From left, Janelle Monae, Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer play pioneering scientists in Hidden Figures. (Photo courtesy of Hopper Stone/20th Century Fox)
When Deborah Bey walked out of a showing of Hidden Figures last weekend, she was struck by how much the movie’s main characters, a trio of black female scientists who fought sexism and racism to make waves at NASA in the 1960s, were powered by their communities.
“If it wasn’t for their families and the people who rallied around them to do this, those three women probably wouldn’t have ended up in STEM,” Bey, a longtime coder who now works in real estate, tells DCist. “It was the push from people around them that got them to where they were.”
Bey saw the movie last weekend alongside 60 or 70 young students training with the nonprofit Black Girls Code. Most of those students, she observed, come from upper-class families. Then on Sunday, she saw an Instagram post from one of the movie’s stars, Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, who rented out an entire Los Angeles screening of the film and invited low-income children to attend for free last weekend. Bey realized she could do that too.
Yesterday morning, Bey launched a GoFundMe page with a $2,000 goal to fund 100 movie tickets and children’s snack packs for a Regal Gallery Place screening on Feb. 4. Within seven hours, donors had met the goal, and now they’re close to doubling it. No one was more surprised than Bey, who hadn’t run a GoFundMe campaign until this week.
In fact, Bey launched the campaign expecting to fund the remaining cost of the screening herself. Now she’s added a second screening, and she’ll pay for discount tickets for any child who signs up after the donated funds run out. She’s already begun reaching out to public schools in Wards 7 and 8 to ensure that children from low-income families get first priority.
The campaign is a partnership with Hear Me Code, a D.C. organization that teaches its female members, including Bey, to code. After both screenings, a quick panel of female coding experts will answer questions and offer children tips for breaking into STEM fields. Representatives from tech organizations have been inundating her with offers since the campaign went up, Bey says. She hopes the screenings will feel like a “hackathon,” with swag bags from tech companies and an uplifting spirit that empowers children to further hone their scientific knowledge.
Bey relates to the situations of the children she’s inviting. She grew up too poor to see movies, even special ones like E.T. and the Indiana Jones series. “I knew some of the kids who would be most inspired by this movie wouldn’t be able to see it,” Bey says.
The campaign fits neatly with the mission of Hear Me Code, founder Shannon Turner tells DCist. She created the organization in 2013 after getting “nasty comments” and a condescending attitude from men in the tech field at events and in professional settings. Hear Me Code started with “four women around a kitchen table” and has grown to serve 2,000 women in the region, according to Turner, who thinks the Hidden Figures campaign amplifies the organization’s message and bodes well for future efforts.
“I think creating space for people to step up and take leadership, knowing that they’re going to have the support of 2,000 women in the community who want to see them grow, we’re definitely going to see a lot more things like this in the future,” Turner says.
Hidden Figures, the highest grossing movie at the American box office for the last two weekends, has inspired numerous campaigns of this sort since its release at the end of 2016. In addition to Spencer’s event, successful GoFundMe campaigns have funded similar screenings in Detroit; Charleston, S.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Worcester, Mass.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Coatesville, Pa.
Here in D.C., Bey plans to keep the campaign online until this weekend. She credits its success to the fellow coders and friends who helped spread the word; the overwhelming response means more students than she expected will have the opportunity to find the film inspiring. She quotes a friend she texted upon learning that donors had surpassed the $2,000 goal: “I’m so happy to have been wrong about this.”
Update 1/19:
Since yesterday afternoon, donations to the campaign have more than doubled—the total currently stands at more than $8,000.
Bey tells DCist that she’ll use the extra money to pay for printing a guide to coding basics and a brochure of local resources for ambitious young coders. Thanks to the extra funds, each screening will now also have room for 200 students, instead of 100. If more donations come in, Bey plans to purchase beginner’s engineering kits to hand out to children at the screenings.
The influx has left Bey “in shock,” she says. Bey has also heard from dozens of people who want to volunteer at the events and keep the momentum going.
“A lot of people are feeling a lot of uncertainty in the world right now,” Bey says. “People have been telling me, ‘This is something tangible I can do, and I can make a difference and I can see it.’ That to me has been the most heartwarming.’”
