Raye Montague - Women's History Month -17

Today's (Jan 21) A Mighty Girl Community Pick is in honor of Raye Montague's birthday: "The Girl With A Mind For Math: The Story of Raye Montague" by Julia Finley Mosca.

As a 7-year-old during WWII, Raye Montague toured a captured German submarine and immediately set her sights on becoming an engineer. Little did she know that sexism and racism would challenge her dream every step of the way – even at college where she ended up studying business because the engineering department would not accept black students.

“You’re female, you’re black and you’re going to have a segregated school education—so you’re going to have three strikes against you,” Montague recalled her mother saying in a 2012 interview with Rhonda Owen of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “But you can do anything you want to do and be anything you want to be.”

Raye ended up working at the US Navy as a typist, studying engineering at night.

All along, her plan was to rise in the ranks. She studied computer programming at night, and was eventually promoted to a digital computer systems operator and a computer systems analyst. After one year, she asked her boss for another promotion. He told her that if she wanted the job, she would have to work nights—a problem for Montague because the buses did not run late and she did not know how to drive. Determined to push forward, she bought herself a 1949 Pontiac and taught herself to drive—slowly. If she left her house at 10 p.m., she would make it into the office by midnight.

Montague was promoted, but her struggles did not end there. She told Good Morning America that she was surrounded by male staff who thought she was “the help.”

 In around 1970, Montague’s supervisor gave her six months to create the first successful computer program for ship design, failing to disclose that their department had been trying unsuccessfully to accomplish the task for years.

“I hate to say this, but he was a racist,” Montague said. “So he decided ... to get rid of me.”

When Montague’s supervisor saw how committed she was to meeting his deadline, he supplied her with a full night staff. Word of the program they created reached then-President Richard Nixon, who asked to see plans for a computer-designed warship, quickly. This prompting from the president led to Montague and her team creating the first computer-designed Naval ship plans in under 19 hours.

She was the first person to design a ship on a computer and the Navy's first female ship designer -- and today the girl who refused to give up on her dream is celebrated as a pioneer who changed ship design forever. - A Mighty Girl Facbook, Jan 21, 2023

In honor of her work, Montague was granted the Navy’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1972. Her program became central to the design of warships and submarines, and she worked for the Navy for 33 years. When she retired in 1990, Montague was given a flag that flew over Washington, D.C., along with a certificate saying that it had been raised in her honor.

 

“Can you imagine that from a grateful nation?” Montague asked during her Good Morning America interview. Then, as if still in disbelief about how far she had come, she exclaimed, “A little girl from Little Rock!”

Source of most quotes is Smithsonian Magazine article about Montague upon her death at 83 in 2018.