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Virginia tucker hidden figures book11/18/2023 Shetterly writes, “the contradiction ripped Negroes asunder, individually and as a people, their American identities in all-out, permanent war with their black souls.” These same restaurants refused to wait on the West Area computers, even though they worked at the NACA in the service of the U.S. For example, restaurants in Virginia readily served enemy prisoners-of-war, some of whom were kept in detention facilities near Langley. Black Americans couldn’t help but compare the plight of Jewish people abroad with that of people in their own communities, where blacks were beaten, tortured, and imprisoned for demanding the rights they were owed as U.S. Hidden Figures takes place against the backdrop of World War II, with Americans (black and white) following with horror the torture and deportation of Jewish people in Europe. While the United States fought for equality and freedom abroad, the country demonstrated its hypocrisy by enforcing segregation on its own soil. Shetterly shows the impact of racism at the international level by highlighting the racial implications of WWII. Ultimately, she shows how, at each level, the United States worked against its own self-interest to enforce racist laws. Hidden Figures author Margot Lee Shetterly examines the long-term impact of this segregation and racial discrimination at an international, national and interpersonal scale. The NACA recruited highly qualified female mathematicians (called “computers”) regardless of color, but the organization housed its black computers in a segregated workspace (called West Area) and made their career advancement difficult. Jim Crow laws mandated segregation between blacks and whites in the NACA’s home state of Virginia, and African-Americans who lived there had to make do with “separate but equal” bathrooms, water fountains, parks, restaurants and schools. In 1943, the United States found itself embroiled in World War II, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the NACA) in Langley, VA needed mathematicians to crunch numbers for its engineers.
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