Title
Honoring and recognizing Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson on her 100th birthday for her extraordinary bravery and brilliance in mathematics.
Body
WHEREAS, Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson was born on August 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the youngest of four children. Johnson showed brilliance in mathematics from a young age, and actually skipped several grades because of her intelligence. Unfortunately, her hometown only offered education for black students until eighth grade. However, her parents were invested in their children's education and moved the family 125 miles away to Institute, West Virginia so their children could continue to attend school. Johnson attended West Virginia State High School and earned her diploma at age 14; and
WHEREAS, After graduating high school, Katherine attended West Virginia State, a historically black college. As a student, she took every math course offered by the college. Multiple professors mentored her, including chemist and mathematician Angie Turner King and W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to receive a PhD in math. Claytor even added new math courses just for Katherine. She graduated summa cum laude in 1937, with Degrees in Mathematics and French, at age 18; and
WHEREAS, After graduating college, Katherine took on a teaching job at a black public school in Marion, Virginia. In 1939, after marrying her first husband, James Goble, Katherine left her teaching job and enrolled in a graduate math program at West Virginia University, making her the first African-American woman to attend graduate school there. In fact, she was one of three African American students selected to integrate the graduate school after the United States Supreme Court ruling Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938). The court had ruled that states that provided public higher education to white students also had to provide it to black students, to be satisfied either by establishing black colleg...
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