Dorothy Vaughan (née Johnson) was the first of the main characters to be employed by Langley. She was valedictorian of her high school class and attended Wilberforce University in Ohio on full scholarship. One of her professors recommended her to join the first class of a new master’s program in math at Howard University, but as it was the Depression, she thought she should work to contribute to her family’s income. She took a degree in education and became a high school teacher. After marrying Howard Vaughan, a hotel bellman, they started a family.

In the spring of 1943, while she was teaching math in Farmville, Virginia, she answered two employment ads related to the war effort in the state. One was for working in the laundry room at Camp Pickett, which she did that summer for extra money. The other was for a full-time mathematical position at Langley. She got hired for this in the fall and moved alone to Hampton. She worked in the West Computing Area, newly created for African American employees, performing mathematical computations for researchers.

She became a shift supervisor, then acting head of West Computing, and finally the permanent head in early 1951. Had she not become the head of the area, she might have taken a position with an engineering group, which was the way up the ladder for Black women at Langley.