During the 1940s the Office of Operations probably consistently followed the military model, i.e., all black functional units were normally formed within larger white organizations. Herman Phynes, for example, was head of the commercial code section, which is believed to have remained a segregated unit until it folded (probably around 1950). Bill Coffee, after leaving that section, supervised a group of typists that transcribed automatic Morse tapes. It is doubtful that this was a mixed group. An indication of the personal feelings and controversy that might have surrounded these black units is provided by a story told by Jack Gurin, chief of the Russian plaintext exploitation branch in 1948. According to Jack, the critical need for clerical support prompted him to approach the personnel officer with a request for additional typists. He was told that "Code 1's" were not available, but "Code 2's" could be obtained. The coding, it was explained, was used on personnel records to designate race. "Code 1" was white; "Code 2" was "colored." On the advice of the personnel officer, Gurin discussed with the existing branch personnel the possibility of bringing "Negroes" into the unit. One person, "a very dignified, good-looking Alabama lady, objected, stating that she could not 'sit next to a colored person and work'." Gurin relocated her desk, and shortly thereafter an African-American man and five women reported for duty.[71] Once again, however, this was an all-black functional unit, in this case a typing section, within a larger white organization.
Signs of change began to appear around 1950. According to Dave Bryant, by that year he had secured a transfer out of AFSA-213, the traffic processing branch, and was attending Russian language classes preparatory to working as a translator/analyst in the Russian plaintext branch. James Pryde was another early escapee from "the plantation." A former radio operator with the Tuskegee airmen, he joined the Agency in 1950 and was initially assigned to AFSA-213 and then the mailroom. Eventually, however, it was discovered that he could read automatic Morse tapes, and he was transferred to a signals analysis section. A brilliant career in Soviet exploitation followed, first as an analyst, then as a manager and as a senior executive.[72]
An equally significant development in the early 1950s was the hiring of African-Americans as entrylevel analysts and linguists and, for the first time, their immediate integration into a target element, bypassing the traffic processing division altogether. Both Clarence Toomer and Arthur Davis graduated from Howard University in 1950, Mr. Toomer as a premed major, Mr. Davis with a concentration in German. In 1951, Mr. Toomer was an accounting clerk at the Census Bureau. Seeking a better position, he registered with the Labor Department as a job applicant and was subsequently interviewed at the Pentagon by a representative of the Department of Defense, in reality someone from AFSA. He was hired and entered on duty as a GS-4 cryptanalytic aide. Art Davis, meanwhile, had responded to an advertisement in the local newspaper for government linguists. He too joined the Agency in 1951 and was placed in an intensive Russian language course. There he met his future sister-in-law, Royolla Franklin Davis, a newly hired GS-5 Slavic languages major from the University of California at Berkeley. Following their initial training, Clarence Toomer, Art Davis, and Royolla Franklin Davis worked as junior professionals in major Soviet exploitation divisions.[73]
Minnie McNeal, a native of Philadelphia, worked at the Commerce Department in Philadelphia, then the Census Bureau in Washington, after graduating from the Philadelphia High School for Girls. She also never worked in the allblack traffic division or in machine processing, but in a 1999 interview, she described how she narrowly escaped that fate:
I came to be interviewed at Arlington Hall in 1951, and there was a woman. I don't know her name, but she was white and she had also graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls. She recognized my class ring, and she not only hired me, she vowed that I would not be 'going down in the hole'. I didn't have the slightest idea what she was talking about. I was just glad that I had a job. I went for processing, and when I came back, she assigned me upstairs. There was a group of us [including] Barbara Barnes, Bess [nfi], and Priscilla [nfi] [upstairs]. Most of the blacks at that time were assigned to the basement. We were [in] the first group whose initial assignment was upstairs in Operations in B Building. We were assigned to the 'U' Street School, and we stayed there until we got our clearances or whatever. We came as a group to the organization. We all worked under Sam Hall on what they call ALLO [all other targets]. We were dispersed throughout the place.[74]
Clarence Toomer, Art Davis, Royolla Franklin Davis, and Minnie McNeal Kenny represented a new breed of African-American employee in the Operations Directorate. They were hired at the GS-4 or GS-5 level, higher than the starting grades offered to African-Americans in MPRO or Russian plaintext traffic processing and equivalent to that given most whites with comparable qualifications. They were immediately placed in intensive training programs to prepare them for professional careers as a linguist or cryptanalyst, and upon completion of training, they were assigned to substantive target exploitation problems in a totally integrated environment. Not until well after they entered on duty did they learn of the existence of AFSA-213. Fellow Howard University graduates who were also hired by the Agency, but sent to "the snakepit," asked Clarence Toomer how it happened that he was assigned to an analytic organization. He did not have an answer.
How were these young professional people of color received in the workplace? The reports are mixed. Most said that the work environment was, at least superficially, generally free of racial overtones. Their desks were intermixed with the others; they occasionally ate lunch with their white colleagues in the cafeteria; and advanced training in the core disciplines of the agency – language, traffic analysis, and cryptanalysis – was readily obtained. But they still experienced the occasional slight; racial slurs were overheard in office conversation; and few African-Americans were assigned to the organization working on the highest priority Russian systems. Tours at external locations were difficult to come by, and as their careers progressed, there appeared to be a "glass ceiling" that dictated, at the executive level, that they were usually the "bridesmaid," or deputy, seldom the bride.
The sense of an undercurrent of racial bias was understandable. In the early fifties, not only were the all-black enclaves still very much in operation inside the Agency, but the external environment was still essentially segregated. Eugene Becker, who retired as the assistant deputy director for support services in 1992, described aspects of Washington life and the Armed Forces Security Agency when he entered on duty in January 1952.
I was struck by the fact that the bus that I rode out to Arlington Hall was a segregated bus, because you transferred from the District bus and trolley to Virginia buses at the Federal Triangle. So I got on the bus that took you to Arlington, and it was segregated. This was 1952. I remember being struck by that. Having gone to school in the district [George Washington University], I knew that the movie theaters were segregated. I remember going to the Blue Mirror. That was the club where you had whites and Afro-Americans mixing. There were not many of them. But I had never given it a thought that the bus system in Northern Virginia was still segregated. Washington in those days was a Southern town, totally dominated by Southern culture.
The fellow that I talked to in my interview was clearly on the Russian problem. I could decipher that much from his questions and the way he inquired about my interests, but before my final clearance came through, it was decided that I would go in a class. I think there were five of us that started in an Arabic class. I think that it was the first one begun at the Agency. We went to the school on U Street and 14th, the old post office building, for six months. We had a great instructor. The agency language department was excellent at that time. We were in an all-white class, as were most of the classes. I don't remember seeing any Afro-Americans in the language classes at the time. There may have been one or two that came in while we were going through our six-month period, but on reporting for work in January, I don't remember seeing any in the school.
The Agency is a microcosm of the nation at large. It was neither ahead of it or behind it, and so it reflected, to a precise degree, what was going on – what the country was. The workforce had a liberal cast, but seeded among the workforce were plenty of racists. They were not hard to find. That was palpable in the place. You knew who they were.[75]
Note
"[In Washington], we went to our own segregated areas. We went to our own clubs, our own theaters. We had nice theaters, nice clubs, so you didn't realize you were being segregated that much. It wasn't something that was bothersome. We had the Lincoln theater, the Booker T., and in northeast [Washington], we had the Strand theater."
Carroll Robinson, 8 June 1999
By the mid-fifties, there were even positive changes within the traffic processing division (now designated NSA-63) and the machine section. Carl Dodd, an NSA-63 supervisor, drafted job descriptions for the other leaders in the organization which eventually were approved and resulted in an upgrade of all positions in the division.[76] An interview with William Pinchback, however, revealed that although measured progress had been achieved by 1955, remnants of the old practices were still very much evident. Mr. Pinchback, a former Army cryptologic operator and a 1950 graduate of Storer College, entered on duty in 1954 as a GS-3 communications clerk in NSA-63. He was assigned to a recently added branch that received, sorted, and distributed hard copy messages (other than Russian plaintext radioprinter). At that time, he recalled, whites were occasionally hired and assigned to his unit and that one, with only a high school diploma, was brought in at a higher grade than he. The system was slowly changing, however, for this time, after the unfairness was brought to the attention of the section chief, Mr. Pinchback was promoted with less than the minimum time in grade. The next year, Mr. Pinchback applied for an advertised vacancy for a cryptanalytic aide. In a then rare demonstration of equal opportunity in competitive selection, he was interviewed and chosen for the job. Once in his new office, his supervisor confided that Pinchback's army experience as a code clerk, coupled with the scores that he achieved on Agency aptitude tests, indicated that he would be a good cryptanalyst. In the mid-fifties, though, these facts and a college degree had not prevented a black man from being hired as a GS-3 and being initially assigned to the mailroom in the National Security Agency.[77]
Significant professional advancement for African-Americans in the machine division during the 1950s was limited, but James Bostic broke convention. In 1952 he left the Census Bureau and joined AFSA as a tabulating equipment operator. A gifted, largely self-taught programmer and systems analyst, he became known as the "the Optimizer" during a career that paralleled the agency's advancements in computer technology. An early tour in ABNER 1 operations was followed by assignment as a programmer on ABNER 2 and as a software designer for a mass file storage and retrieval system. Before retiring in 1986, he led the terminal subsystem development team for a UNIX-based system.[78]
The Research and Development organization, already home to a number of African-American males in engineering specialties, was also breaking other barriers in 1951. Vera Shoffner Russell, an African-American mathematician, reported to the Agency that year and was assigned as a programmer on the early computers, ABNER 2, ATLAS 1, and ATLAS 2. But the glass was only half full. She believes, as do the vast majority of African-Americans hired before 1954, that she started at a lower grade than similarly qualified whites. Her story also includes familiar references to the employment options for educated blacks in the 1950s and to the harsh realities of segregation:
I graduated in 1951 from West Virginia State College and took the test for math majors at the U.S. Employment Center in Charleston. I was a math and physics major and had an offer to teach school in Winston-Salem [North Carolina], but I didn't want to teach. At the time, however, for the most part, when [blacks] came out of college, you went to teach. Teaching and preaching were the only things open. Then, I got this letter to come to Washington and take a physical at the Pentagon. Shortly thereafter, I came into the Agency, which was located at the time on Arlington Boulevard. Now, my maiden name was Shoffner, and West Virginia is only three percent black, so my notification of hiring, which I saw in my personnel folder years later, carried a 'w', and they offered me a GS-5. When I got here, they asked if I would accept a 4. I took it. I didn't know anything about GS ratings, and I really think they offered me the job because they thought I was white. As far as segregation goes, I did better in West Virginia, because Washington would make you stand in carry-out lines. But you didn't have that in West Virginia. The first year I came here, I sat up at the drugstore counter down on Connecticut Avenue, and I opened the compartment and took a donut. And all the commotion! All the waitresses were white, and they kept going back and forth – passing me. I wanted a cup of coffee, and nobody gave me a cup. So, the guy from behind the cigar counter came up and told me, 'We do not serve colored people at the counter'.[79]
