Viral #BlackAtNASA takes flight on Black Twitter
Who knew posting a professional headshot could start a viral trend? Tyrone Jacobs Jr. certainly had no idea when he shared his official work photo from the federal space agency NASA. For days now, Black Twitter has been praising the young man and many other Black employees of the organization for being real-life Hidden Figures in a thread of photos.
The component engineer, who works on hardware for space and satellite apparatus used in government and military vehicles and rocket ships, posted his image on Thursday (March 14) and has since amassed more than 33.8 million views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and countless comments, retweets and quote tweets. There are people praising him for proudly wearing his locs and even more comments celebrating the presence of diversity at NASA.
“When I posted it, I thought I would get a little bit of love, you know, some congratulations, ‘This is a nice picture,’ ‘You look nice’… But to see it going and where it went now in [the] present day, like, I totally did not expect it. And it’s a very overwhelming feeling… There’s no words to process what I feel on the inside,” Jacobs told FOX 26 with a beaming smile on his face.
It is not lost on him that the outpour of love and support is rooted in the pride Black Twitter users feel in seeing themselves represented. “That’s a big part of my life’s story; the theme of my life story is being yourself, being who you are, being authentic, being true to you, and don’t compromise who you are for anybody or anything… I just wanted to show people, 'Hey, you can be yourself, you can be tall, you can be Black, you can have locs,'” he said.
Even now, #BlackAtNASA takes users down a rabbit hole of images showcasing historical NASA figures such as retired astronauts Ronald McNair and Leland Melvin. Additionally, current personnel who work in varying roles for the agency have shared their headshots to further provide proof of the Black excellence that takes place at NASA. Take a look at the men and women who are being lauded as superheroes in the posts below.
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