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Though the government had the opportunity to establish the Reservation as a completely desegregated zone, it did not; black residents on the grounds of the Clinton Engineer Works would be primarily laborers, janitors, and domestics, and would live separately, no matter their education or background. This would prevent noted mathematician, physicist, and engineer J. Ernest Wilkins Jr., who was working at the Metallurgical Lab at the University of Chicago, from being transferred to Oak Ridge.
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Denise Kiernan (The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II)