In 2016 I was captivated by Hidden Figures, the film based loosely on a book based fairly solidly on the real life story of NASA’s “human computers.” Or, as NPR put it, “How Black Women Did the Math that Put Men on the Moon.” As the title suggests, I didn’t know anything about these people or their work before watching the film. Neither did most Americans, I suspect.
One one level, there’s nothing sinister or surprising about that. An endeavor as large as the Apollo project required the collaboration of an immense number of people working on all kinds of tasks. So, it’s perfectly natural that the public wouldn’t be familiar with all of them. We can fit only so many details in the history books. History works by summarizing.
But the point of the film (and the book, and real life) is that whose work gets valued and who gets credit for an outcome—like landing on the moon!—isn’t determined by some random or impartial . Rather, people hold culturally entrenched views about what sort of work is worthwhile and who is capable of doing it. These views get passed down in the stories they tell. So, Hidden Figures isn’t just a story of people doing work; it’s a story of black women proving their worth.
The reason so many women, including black women, ended up computing for NASA was that computing was seen as lesser, mechanical work, as opposed to real engineering, which was better left to men. At the beginning of the story, they are relegated to their own department, not allowed into the management meetings where important business was discussed. By the end, barriers have been broken down and senior NASA staff recognized just how talented and valuable the human computers were to the project. The film ends on a high note, but rarely in history do people of marginal status reach full equality and full recognition for their work.
Catherine McNeur’s book Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science presents its own pair of hidden figures: Elizabeth and Margaretta Morris of Germantown, Pennsylvania. They dedicated themselves to science as children and worked their entire lives to advance American biology, but did not always receive the recognition and respect they deserved for their labor.
Wealthy white women in mid-nineteenth-century America could participate in science to an extent. They could read journal articles, attend lectures, even host discussion groups or drum up funds for scientific research. Young women at that time could receive a decent science education in school. Some would go on to teach at the pre-university level. Others would become scientific illustrators or write articles popularizing scientific discoveries. In fact, the first known use of the word “scientist” is in reference to a woman disseminating natural philosophy to a broad audience. Some women married male scientists; these “science wives” often performed a wide variety of tasks in conjunction with their husbands, but were deemed assistants rather than partners. As widows, they were expected to ensure their husbands’ legacies by putting papers in order and arranging for memorial tributes to be written. In so doing, they often effaced their own contributions, subsuming them into their husbands’ work.
The Morris sisters were unusually blessed with opportunity. Their family was part of the upper crust, if only barely, of Philadelphia, when that was the scientific capital of the United States. The American Philosophical Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin as the first learned society in North America, attracted world-class scholars. Even when the death of their father forced a move from Philadelphia to Germantown, they enjoyed tutors of exceptional caliber.
Elizabeth and Margaretta would traipse down to the nearby Wissahickon River for a day of leisure and scientific discovery. Part of their retinue included Thomas Nuttall, a leading American botanist, from whom Elizabeth learned her love of plants. Margaretta in turn caught her fascination with entymology from Thomas Say, who would publish the first catalog of North American insects.
Truly gifted and resolutely dedicated to science, the Morris sisters wanted more than most of their female peers. They wanted to do original research, to contribute to the conversation, to have their ideas taken seriously. They wanted the freedom and leisure to hike off to the woods and streams in search of curiosities. And Margaretta, well, she wanted credit. They wouldn’t get what they wanted without a fight.
Margaretta’s emergence into public scientific discourse came, as it so often does, from correcting her teacher. In the 1830s America’s wheat harvests were being decimated severely enough to contribute to the little depression known as the “panic of 1837.” The culprit was wheat flies. One species in particular—popularly called the “Hessian fly” based on the assumption that foreign mercenaries imported it during the Revolutionary War—was so pernicious that Thomas Say, its discoverer, named it “Mayetiola destructor.” Given the stakes, American farmers were desperate for reliable information on how to identify and combat this pest.
Margaretta was inclined to make observations in the same fields Say had. She noticed a discrepancy, though. Say had written that the fly “probably” laid its eggs between the groove and the stem of the leaf. She herself watched them lay eggs in the head of the wheat near the seeds. This may seem trivial, but it was of both theoretical significance to botanists and practical significance to farmers inspecting their fields for traces of the pests. Her observations of the life cycle of these flies were just the sort of thing American natural philosophers were talking about in conferences and publishing in journals. She decided to go public with her findings. If she were a man, she could have simply marched down to the American Philosophical Society and reported her findings. But she was a woman.
Her publication had to come in stages through male intermediaries. First, her cousin Robert Hare, a well-respected chemist, read a version of her findings to the Society. It was well enough received that they wished to circulate her information in writing. As if she were not capable of writing her own paper, they assigned the task to Benjamin Coates. He was enthusiastic about her research but not an entomologist. As such, his elaborations and interpretations of her material were not always helpful. When criticism eventually came, Margaretta found herself in the position of not being able to respond directly, while Coates found himself increasingly unwilling to invest his own time and reputation in making the strongest case possible.
Margaretta was the victim of another misfortune. The amateur but extremely well-connected Thaddeus William Harris was about to publish a book on agricultural pests. He had used Say as a source on the Hessian fly but became aware of Morris’ dissent. Panicked, he asked his friend Edward Herrick to write a piece resolving the issue, which Harris could cite as a reference. Herrick attacked Morris, patronizingly implying that, though well-intentioned, she must have been mistaken. After all, Say was an established man of science, whereas she, well, could never be.
Citation in hand, Harris published, dismissing Morris’ theory. Margaretta could only fume or do science. She chose both. By 1841, she had enough evidence in hand to discover the root of the issue. Say had repeated at second-hand information about the Hessian fly. It was correct, except for one thing. The species of fly terrorizing her neighbors’ fields was not the same as the Hessian fly of New England. She had discovered a novel species. Nevertheless, it took years for her discovery to be appreciated. She was eventually given the honor of naming the fly, which she called Cecidomyia culmicola (Morris). Unfortunately, because the writings of Say and Harris were so influential, and the publication of her correction fairly obscure, entomologists well into the twentieth century tended to repeat the incorrect information. Her gender kept her discoveries from receiving the attention they deserved.
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The Morris sisters were shrewd enough to realize that getting their work taken seriously would require cultivating relationships with well-placed natural philosophers. Elizabeth was particularly gifted at forming genuine relationships through correspondence, ending most days by trading in her garden trowel for pen and paper. Her entry into the correspondence network of American botanists came through William Darlington, an amateur botanist and patron of science from West Chester, PA. It was Margaretta’s research on wheat flies that initially attracted his attention, but for the rest of his life he carried on a lively exchange of letters with Elizabeth.
Darlington introduced Elizabeth to Asa Gray, Harvard’s first professor of natural history. The first sentence of Asa Gray’s Wikipedia article informs us that he “is considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century.” At that time, though, he was just a young man with a dream and, crucially, a network of willing collaborators.
Taxonomy was the compelling issue of 19th century botany. America was still the New World, relatively speaking, full of thousands of species of plants and animals not yet observed, categorized, and cataloged in the annals of science. Gray wanted to build the botanical gardens at Harvard into a repository for a continent’s worth of plant life. To do this, he relied on the cooperation of many local experts and collectors. Elizabeth, with her detailed knowledge of Pennsylvania flora, would become an invaluable collaborator, if never a peer.
Elizabeth and Gray developed an intense and perhaps even flirtatious relationship. Gray would pass along a list of desired plants. Elizabeth would secure whatever she could. He would repay her in thanks and occasional gifts, the gifts being plants not available in her area. Live plants, pressed plants, seeds, and illustrations of plants formed the currency of the botanical gift exchange economy. Unlike some botanists, he credited his collectors. Sometimes he would remark on how “her” plants were doing, especially the forget-me-nots she sent him with an ambiguously romantic subtext.
Gray valued her opinions, even asking her to edit the first draft of his textbook. He praised her intelligence and wished she were in his lectures so he’d have a worthwhile student. This friendly, familiar, borderline flirtatious relationship lasted for some years, but it changed over time. First, Gray became more famous and well established in his career. He was less reliant on individual collectors and had less need to be polite. Later letters became more terse, more like to-do lists than friendly exchanges. Second, he married, and as he subtly informed Elizabeth, his wife would have the privilege of looking over his correspondence.
In her correspondence with men of science, Elizabeth fastidiously kept to gendered norms of etiquette, casting herself as the lesser partner, grateful to have their time and attention. She showered them with praise and contradicted them only obliquely. An entirely different Elizabeth appeared in another outlet, her anonymous articles for agricultural magazines.
She was a force in the American Agriculturalist, penning dozens of articles as the gender-ambiguous E.C.M. She was one of the most popular contributors to the journal, bold in her opinions, witty in her writing. She proclaimed her love for her garden, encouraged women to get outdoors for exercise and education, and brought practical science into the kitchen and storeroom.
Safely anonymous, she didn’t hesitate to put men in their place. When another anonymous writer, Solus, complained about not being able to find a woman to knit his stockings, she responded by asking what prevented men from learning to knit their own stockings. Elizabeth’s pieces were so highly prized that when she died, the editor of Gardener’s Monthly wrote a tribute for her, revealing her identity and praising her as the author of many of their best columns. By not being herself she found the freedom to be herself, but it came at a cost. With her many contributions scattered across journals and various pen-names, she has never received full credit for her accomplishments.
“When I am grieved in spirit, or vexed in temper, by the unavoidable cares of my little world, I go out and work in my garden; and in the healthful exercise of the body, and the beautiful soul-subduing quiet that pervades the place, and steals like a healing balm over my mind, I soon forget my troubles.”
~ Elizabeth Morris, writing anonymously in the American Agriculturalist
Margaretta, on the other hand, spent the 1840s carefully laying the groundwork for recognition as an entomologist. Like many Americans, she was astounded by the cyclical patterns of cicadas. Unlike most of them, she investigated. At the time, it was not known how the cicadas survived for so long underground. It was generally believed that they were dormant and inert.
Pear trees presented Margaretta with an alternative proposition. She noticed that some of her prized trees had stopped bearing fruit. When she went digging, she found cicadas clinging to the roots. Not just clinging, but appearing to draw nourishment from them through their probosces. When the sisters had the soil around one of the pears dug up and replaced, a process that removed infested roots, the tree’s health recovered. These observations formed the basis for a new theory about cicadas, which was of interest to entomologists. But they also touched on practical agriculture, which interested farmers.
The task now was to make sure people took her observations seriously. The Morrises had learned by now that a woman could not just show up to a society meeting and inform the men of science they had things all wrong. Instead, they embarked on a multi-pronged plan, which included anonymous articles, sharing ideas with a few carefully chosen, encouraging men in their existing network, and in-person demonstration.
Elizabeth posed in the pages of the American Agriculturalist as a fruit farmer facing trouble with his apple and pear trees. “His” pleas for advice were swiftly answered by M H Morris, who related the story of the revival of the pear tree and advised the farmer try a similar experiment. Meanwhile, Margaretta had tapped Walter Rogers Johnson, a trusted colleague and secretary of the Academy of Natural Sciences, to present her findings formally.
The most successful tactic, though, was simple in-person demonstration. By that time the Morrises were ingratiated enough with the intellectual community around Philadelphia that Morris Hall was a frequent stop on the circuit of scientists passing through. When Louis Agassiz, one of the most famous scientists of his generation, came to tour America, the Morrises convinced him to come by. They impressed him by digging up cicada-infested roots right in front of him. Agassiz decided he quite liked America, taking up a post at Harvard. There he became a powerful ally.
Margaretta finally achieved the recognition she desired. In 1849 her cousin Robert Hare presented her research on cicadas to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Louis Agassiz publicly endorsed her conclusions. Even her old rival Harris reached out to her, expressing interest in specimens she may have collected. The second edition of his textbook on agricultural pests incorporated some of her findings. (It’s worth mentioning that scientists are still undecided on whether or to what extent cicadas can be harmful to trees. Either way, Margaretta made many undeniably helpful observations about their physiology and life cycle.)
In 1850 the AAAS elected Margaretta a member. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia followed suit in 1859. Yet matters were not so simple. In both cases her membership was qualified. She was exempt from dues, but also not allowed to present research in meetings or vote on society affairs. Despite her multiple contributions to science and her connections with male scientists who appreciated her work, the intellectual establishment was not quite ready to surrender its status as literally an old boys club.
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As women struggling to receive recognition and respect for their work, Elizabeth and Margaretta Morris were far from alone in their time. The forces working against them are well described by another of their contemporaries. In 1849, overcoming constant ridicule and prejudice from her teachers and classmates, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn an MD in North America. (She graduated first in her class.) The prejudice didn’t end there; if anything, it increased when she began to practice medicine. But she persevered, creating opportunities for other women to follow in her footsteps.
Illuminating is Blackwell’s first piece of public writing, an opinion article titled “The Position of Women” published in The Press (Philadelphia). Immediately one notices that the article does not begin with her words, but with a preface by the paper’s male editor, nearly equal in length to her piece. He legitimizes the presence of female writing in the paper, saying “She has earned the right to be heard and regarded; for she has added to the heroism of enduring the customary disabilities of her sex a brave endeavor to overcome them, in a spirit remarkable for its considerate moderation.”
That is, merely being a woman was not sufficient to qualify her to write; she had to be an exceptional woman, and a well-behaved one at that. The editor later acknowledged that men have perpetrated wrongs against women that needed political redress, but he regarded the direct involvement of women in politics as an evil, a course of last resort. For a woman to exercise political power directly “will never be granted, opposed as it is by so many social and political obstacles, and especially by that sense of delicacy and refinement which is the characteristic of the gentle sex.” Though not the focus of her article, Blackwell did mention that it was important for women to secure the ballot-box. As such, it’s hard to read the editor’s comments as anything but patronizing.
Blackwell diagnosed the situation succinctly. “The fact of woman’s humanity has never been fully recognized. Only of her womanhood.” That is, when it came to men, people recognized that it was right and natural for humans to strive to develop themselves to the heights of their capacities, involving themselves in whatever sphere of activity or occupation suited them. But somehow the same did not apply to women. They were discouraged from serious activity and employment outside the home. Those that bucked the norm faced trouble, arising not from intrinsic inability, but from discrimination:
“The custom which excludes American women from varied employments oppresses those who do work, heavily; for when a woman has won herself an honorable position in any unusual line of life, she is still excluded from the companionship and privileges of the class to which she should belong, because her course in unusual. The difficulties which all women have to struggle with, who attempt to widen the range of occupation for their sex, is in the highest degree discouraging.”
Blackwell has set up an informal syllogism. If humans are meant to develop their capacities to be of service to others, but women are discouraged from doing so, what can this mean, except that that society does not recognize the full humanity of women? Against that she registered her plea: “Let us learn to regard women as human beings as well as women, and educate our girls as well as boys upon the principle of human right.”
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2024 would fascinate the Morris sisters. In May the 13-year cicada Brood XIX and the 17-year Brood XIII emerged together, the first time since 1803. Neither brood visited Germantown, but we can imagine the sisters boarding a train (if they couldn’t be talked into an airplane) to Illinois to marvel at the woods where they overlapped. Who knows what careful observations they might make about the plant and insect life?
And if they turned their powers of observation to our society, to the places women occupy in it, what would they see? Would Elizabeth still prefer to avoid drama and make her contributions indirectly and anonymously? Would Margaretta be a proud, full member of scientific societies? Would they sigh in relief that women are finally full members of our civic societies? Or would they pose again Blackwell’s plea to regard women as human, and not merely as women?