Marsha Coleman-Adebayo vividly recalls a meeting during her early days at the Environmental Protection Agency. It was 1992, and the MIT-trained African-development expert was one of two black employees in the mostly white, mostly male senior ranks. "Come on in, Marsha," her supervisor beckoned as she arrived at the conference room. "We'll make you an honorary white man so you can join us."

Another exasperating memory is that of returning from maternity leave to find that a far less experienced white man had become her boss. When she complained, she said her supervisor responded, "You're an intelligent woman; you knew how not to get pregnant. How can you make that decision and expect to compete with men?"

According to Coleman-Adebayo, such comments were routine. "The EPA was just beginning to open its doors to black professionals when I arrived, so they were really grappling with how to interact with African Americans," she told The Root, adding that her protests were met with accusations of being too sensitive. "But all of that paled in comparison to my problems once I filed a lawsuit."

That 1996 discrimination lawsuit would eventually expose an even grimmer story: an EPA cover-up of deplorable working conditions for South African miners poisoned by vanadium in a mine owned by a U.S. multinational. After she told her superiors about poisoned workers with gruesome ailments, including green tongues and bleeding from every orifice, they showed little concern, ordering her to stop talking about it immediately.

In Coleman-Adebayo's new book, No Fear: The Whistleblower's Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA, she details the pressure, name-calling and death threats that she says she received after refusing to keep quiet. Her testimony in her discrimination case eventually resulted in the passage of the No FEAR Act, which protects federal whistleblowers from victimization.

"I made a commitment to the South African miners and their families that I would tell their stories. I also wanted to do something to stop the abuse and retaliation against people like me who spoke up when we saw wrongdoing," she said of the No FEAR Act. "We passed the law at the same time as 9/11, so there was very little acknowledgment -- but this struggle can't continue to be a footnote of history."