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Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly

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question in private and in public, and<br />

with every possible inflection:<br />

rhetorically, angrily, incredulously,<br />

hopefully. What did this war mean for<br />

“America’s tenth man,” the one in ten<br />

citizens who were part of the country’s<br />

largest minority group?<br />

It wasn’t northern agitators who<br />

pushed Negroes to question their country,<br />

as so many southern whites wanted to<br />

believe. It was their own pride, their<br />

patriotism, their deep and abiding belief<br />

in the possibility of democracy that<br />

inspired the Negro people. And why not?<br />

Who knew American democracy more<br />

intimately than the Negro people? They<br />

knew democracy’s every virtue, vice,<br />

and shortcoming, its voice and contour,<br />

by its profound and persistent absence in<br />

their lives. The failure to secure the

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