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Once, he and his fellow protestors entered a local pizza parlor, expecting to be denied service. They were thus shocked when a wait- ress approached them to take their order. So certain were they that they would meet with failure that they hadn’t thought to bring any money. “From that day, I’ve always said, ‘You have to be pre- pared for opportunity when

African Americans have long played a part in the success of the military.

it arrives,’” he explained during an oral history interview archived at the HistoryMakers website. “You’ve got to be prepared for success.” Greene earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engi- neering in 1961 and then entered Purdue University, where he earned his master’s degree the following year. He then took a break from academia, joining the US Air Force and serving as an electronics engineer for four years. As part of his duties, he reportedly helped develop high-performance computers for the National Security Agency. Upon being discharged, Greene took a job with Fairchild Semiconductor, a company that had gotten its start a de- cade earlier, when Nobel Prize-winning physicist William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor , launched an epon- ymous venture, Shockley Semiconductor. Within a year,

Frank Greene

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