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Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly

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however, the iron curtain of segregation<br />

fell on federal employment. A 1915 rule<br />

requiring a photo with every application<br />

made race a silent consideration for the<br />

final decision. From agencies as diverse<br />

as the Bureau of Engraving, the US Post<br />

Office, and the Department of the Navy,<br />

Wilson officials conducted a rout,<br />

purging the rolls of high-ranking black<br />

officials. Those who remained were<br />

banished to segregated areas or hidden<br />

behind curtains so that white civil<br />

servants and visitors to the offices<br />

wouldn’t have to see them.<br />

The intransigence of the forces<br />

opposed to the Negro’s drive for equality<br />

was made almost unbearably plain in a<br />

1943 comment by Mark Etheridge, editor<br />

of the Louisville Courier-Journal, who<br />

had served as the first head of

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