Faced with the global threat of the rise of a world communist power in the aftermath of World War II, the United States employed hundreds of black Americans to quickly read Russian communications and gather key information about the United States' most dangerous nuclear rival.The result was the creation of a separate civilian decoding unit known as the Traffic Handling Division - “The Farm”. Despite wage discrimination, arduous working hours, strict quotas, and harsh conditions, a hundred black university-educated women on the “farm” made valuable achievements in Soviet-American intelligence, even as their democratic freedoms were eroded at home by fear of communism and backlash against civil rights. Their top-secret, underappreciated work led directly tovictory over the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War thirty years later.
In this thrilling historical book, Sarah Valentine tells their extraordinary story in full for the first time. Decoding the Devil offers a long-awaited tribute to these lesser-known black decryption experts for their crucial contributions to national security during the Civil Rights era, offering a new perspective on the Cold War and American heroes of color.
