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Showing posts from April, 2017

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past by Jennifer Teegee and Nikola Sellmair

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My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past by Jennifer Teegee and Nikola Sellmair                 Jennifer Teegee was browsing through the library in Hamburg when she came across a book titled I Have to Love My Father, Don’t I? The Life Story of Monica Goeth, Daughter of the Concentration Camp Commandant from “Schindler’s List.” Monica Goeth is Jennifer’s biological mother. Monica placed Jennifer in an orphanage when she was an infant and she had been adopted at the age of 7. She never had a great relationship with her mother, but she did love the company of her maternal grandmother, Irene. Irene was the woman who loved Amon Goeth, the Commandant. Now all Jennifer has is questions about her family, about her life, about the grandfather she saw portrayed in a movie by Ralph Fiennes. He was the man shooting people in the camp from his window. She writes “He in his black uniform with its death-heads, me the black grandchild. What would he

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

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Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly                 With World War II came the need for faster, more efficient planes. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), located at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, needed computers. The need was so great that women were hired in very high numbers, even black woman were hired for their mathematical skill. Many of these women had advanced degrees and worked as teachers. When the opportunity arose to work for NACA they rose to the occasion. But they would experience many of the hardships in the work place that they did outside of the workplace. Even though they were vital to the work being done they were segregated and known as the West Computers while their white counterparts were the East Computers. They had to sit in a segregated lunch area and use bathrooms labeled as “Colored.” The years would pass