First African-American woman to work in the offices of RCA
Florence Butler was the daughter of Bloomington minister and civil rights activist the Rev. Ernest Butler. She worked at RCA as a key-hole punch operator (an early form of computing) during the 1960s. RCA and other corporations in Bloomington often hired people of color but limited them to working on the production line. Florence crossed the barrier from unskilled to skilled labor at one of the world’s leading manufacturers of televisions and other electronic devices.