Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly

etreated against the rolling tide of
newcomers. From the forests and
fisheries and farmlands of an Arcadian
state dawned a powerful military capital,
a nerve center that had welcomed
residents by the hundreds of thousands
since the start of the conflict. Now, the
chief business of the people of Hampton
Roads was the war.
Whether approached by land or by
sea, Newport News, with its vast
complex of coal piers and scaffolding,
cranes and smoke-belching stacks, rails
and elevators and berths laid out on the
James River, gave a sense of the great
power concentrated in America’s
military, the scope of a manufacturing
and production machine of nearly
inconceivable proportions, the
consummation of a military-industrial