Celebrating The Invisible Cryptologists
“… these early African American cryptanalysts and translators appear to have been virtually invisible… Few former Agency employees… had any knowledge of African Americans in professional positions; most did not even recall seeing African Americans on the campus.”
The Invisible Cryptologists: African-Americans, WWII to 1956 by Jeannette Williams
The theme for this year’s Black History Month is “Hallowed Grounds: Sites of African American Memories”, and it speaks to the places across the US where African-Americans have made a significant impact. One place that should be recognized is the National Security Agency (NSA), where African-Americans made important contributions to the evolution of cryptography — a science that’s fundamental to cryptocurrencies — as well as to race relations at the agency.
In The Invisible Cryptologists: African-Americans, WWII to 1956, Jeannette Williams provides an in-depth account of the early days of cryptology and the African-American experience at Arlington Hall Station (AHS), the predecessor to the NSA. Based on first-hand accounts and archival records, the book describes how the employment of African-American cryptologists came about and developed over the years.
Reading the moving personal accounts of these AHS pioneers, and realizing how little is acknowledged of the African-American contribution to this vital technology, reminded me of the importance of efforts like the MIT Hackathon for editing black history on Wikipedia. As was discussed in this account of that project, diverse perspectives on historical events are necessary to ensure the full significance of how they came about can be accurately captured and relayed to future generations. This is especially true when it comes to the historical accounts contained in the Invisible Cryptologists, a book that is, as historian David Hatch noted in the foreword, “by turns infuriating and inspiring.”
A few of the highlights from Williams’ work:
- The first African-Americans in the agency were hired to work as messengers and relay communications between units on AHS campus. In 1944, based on a communication attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, the agency was told that 12–15% of personnel had to be “black and gainfully employed”. William Coffee, a college graduate who was serving as a messenger, was charged with assembling the first all African-American unit at AHS.
- The first job the unit received was reading forms of Morse communications during WWII. From 1944 to 1945, the unit grew to 30 members. Almost 30 years later, a member of the unit, Herman Phynes, would become the NSA’s first African-American office chief in the Operations Directorate.
- An increased need to decode messages as the Cold War took hold in the late 1940s led to an increase in the hiring of African-Americans at AHS. The Operations organization hired many African-Americans into non-supervisory, manual labor positions in the machine and Russian plaintext processing branch called AFSA-213.
- In response to new conflicts and the continued need to dissect communications, hiring of African-Americans into Operations positions continued to rise in the 1950s — and yet opportunities for advancement did not. As a member of AFSA-213 described, “… key punch was virtually all black except for the supervisors… it seems like whites would come in with no degree and … they would move on up.”
- In 1948, the Research and Development organization hired the first black engineers. One of those engineers, Carroll Robinson, went on to become the Agency’s first African-American senior executive.
- In the early 1950s, Raymond Weir, Jr. became the first African-American polygraph examiner in the US. He later became the chief of the AHS’s Investigations division and became the first African-American president of the American Polygraph Association
- The early 1950s also saw greater hiring and integration of African-Americans into units outside of machine processing.
- In closing the book, the author highlights, “Many of those who started at Arlington Hall Station became the Agency’s social activists of the 1960s and 1970s…”
While the names and faces of these early pioneers may be not familiar, their stories of perseverance and accomplishment are like other African-American historical figures celebrated every February. As Booker T. Washington said, “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” In the face of adversity, these Americans were able to stay diligent and focused on their work. In doing so, they changed the minds and attitudes of those around them and the opportunities for future generations of African-American cryptologists, cryptographers and, now, cryptocurrency developers.
Special thanks to Michael Casey, Brian Forde and Neha Narula for reading and providing valuable feedback on this post.
