone like Jane Jacobs would continue to do the things she did if she weren’t recognized?
- Can you think of any other pieces of media that depicts this similar situation?
