Book review of Decoding the Devil by Sarah Valentine

Ethel Just, a fluent German speaker, earned degrees from Ohio and Boston universities, then taught languages at Howard University and Washington, D.C., public schools for many years before ultimately becoming a college administrator. But when she was laid off at 59 during an economic downturn, the U.S. government only grudgingly hired her into a job as a low-level data clerk, well below her skills and experience.  

Why steer someone so overqualified to that position? Because Just was Black, it was 1944 and white officials forced to meet a tiny quota for Black hires made sure these workers would stay at the bottom in segregated units. But, hey, the job had retirement benefits. And, as it turned out, it was vital to U.S. national security: Just was among the first of more than 1,000 Black codebreakers who would be hired during World War II and the Cold War to fight Hitler and Stalin. They were readers and processors of global signals intelligence.

Decoding the Devil: Black Women Codebreakers and the Secret War Against Stalin’s Bomb tells the little-known story of Just and other Black cryptologists, predominantly women, described by author Sarah Valentine (When I Was White) as “segregated, overworked and written out of the official histories.” They were employed by what has evolved through several stages into today’s National Security Agency. The Black employees, performing tedious but crucial skilled tasks that would now be computerized, were deliberately kept at the front end of the process, denied the opportunity to become more prestigious intelligence analysts despite their qualifications. This discrimination lasted well into the 1950s; change was slow even after then.

Valentine highlights the value of these workers against the backdrop of both the U.S. intelligence effort, often hampered by infighting and inefficiency, and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement. The greatest strength of her book is her reconstruction of the otherwise obscure careers of remarkable Black women like Just, such as Naomi McElwaine, a Purdue graduate who went into biotech after the war, and Iris Carr, a Texas schoolteacher who ultimately clawed her way into an NSA position that allowed her to mentor a luckier generation. 

These women, frustrated but tough, did vital work in what Valentine calls a system “that depended on Black labor while denying Black talent.” Struggling against prejudice at home, they helped win victories for democracy in the world.