Karl Zielinski: There is another opening in the Engineer Training Program.

Mary Jackson: Flat head rivets would reduce wind drag.

Karl Zielinski: Mary, a person with engineer’s mind should be an engineer. You can’t be a computer the rest of your life.

Mary Jackson: Mr. Zielinski, I’m a Negro woman. I’m not going to entertain the impossible.

Karl Zielinski: And I’m a Polish Jew whose parents died in a Nazi prison camp. Now I’m standing beneath a spaceship that’s going to carry an astronaut to the stars. I think we can say we are living the impossible. Let me ask you, if you were a white male, would you wish to be an engineer?

Mary Jackson: I wouldn’t have to, I’d already be one.”
Tagged: NASA, Nazi, Polish, Jew, Holocaust

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