In 2016, Katherine Johnson, the Black NASA mathematician whose effort helped launch astronauts into outer space, was depicted in the Oscar-nominated film
Uptown Magazine
A
Fairfax, VA middle school that was once named for a Confederate soldier was renamed last week to honor
Katherine Johnson, a Black woman and mathematician who was integral to
NASA’s missions to put an American in space and for an American to orbit the Earth for the first time.
The school was named after Sidney Lanier, an American poet and private in the Confederate army, in the 1960s when Fairfax County named all schools after literary figures, Dr. Tammara M. Hanna, the school s principal, told ABC News. Civil rights activists have argued, especially over the past year, that naming institutions after Confederates and celebrating the Confederacy through monuments actually pays homage to America’s history of enslavement and racism. After months of public debate and hearings, the school board for the city of Fairfax voted unanimously to change the school’s name.
A Virginia school board held a naming ceremony where they removed the name of a Confederate soldier from a middle school and replaced it with Katherine Johnson the NASA legend.