If you’ve seen the movie Hidden Figures, you probably feel like you know Mary Jackson. You saw Janelle Monáe portray that fierce, brilliant engineer who fought the courts just to sit in a classroom. But movies have a way of making people feel like fictional characters. They aren't. Mary was very real. And when you ask when did Mary Jackson die, you aren't just looking for a date on a tombstone. You're likely looking for the end of a chapter in American history that stayed closed for far too long.
Mary Jackson died on February 11, 2005.
She was 83 years old. She passed away at the Riverside Convalescent Center in her hometown of Hampton, Virginia. It was a quiet end for a woman whose work helped roar rockets into the atmosphere. Honestly, the most frustrating part about her passing is that in 2005, the world wasn't talking about her. Not really. Not like we do now. Margot Lee Shetterly’s book hadn't come out yet. The Oscars hadn't celebrated her life. She was a retired NASA engineer, a grandmother, and a pillar of her church, but she wasn't a household name.
That came later.
Understanding the timeline of Mary Jackson’s final years
By the time 2005 rolled around, Mary had been retired from NASA for about twenty years. She stepped away from the agency in 1985. But her retirement wasn't just about sitting on a porch. If you look at her track record, Mary spent her final decade at NASA doing something most "hard scientists" wouldn't do. She took a demotion.
Think about that.
She was a high-level engineer. She had reached the top of the pay scale for her track. But she saw that women and minorities were still hitting a glass ceiling at Langley Research Center. So, she took a pay cut and a title change to become the Federal Women’s Program Manager. She decided that helping others get through the door was more important than her own seniority. That’s the kind of person who was lost when Mary Jackson died in 2005.
The cause of death and her late-life environment
When she passed, it was due to natural causes. At 83, her body was simply tired. She had spent a lifetime fighting—fighting to get into Hampton High School’s integrated classes, fighting to be recognized as an equal in the 1950s, and fighting for the Girl Scouts for over thirty years.
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She lived most of her life in Hampton. It’s a coastal city with a heavy military and aerospace presence. Even in her final years at the convalescent center, she was surrounded by the community she helped build. Her husband, Levi Jackson, survived her at the time, as did her children, Mary and Levi Jr. It’s important to realize that when she died, her obituary in the Daily Press mentioned her NASA career, but it didn't frame her as a "human computer" or a "pioneer" in the way we do today. She was a "retired aerospace engineer."
The weight of her legacy was still largely localized.
Why her death date matters for history
Timing is everything in history. Because Mary Jackson died in early 2005, she missed the massive cultural shift that happened a decade later. She didn't get to see the West Computing Office where she worked be turned into a symbol of American progress. She didn't get to see the NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., renamed the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters in 2021.
She died a quiet hero.
There’s a certain sadness in that, but also a profound dignity. She didn't do the work for the Netflix specials or the statues. She did it because she was good at math and she had a right to be there. When she passed in February 2005, the internet was in its infancy. Social media wasn't around to make her name go viral. Her story was kept alive by her family and the small community of black female engineers who knew exactly whose shoulders they were standing on.
The gap between 2005 and the "Hidden Figures" era
Between the day she died and the year 2016, there was a weird silence. Most people knew about John Glenn. Everyone knew Neil Armstrong. But the women who calculated the trajectories? They were footnotes.
- Mary Jackson passed in 2005.
- Dorothy Vaughan had already passed in 2008.
- Katherine Johnson was the only one of the "big three" still alive when the movie came out.
This matters because by the time the public wanted to say "thank you," Mary was gone. We couldn't give her the Presidential Medal of Freedom while she could still feel the weight of it around her neck. She was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 2019. It’s a bit bittersweet, isn't it?
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What most people get wrong about her passing
There’s a common misconception that Mary Jackson died while she was still working or shortly after the space race. That’s just not true. She had a full, long life after NASA. She was active in the Bethel AME Church. She was a leader in the Girl Scouts. She lived to see the turn of the millennium.
She saw the Space Shuttle program. She saw the International Space Station.
She lived long enough to see the world change in ways that would have seemed like science fiction when she was a "human computer" in the 1950s. But she didn't die in obscurity because she was "hidden." She was "hidden" because the history books chose not to look at her. Her death in 2005 was a loss to her family and to science, but the real tragedy was that her story stayed in the shadows for another eleven years after she was gone.
Reframing the "Hidden" narrative
We often talk about these women as if they were ghosts in the machinery. But Mary wasn't a ghost. She was loud. she was vibrant. She was known for helping young engineers find their footing. When you look at the archives from Langley, you see her name on technical reports like Effects of Nose Angle and Mach Number on Transition on Cones at Supersonic Speeds.
That’s not the work of a ghost.
She died knowing she had done the work. Whether the world was ready to celebrate it in 2005 or not, she knew.
Actionable ways to honor her legacy today
Knowing the date of her death is just a trivia point unless you do something with it. Mary's life was about breaking barriers. If you want to actually respect the history of Mary Jackson, don't just memorize a date.
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Look into the Mary W. Jackson Scholarship. There are programs specifically designed to support women of color in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Supporting these is the most direct way to keep her 2005 passing from being the end of her influence.
Visit the sites. If you are ever in Hampton, Virginia, go to the Virginia Air and Space Center. See the history. Don't just watch the movie; read the actual technical papers she wrote. They are public record. They are dense, difficult, and brilliant.
Advocate for transparency. Mary left engineering to work in HR because she wanted to fix a broken system. In your own workplace, look at who is getting promoted. Is there a "Mary Jackson" in your office who is being overlooked because of a title?
Mary Jackson’s death on February 11, 2005, marked the end of an eighty-three-year journey through some of the most turbulent and exciting times in American history. She started in a segregated office and ended as a legend, even if the world took a little extra time to catch up to that fact. Her story is a reminder that the work you do matters, even if you aren't the one who gets the applause when the curtain falls.
Next Steps for Further Learning
To get a true sense of the technical genius Mary Jackson possessed, search the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) for her name. Reading her actual publications on supersonic wind tunnel research provides a much deeper understanding of her intellect than any biographical summary ever could. You can also contact the Hampton History Museum to view local archives regarding her extensive community work in Virginia, which shaped the lives of hundreds of young women long before she became a global icon.