I haven’t read up on Katherine Johnson but I suspect she’s another progressive plant like Margaret Hamilton in the space program. Margaret Hamilton was put in charge of the on-board flight software for the lunar lander and given endless praise in the press. The fact that her software was buggy and put the Apollo 11 crew on course to crash in a field of boulders is left out of her biography. It was only thanks to Neil Armstrong quickly taking manual control of the craft that saved the mission. The landing software was quietly rewritten by other people after the mission.
Progressives play the long game when it comes progressive group promotion. They put unqualified people in positions of great authority and once enough time has passed they rewrite history to make incompetents into mythical heroes to influence future generations.
Obama.