{"response":{"docs":[{"id":"geh_vhpohr_318","title":"Oral history interview of Mortimer Augustus Cox, tape 1 of 2","collection_id":"geh_vhpohr","collection_title":"Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews","dcterms_contributor":null,"dcterms_spatial":["United States, Alabama, Jefferson County, Birmingham, 33.52066, -86.80249","United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018","United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383","United States, Hawaii, Honolulu County, Honolulu, 21.30694, -157.85833","United States, North Carolina, Onslow County, Camp Lejeune, Montford Point, 34.72433, -77.41441"],"dcterms_creator":["Brown, Myers; Johnson, Ahnekii","Cox, Mortimer Augustus, 1919-2001"],"dc_date":["1999-07-26"],"dcterms_description":["In part one of this two-part interview, Mortimer Cox describes his experiences as a black Marine in the Pacific during World War II. He discusses the reasons why he chose the Marines, having enlisted in the Corps as one of the first black Marines and describes the extraordinary lengths they had to go to to prove themselves. He recalls his encounters with prejudice and eventual acceptance.","Mortimer Cox was a Marine in the Pacific during World War II.","MORTIMER COX VETERANS HISTORY INTERVIEW Atlanta History Center July 26, 1999 Interviewer: Myers Brown Transcriber: Stephanie McKinnell TAPE 1 of 2 Myers Brown: . . . full name, and date of birth, and place of birth, just some general information now. Mortimer Cox: All right, I'm Mortimer Augustus Cox. Why they named me that, I'll never know. I was born April 15,1919, in Birmingham, Alabama. MB: When did you first move here to the Atlanta area? MC: I moved to Atlanta June of 1946, September of 1946. I had decided to use my GI Bill for college education. It's interesting how I selected—everybody asks me why did you select Atlanta and why did you select Morris Brown College as school. I'm a son of a coal miner in the steel mills of Birmingham. Returning from the war and my experience in the Marine Corps said to me that—while my parents could not afford me the privilege of college, I graduated from high school in 1937. Knowing that I had the opportunity to utilize the GI Bill of Rights, I decided I would do that. I didn't see a future in the steel mill. On the basis of my experience in the Marine Corps, I wrote every black, historically black college in this country in a large city. I was concerned that I needed a large city in order to supplement my income because I was married at that time. Most of them in '46 was overfilled with the returning World War II veterans and I began to get , “We're full.” Finally I received a letter from Morris Brown in Atlanta, Georgia, and they said they had an opening and they would accept me. They wanted a $5 deposit on my room, incidentally. And I could afford that, so I took that. That's why I chose Atlanta. MB: When did you first hear of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and America's involvement? Do you know where you were when that happened? MC: Exactly. I'll never forget it. I was at a Sunday afternoon tea, that was what we had in my community, teas on Sunday. They were church related activities, and of course you would always go and do such exciting things as dance, maybe, but spin the bottle and kiss the girl, yes!, and we would always attend those. That was late Sunday afternoon that year, and we were there, and someone happened to turn on the radio, and we heard it on the radio, and the President was speaking, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and, of course, all of us had registered for the draft, but we were just waiting on our number to go up. All of the teenage boys were there, and the girls, and we listened for the rest of the afternoon. I don't think we spinned the bottle at all that day because we were concerned. But I can remember, I can remember the house, and quite often, if I'm in Birmingham, I'll drive past. And the lady's name was Mrs. Pittman, and as I said there's where I was December 7, 1941. But it's very clear in my mind because it changed my life. Int: When did you get drafted or enlisted? MC: In 1942, I began to think seriously, and the draft was on all young men. And, of course, I was thinking I did not want the Army because blacks were limited in the Army. I had a brother who had volunteered several years earlier and what he was doing did not impress me. Of course, the travel was always intriguing, but just the activity did not impress me. The Navy from what I had seen, I had seen blacks who were in uniform but most of them were either butlers or waited tables aboard ship. That did not appeal to me. There was a paper which was printed, a black newspaper, the Birmingham Daily World, it was a branch of the Atlanta Daily World. It was printed in Atlanta but it was primarily news about blacks in there. I saw the announcement that the Marine Corps was accepting blacks, and of course I thought this was a challenge. I realized they didn't have the kind of segregation that existed in the other major services. So I thought I would go down just to get some more information, and I went to the post office, and I found myself taking the test, and I passed the test and I was sworn in that day. I guess if I'd had to think about it, I don't know what I would have done, but when I found myself being given the oath of office and then told I was a Marine, and I was no longer subject to the draft, that of course gave me some relief. Now I did not immediately go in. I didn't know why. I went back home and from, that was June, I guess about June 12, I believe it was, and I went back home. All my friends were being drafted and were going in the service. I was home, I had heard nothing from the Marine Corps at all, and it was only in late August of '42 I received my orders. “You will report to Camp Montford Point, New River, North Carolina,” on such and such a date with a ticket aboard the train to North Carolina, and that was the first [notice] I had. When I got there, there were very few blacks. I believe I only saw about five or six blacks. That was September 1. And, of course, over the next several days they were bringing more in, so I ended up being in what we call the First Platoon of blacks, the first 40 men who began training. I was in that outfit and I began, I found myself in boot camp at that time becoming a Marine. It was very traumatic. We had a situation where there were no blacks to provide the initial training so these were all whites who were to give us the boot training, and if you know anything about what boot training incurred, it was traumatic. Those of us from the south did not have as much of a culture shock as those young men who were coming out of Chicago, out of New York, and out of the Midwest, who came and found themselves in Washington, D.C., and they'd have to move in the back of the train, so they came onboard in the camp angry. . . . Interestingly enough, most of that group of 40 men had some college, some were graduates out of college. It was a ______, why I don't know, maybe they were the ones who could pass the initial test, but they were angry and very, very hostile, so it was [difficult], because that special service group that was assigned to give us our training did it with the enthusiasm that I guess the Marines have had for 200 years prior to that, so it was an experience. It was hard to differentiate what was racial and what was required of training. The rigors of training is to get you to think as a group, so those of us who had never been into it, I had never been to a camp. Years later as I got older and began to broaden my experience, I could see that in day camp. Youngsters are taught to think as a group and be responsible for the group, so I could understand it. But I had never had that experience, and I suppose most of the youngsters who were there had not had that kind of experience so we did not know what was racial and what was training, so it was very, very difficult. Int: Did you all talk about it? MC: Very traumatic. Int: Did the southerners talk to the northerners? MC: Uh-huh. We almost took a kind of attitude that we were responsible for the group. So first of all, we felt a closeness to those black leaders who were pushing for equal opportunity for blacks, like A. Phillip Randolph and the guy who was head of the National Urban League and NAACP, who were actually talking to the President looking for opportunities for young people in service. And we felt obligations, especially those from the south. You had youngsters out of Talladega, in Talladega, Alabama, Alabama A\u0026M in Montgomery, Morehouse College and Clark [Atlanta University] here, so those educated blacks began to take an attitude that we can't let the race down. They don't want us in the Marine Corps, but we cannot fail. If we fail it will be because they just made the decision, not that we could not do it. So we began to form what we did not know were support groups at night. We would rehash those traumatic experiences that an individual had had and try to put it in perspective. And looking back during the earlier years when students began to integrate white institutions, that was one thing that I tried to get our organization, the Montford Point Marines, that's a national group of black Marines, to form those kinds of groups in the black community, to get young people to realize and see the big picture, as we would always say. You know, do your task and do it well. But it never really happened. But it was very difficult to go through that training and keep everybody concerned. MB: Now how old were you when you went to . . . MC: I tell you, I had been out of high school since 1937, so I was what, '42, 18, I was 23. MB: Were you older or younger or about the same age as most? MC: About the same age. As soon as the Marine Corps had to accept, later on in '43, the Marine Corps had to accept selective service, which was a body of men that selective service, a local selective service [office] would refer to the service, and they would be assigned out. When they began to get that kind of person, you began to get younger, more hostile blacks who didn't understand, didn't want to be in the war anyway, but they realized they had to. But that was my age. Jacksonville [North Carolina] was an experience. It was a small town that depended on the Marine barracks for its existence. But they didn't take kindly to black Marines, and the black Marines were really the ones closest to them. The Marine barracks was farther out across the railroad tracks so they viewed us as outsiders, and they felt we weren't going to be there long. I guess maybe it was assumed that “This is a trial and if they fail, it will close.” So that was our first impression. But it was, truly there were some experiences that even I remember. And being raised all my life in the south other than just going to New York or Washington to visit relatives or something, it was traumatic to me. Because there was always—in Birmingham where I was born and reared, there was always even downtown, theaters and cafés, you had all of your social organizations and your churches and school groups. But here in Jacksonville, it was a country town with very few blacks and no “black society” so it was traumatic. The bus drivers had never had to adjust to black troops. And if we wanted—the closest liberty places were either in Wilmington, New Bern or Lamar, where they had black populations, so most was ready to take a bus. But the bus drivers would always enforce segregation. You had to be in the back seat. So you formed two lines, which was unusual, you know, hard to accept because I had on the uniform just like you. But usually about four or five blacks would get on the back seat and he would fill up the bus with the white troops. So that got to be a problem, especially with those of us who were then moved up where we began to replace the special service troops and we were becoming NCO's ourselves. We had to deal with the fact that here's a youngster on leave, then he comes back AWOL and it's not his fault, because we had experienced first hand that you just couldn't get the bus. You know when only five of you can get out on that bus, you know what I mean, so they were more likely to be absent without leave. So, we increasingly began to press the commanding officer. Now it's to his credit that the person who was selected as commanding officer, Colonel Samuel Woods, accepted the position because he wanted to do it. He actually asked for the assignment, and I've heard him tell me a million times why he had, the name of the group of 51st Defense Battalion, and his pride and joy was that he, how he selected 51st. He said he selected the “5” and the “1” because of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The two persons that appear on the five and one dollar bills were most liked by blacks, and that was how he got it. But he was very, very, very fair and the only thing that really bothered me, as a colonel with the long tenure in the Marine Corps, he could look you in the eye and tell you, I can't control this, and he couldn't. But he would come up with a point with buses, he would assign the troop trucks to go to cities like New Bern and carry them on liberty. So we had our own trucks. Interestingly enough, whites who were running late and missed the last bus would be begging and pleading “let us on your bus,” because we could stay a little later, we didn't have to abide by the bus schedule. And you always assigned noncommissioned officers, so that the MPs which were old Marines that resented the blacks did not have to interface with us. So that they would always say, “Where is your NCO?” and turn them over. “I caught him doing such and such a thing.” And of course we would handle it. But it was interesting enough, I can remember one night, they found me in 1953 [43?], and I just happened to remember that because I can remember when my wife and I got our first house and quit rooming and got an apartment. They built apartments on the base for black non-coms who had a family, so the family's there. When I married, my wife and I had an apartment there. And we were laughing. In December of that year, out in Jacksonville on that coast, it was very cold. The wind is awful. Easily on a cold day you can feel little flakes of ice in the wind. But the deal is when it's cold, coal is limited. They would not let the troops, and we had to buy coal to heat the apartment, would not sell us any coal. Coal would come in and we'd go down to pick up some coal and they'd say, “No, all of this is promised.” So finally we convinced Colonel Woods, the commanding officer, we have a problem. He said what, we told him, and immediately we had a mountain of coal for the steam boiler to do the heating on the base. And he says, “That's our coal. Get you some trucks and back up the pile and get all the coal you need.” So we never bought no more coal, it was that kind of thing. But he was a thoughtful caring person. The camp was not all bad, we had some plusses. There was a young lieutenant who was assigned, he was a radical they said. I guess he was a forerunner of the so-called hippies. Robert Troop, and I had seen some movies, he was out of Hollywood, but he knew all the band leaders, the actors who were black and everything. We had a movie, but by the time we got the movies from the main base, they would be old. He had a contact in Hollywood he could call, and of course they would send movies in. Most of the band leaders then, Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, he knew them, and he would have them on the base. One of the most interesting articles, I mean incidents, on the base, is that the commanding officer of the total camp, Camp Lejeune, heard that we had a black boxer who was very good. I can't think of his name, but he was coming to give us an exhibition as the result of Lt. Troop's invitation, and everybody wanted to see it. He wanted to see the bout. He came down, and the guys, like most youngsters, are noisy. And you know how you are at a boxing gig. That bothered that CO and he issued an order for all of the troops to be quiet, and of course we said you're on our turf, you know, and this is for us and you're just a guest here. He had really turned them off because at the time he came over to see the troops, we really trained the troops to be very precise in drilling and to do it exact, and it was a thing of beauty to watch those young fellows drill. And he had, in talking to them, said—he was just returning from the Pacific. And he says, “You know, I'm just back from the Pacific. I've seen women Marines, I've seen dog Marines, and now I see you people.” And I guess he was trying to make a point, I believe in my heart, now that I reflect on it, he was trying to make a point. “Now when I see you people, I know we are at war.” And, of course, the guys are afraid to boo a general, but the next time, he was coming this particular night, and the guys say, he's going to see it by himself, we're not going, and we'll just pass over the camp. And we knew, to Colonel Woods, that was going to put him in a pretty bad light to be a camp commander and be told, the commander of the total camp is coming and none of your troops will be there, so we didn't know what to do. So we decided we would declare what we called a punishment, that you will do a camp cleaning, nobody would say anything. Well, the troops go on punishment and that was going to be our way of doing it. But the colonel came in, he sent for his non-coms then and asked them, fellows, I can't let this, guys got to be there, he's going to know something, you know. But we did relent and the troops did go, but it's that kind of thing that you had openly. Int: Where was your first assignment? MC: My first assignment as I told you, I came in to be assigned to the 51st Defense Battalion. About [1943] when the war had changed, I suppose troops were addressed [?] then. Interestingly enough the whites were gone. They kept the 51st Defense Battalion, but they realized they would have to have a cadre of troops to continue training those blacks who had come in there out of the selective service, so they set up what they called recruit depot training, and Colonel Woods took that camp, and another colonel took over the 51st Defense Battalion, and he asked me if I would be one of those who would stay. He said they like my style, they like my leadership qualities, will you stay. And, of course at that time, I had—it's interesting, the story goes back to the six blacks who made PFCs. That was the first time in the history of the Marine Corps blacks ever made it. I was one of those. And I had, by this time I think I was a buck sergeant. They had to pull the whites out and they had to put us on fast track for promotion, so we were about every three months getting a promotion, and that's unheard of in the Marine Corps. But he had asked me to stay and to serve as first sergeant of “A” company, which was the first recruit training company we were going to have, and, of course, that's when I decided to get married. I says, I'm going to be here, and he told me all about the plans for apartments, and “you'll be here for the rest of the war just training troops.” Gee, that was nice. So I accepted. It was at that point that I began to get over ___. But in 1944, the commanding officer of Camp Lejeune then returned from the Pacific to do duty back in the states, he had been out long enough, and he came over, and he had seen black troops overseas. But always under the supervision of white non-coms, and he came over and saw first sergeant, black sergeant, he was amazed. He had been on Saipan incidentally, the first activity of blacks in the Pacific, but the Japanese, they didn't know that the troops had been trained. They thought all they could do was handle supplies, but when the troops came through, they laid down, grabbed weapons and began to stop the Japanese. And, of course, at that point, there was an article in Time magazine, it was right after, it was a sailor aboard the ship who grabbed the gun and actually to, began to do like at Pearl Harbor, and all of that came back, so it began to take an attitude. His feeling was the troops would be better off, he looked around and saw a whole cadre of black non-coms that he didn't know existed. So he then said that he was going to begin to send black non-coms out. That must have been midsummer '44. And with my seniority and my connections with Colonel Woods, I would always miss it, [they'd take] somebody else, and finally Colonel Woods said, “Sergeant, they're going to get you, you're going to have to go, you've got to be selective.” And, of course, there was a company with a friend of his who was going over with the 36th, and he wanted me, and Colonel Woods wanted me to go because he felt that he could do a good deed through a friend of his. And of course I had to go, and that was traumatic, but I went and got in Pearl Harbor December 15, five days before Christmas, lonely, mad, and deserted, and not knowing what I was going to do. But it was Pearl Harbor and Honolulu at Christmas time, I guess it was nice. But we did, and of course, the rest is history, because in '44 we began doing immediately maneuvers and training immediately after Christmas and that led right up to February of '44 or '45 then isn't it?, yeah, '45. MB: Now which unit were you assigned to when you went to Pearl Harbor? MC: We were assigned with a unit of what they call a depot company, a battalion I guess it was, something new for the Marine Corps, which handled all the supplies. See, the Marine Corps prior to that had had encounters in which it would go ashore and was able to supply itself [by] scrimmages. But for the first time, the Marine Corps found itself out at Saipan which would need reinforcements, medical personnel, would be the only thing the same as the Army, because they were fighting the war just like an Army, but it was not equipped to handle that, so they began to come up with depot companies with full detail, armaments, you know, armaments and the whole ammunition supply. We had to supply all the troops as you went, remember, because they could only carry so much during initial action. So we were assigned to one of those companies, and we began to maneuver loading and reloading. We wore out the equipment during January and the first of February prior to Iwo Jima just training, so that by the time we got to Iwo Jima, we were just like the Army going aboard with the artillery, coming on in phases with the supplies, and that's what the company and I did. We handled more ammunition, we handled clothing, water, and all the wonderful brandy that they gave you, and that's another whole story, but that was nice. MB: But you were there training until February, and then in February? MC: Yes, we actually went to Iwo Jima and was there when the flag, every time you see that flag, it brought on a different kind of meaning, because I had no idea, I had . . . [TAPE changed] . . . I had nothing to compare it with. I thought it was difficult but I just thought that was war and it was only on reflection that it really, really . . . and the deaths, I had never seen that much death before in my life, and that of course bothered me, and I was certain that I was not going to get off. But— MB: When did you actually go ashore on Iwo Jima? Did ya'll go? MC: Yes. We went, it went by D-plus D-Day, D-Day is D and the day after is D-1. We went D-5 and that was because you just couldn't get ashore because everything just logged up and the what it was about D-5 when you actually see the flag raising on Iwo Jima, which the Japanese could actually pinpoint any island. They could look and see a group of men, they'd know exactly how to set their weapons and hit it, so that just naturally tied the troops up on the beaches, and you couldn't until . . . that's the importance of Mount Suribache and the flag raising. So, yes, when you saw the flag up, you knew that they had conquered the island where they could actually, it's a mountain, it's a top of the mountain, and they had pinpointed and all of our control so that once they put the flag up, that was a symbol to the troops that that was secure, then you no longer had to fear the being attacked with emplaced guns from their mountain. But we went in and they, we were, there was no place for you to hide with Marine Corps at invasions, whether you're going in D- or D-10, they needed you. But it was nasty black sand, just as black as that chair, and by the first full day with the body parts and the bodies, flies were big and it was a stink that you never would forget. MB: When you were on shore, how close did you guys deploy to the front, I mean, did you have people taking supplies up to the front or were they coming back to you? MC: No, you carried the supplies. The only man I lost in my company, I had 160 men in my company, and course I was first sergeant, I laugh about it now. First sergeants do nothing but receive the reports and hand it out, that's his responsibility. But it, there's no background. Iwo Jima's not large enough, very small island, not any larger I would say than what you call Buckhead, so that you're on the front line when you're there. So it is, it was an experience. Int: Did the company you were in, were they all black? MC: All black, yes. The officers were white. That's a whole different story. After the war, after Iwo Jima, we returned to Hawaii for rest and well, what they call R\u0026R. Rest and recreation. That was very good duty. We were stationed on the big island of Hilo, that's the big island of Hawaii, Hawaii itself . . . Honolulu is on Oahu . . . but it's the largest island, primarily sugarcane, pineapple, and bananas. We were assigned a camp for black troops. They had some trouble. Most of the Hawaiian, true Hawaiians, were at that time, back in the ‘40s, were on the big island and living in small cities around Hilo. Hilo was where most of the tourists would come in, that was a city like Honolulu is, but in the camp which is out in the suburbs, that was a Dole pineapple camp and they decided to put us in this camp as black troops, thought we'd get along with the natives better, which we did, it was just like being in Paradise, having been on Iwo Jima, that black sand, with no food, to be able to reach out of your window and pick a ripe banana, you know, for breakfast, eat all the pineapple you want, you know, it was quite well. But even that did not last because after about, I guess about two months after that, everybody said, well, we got the, right after Easter when Iwo Jima was secured, and let's see, the European war was over around August I believe it was of '45. Do I remember my history correct, I'm thinking about how I lived it. I can remember that, I can remember hearing, on that island, that Franklin Roosevelt died down in Warm Springs, that Truman became president and that we were gearing up at that time again to do the maneuvers again for another march. We did not know it at that time what it was going, or where it was going to be, but we were doing about the same thing we had done back in September, and after you've done it once, you did this before, you know what happened. But then in September the first bomb was dropped on Nagasaki [Hiroshima]. We did not know it, only then we had put together that we were getting, preparing to invade Japan. Because we began to do certain things. You would not have the sand beaches, which told us that we were going into a port. So we did some, we were praying for the second bomb, you know, and I still do not blame . . . . Historians now second-guess Truman about that second bomb but I thank him for it because we didn't, so that when they finally surrendered, we actually covered the territory that we were preparing to invade. And we went in the naval base on the southern island of Japan, Sasabo, the naval base in Japan. We actually made the occupation for that section of the island that we were going to, I imagine everybody took what they were supposed to do. But there is where the end, the war ended. I had been in now four years. I'd been overseas, I had rank, and they began to let you out based on the points system. And then December of '45 I had the points, and I applied at that point to be released. And of course I had an opportunity and I knew most of the people who were in charge, and they kept saying, you're going to go back on a nice liberty ship, you're not going to go. And finally I said I'll take anything. It was after Christmas and I told my wife I was coming home and I didn't. And I waited, I waited all of January of '46 and nothing good came through. Finally about the end of January, I said, I'll take whatever it is. And I got an LST, an LST is a flat bottomed ship that can pull up on the beach, and I came back from Japan on an LST. That was a trip that all I wanted was the United States, and I wanted to get back home again, I was ready for the war . . . . I am not a soldier, I would get the orders for the company _______. And the thing that bothered me, and I hear it now, on September, I mean on July 26, 1999, at 0100 you will . . . you know, move to such and such and report to so and so. That bothers me, you know, you have nobody enters into . . . I remember telling Colonel Woods the day I got my orders to report to the company that I had, and that was away. And my wife was there, alone, didn't know anyone there on the base, but I had not had chance enough to get the furniture and get everything moved, you know. And I was just about ready to tell him I'm not going to do it, they're going to have to shoot me or something, I'm not going to leave my wife here, you know, alone. She's never been away from home. But he said, “Sergeant, we're going to tell your wife, we're going to pack the furniture, we're going to see that she gets on a train, see that she gets home, you've got nothing to worry about.” I said, “Colonel, I believe you but I don't believe them other folks out there.” MB: Did, can you describe for me when you landed at Guadalcanal, what you were wearing, what you were carrying, uniform, equipage, head to toe? If you can. MC: Fatigues, I had fatigues, just straight fatigues. MB: Chamois or… MC: What we called the olive green, twill like, like this. It's about this color, maybe like these trousers. It was olive green. You had a helmet, a steel helmet, that was it. We left Norfolk, it was a wonderful trip for a country boy to leave Norfolk go down the Pacific and take about three or four days through the Panama Canal. Didn't even feel like it was cold, it was in October, and once you got down to Hilton Head, the sun was out, you pull off your clothes and lay on the beach on a nice new USS named after a county in New York, see they were having these liberty ships. And we just thought we were going to heaven, you know what I mean. And then load up in Panama, we had to wait because the ships went through the canal based on priority, and I guess our priority wasn't high enough. So we just sit there and you'd go on liberty one day and every other day you'd go on liberty and see the nice girls out there, I guess we had more money because we didn't have anything to do with the money we had, we were going overseas. But it was wonderful, and to experience the Panama Canal. That I really appreciated. It was only when we got to the west coast and we joined then the armada with the battleships, the destroyers, the other troop ships, and we went from Northern Japan because we went in the water then, no smoking at night, you know, no lights on the deck, always with your gear if you were on the topside. You could never go topside with the, not full gear and prepared to evacuate because you never knew when you were going to be struck with a torpedo or something. MB: Were you carrying weapons at Iwo Jima or were you wearing a sidearm? MC: I wore a sidearm, which didn't seem to be accurate enough, a .45. That wasn't enough. I finally took on a carbine which was a rifle and could be accurate up to about 200 yards, and I had fired it so I knew I could do it, and I wanted to be able to shoot. A .45 is alright for hand to hand combat, when you're close up on you, but you could miss, I could miss you firing if I wasn't very careful, this distance, with a .45. But carbines or something like that, but most troops carried that. The first sergeant was required with a sidearm. That looks good in the states, you want something maybe more effective. MB: Were the rest of the men in your company also carrying carbines? MC: All of them. You were issued a carbine in boot camp, that was yours. That was your baby, you kept it, you never let a piece of rust show on it, and you carried it with you. And the only time you could _____ that was when it wouldn't fire. MB: Everybody tells stories about the famous Marine Kbar knife, did you guys carry those Kbars? MC: No, no. We did not. See really and truly most of the weapons where Marines had been fighting hand to hand in World War II, they began to change. We began to see a change for that because that was a different kind of war, you began to go like down in the Pacific, you remember Haiti and all of that, well the Marines, the “halls of Montezuma” you know down in Mexico, all of that stuff, that was when they had the hand to hand combat. We did, when I first went in, jujitsu and all of that was in for hand to hand combat. But increasingly the Pacific did away from that, Japanese say they'll shoot you down, no hand to hand . . . MB: What kind of food did they give you? MC: Food was always good at installations like camp, good cooks, always. Yeah, I can remember I was telling you about Hilo on the big island of Hawaii there on the top of what is the mountain name, I've forgotten, it looked like Texas, and they have beef cows. We would send up every day and get steaks, steaks that were about that thick and about that big. And I had a mess sergeant who could really cook a steak, you know. And, well, that was it, they'd really be a roast and not a steak. But the food at all the installations is as nice as, I was reading either this year or last year, about the Marine Corps birthday, there's always a good meal. And I was thinking about it and how wonderful it was, but now in combat, you're going to have K rations, and all K rations taste alike. But Marine Corps, the only outfit I imagine attached to the Navy would be aboard ship because you've got an installation for cooking. MB: As far as your equipment, uniform, anything like that, was there any piece of equipment you thought was really useful, a real good thing to have, or was there stuff that you thought why on earth did they ever issue me this, this is a piece of garbage? MC: Marines always had good equipment, course you didn't put up with a rifle. See you were talking about weaponry. When I went in, we learned to fire the Thompson submachine gun. You see because it was hand to hand, you could move in a group of people. That was the kind of activity the Marine Corps had up until World War II. But in World War II and the type of activity that we had, we began to shift. I did fire, I fired the Thompson sub for, just for qualification. What else did I fire? We had the BAR, it was an automatic weapon, and of course every Marine up until the time I went through boot training had to fire the '03, that's the old rifle that you had to cock, and you had to fire and qualify with it before you got with the new rifle that had the, you know, you could fire, what, eight rounds? And with the, with the . . . MB: The M-1. MC: Right, right. The M-1 was relatively new to World War II, but you had to qualify. I qualified as a sharpshooter. Qualified as a sharpshooter on the BAR and the Thompson sub, and the '45, yeah. MB: Now after you were discharged and you took your GI Bill and you came here to Atlanta, went to school, what did you do after you got out of school? MC: After I finished school? I took all of my GI Bill, what, 48 months, I took every penny. The government does not now owe me anything, and I went four years through college. I really had the plan of being a lawyer. My plans were to finish Morris Brown and I took what they called the pre-law which was heavily history and government. And in the second year I joined my fraternity and one of my assignments as joining that fraternity, this Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, was to identify, you know . . . was to meet a person in the profession I intended to go into. I met a young attorney who had just finished Howard University and he gave me some advice and I kidded him about it. He died a couple of years ago, but I never let him forget it, he gave me a rude awakening. He said to me he wouldn't advise it. I really wanted some support and I asked him why. And he told me, unless you have a family who can buy you a law library and support your office for two years with at least a secretary, if you don't have that, I wouldn't advise you to suffer through law school. And I was angry when I left him, I was foaming, why would he talk to me like, why would he bust my dream. And I went back, but the more I began to think about it, that with my total investment, I had gone to college against my father's advice. His advice was . . .U.S. Steel had saved me, see during the war if you were drafted and you had a job, that company had to promise you a job when you returned. And they had given me that job and I think I worked about three months and finally I said I can't do this, this is too hard. And he said I was crazy, “you're married, you ought to be buying a home. Take the GI Bill and buy you a house,” you see, which is his right, eh, I can't do that. And I guess his wish is, then the last thing he told me and my wife, one more year, she was in junior college, she had been teaching with a certificate for two years college and while overseas I convinced her, you go ahead to college and finish college while you're, I'm overseas, that will give you something to do. Because she's going to go back to teach. “No, I don't want you to teach, you go back and finish college and stay with my daddy.” And she had another year, and he says if you go don't come back here. And I guess he still, I think he still viewed me as a child and I realized I wasn't ever going back and I felt if I went and went through Howard and got a law degree and had to go back home, I would have failed. So I made up my mind, I had changed my major. Well, I couldn't change it because I had a subject. I began to take courses in business administration. I never will forget, I went in a bookkeeping course and I think why am I doing this, I'm almost a junior and I'm going here taking a freshman course but I did. I took as many courses as I could and by that time my advisor said if I was going, I would decide to go the school of business at Atlanta University that I would not have to have, I could still get the courses, but I went through and did my two years for the master's at AU. And the last semester and my thesis, I did not have enough time but my counselor with the Veterans Administration said he wouldn't give me a check which I did not need, I had full time employment there, but he would pay the tuition and give me the supplies, so I was able to finish it, all of it under the GI Bill. Immediately after that, I had been selling home appliances. You couldn't buy refrigerators, washing machines, and all that right after the war and they were just coming. And I was very creative, did quite well, I think I made more money there than I ever did, you know just commission. But in conjunction with that, I had specialized—they didn't have a specialty in the school of business at Atlanta University then—but I leaned towards marketing and that's where my interest was. Well, connected with my selling, I knew every professor on the campus, knew every professional in the city, including Maynard Jackson's father, because I was selling them what they needed. So that, Johnson Publishing Company, at that time, Ebony and Jet, Johnny Johnson had, most of his advertisements in his magazines were cigarettes, beer, and maybe cold drinks, no hard advertising, automobiles and clothing and that kind of thing. And he in his wisdom decided that he wanted to go into that area, and he came looking for someone in Atlanta [to represent the magazines]. And he said everywhere he went and explained what he wanted, even on the campus, they'd tell him, “You need to see Mortimer Cox, he's just your person.” And I did, and I did quite well. I went with Johnson Publishing Company, and I enjoyed the work. It was travel. Johnny Johnson was a peculiar person, had a mind for it. For the first time in my life, you know, I traveled first class, because he said the people you need to meet are never in coach, you know. And I kind of like that. In the best hotels, I would go down and eat in the finest dining rooms, you know, and you would meet people. But it was an exciting thing. I was very instrumental in getting the Chrysler Corporation, advertising cars. Then clothing, Eagle suits, I remember that. And food, you know Chase \u0026 Sanborn Coffee, that kind of thing, just what the marketing gave me, that I would come out. Atlanta would always show, I remember distinctly in '52, Rich's downtown [store], and we ran a half-page ad with Eagle clothes, which was a good line of suits at that time. I wanted to set the same ad up into Rich's store for men on Forsyth Street and the buyer looked at me like “You're crazy, what, put an ad with a black magazine with the Rich's downtown?” Yes, what's wrong with it? I wanted to put my Ebony sign in the store. “Let me think about it.” So I went back and got all my friends and said, “You go to Rich's and ask for this outfit.” Now I knew all of them were not going to buy, but by the time I did it, the guy said he'd never seen an ad generate that kind of activity. And all these guys, they were college professors, businessmen, you know, ministers and that kind of thing, they could afford it. So then he said to me, “I've never had that.” He said “That's unusual and I sold some outfits.” He said, “I've got to do something nice with that ad, I don't know.” I said, “All I want to do is to get that ad, get a photographer and shoot it. And then you do whatever you want.” I didn't say it had to be up there for two weeks. He said, that's all you want, he said he can do that. So he sent the decorator and all, they set the window just like it. I shot it. Eagle has never figured out to this day how they couldn't get it done in New York, Los Angeles or anywhere else but here in Rich's in Atlanta. But they were impressed with that. I would have stayed with him but after I stayed with him almost two years, he wanted me to move to Detroit. I'd been to Detroit because I had a brother there, and Detroit had begun to deteriorate in terms of crime downtown in the city. I just didn't want to go. My wife had begun to teach, she had come over and gotten her masters and she was teaching in the public school system. I was doing quite well myself and I saw no reason. I finally told him, and he did terminate me right on the spot, sent me home. But my concern, he was rich, and as I looked back over, I'm in a position in a career that I could do, I knew I could do it, I knew I could be successful, but Johnson and Johnson had their own little magazine and the publisher couldn't afford me. So I had to make a choice. I can't afford the risk because I had put all my investment into having that kind of life. I left that company. He didn't fire me, he told me if I needed a recommendation, you know, and now that I'm old and I look back, I would have done the same thing. “And I'm going to pay you a good salary and I need to do what's best for the company. If you don't want to take it, I'll let you go.” Now that is just common good sense to me, as I age, of course I was angry at the time because I felt the man did me an injustice. That was the best he had, you know. But I left. On my way—I was in Chicago and he had given me two weeks termination pay and my vacation—and on my way, I bumped into a guy I knew who told me about a company in Owatana who was looking for a guy in sales, and it was Josten, in Owatana, Minnesota, just south of Milwaukee. He called a guy from Chicago, the guy says, “Hey, I'll come to Atlanta and see you.” I came back, he came and within two days I was headed back to Josten to learn their business of selling high school rings and supplies to high school students. I took that job, did well. I made more in that year than I'd ever made because I was, I could sell to schools, I could sell to high school girls. You had to do it on competition, and I was competing with white salesmen in the south. None of them could offer what I was. I was a black professional going into black high schools, and I could make a speech to some high school students that would make a principal of a white school say I was the best thing that had ever been in there, because they did not see black professionals. I was driving a new car, dressed nice, and that was it, so I had the edge on them. They were saying I wasn't a good salesman, you know what they was saying, you're not a good salesman, you've just got the edge on, you're a black salesman. And most of the other companies at that time were getting into looking for black salesmen to do that. Now I could begin to see some ripples. I could begin to see integration coming, and I said if I make this investment and establish it, if the schools integrate and you've still got white superintendents who control the schools, where would I be? Because this has never happened in this country before, so I had to make a decision. I'd better get into something a little bit moving. By this time, my wife was doing alright teaching, you know, working, and I began to say, you know, I'm getting older, I'd better start looking for a career. At this time, I guess, the housing authority was looking for a person, and they wanted a housing manager, and that was a pretty good salary at that time. My wife didn't like to travel either, so I left that job and went with the housing authority. And I guess the old sociology that I had, and I've always had an interest in people, I've always worked in my church, began to make a difference in the housing. I kept saying that these people, even though they're poor, want the same thing that you and I want where we live. They can't do it without a job, and how can they get a job, and I would ____ a guy who couldn't pay his rent. I had developed a plan where employers who were looking, and these were the people who were first line supervisors, I got to know them, and I could pick up the phone, I got this kind of guy, he'll come out and give you a good job, and I'd tell him it was a good job, it's got tenure, you can keep it and take care of your family. So increasingly, first line supervisors began to tell others, “I can get good people who want to work, call Cox out at Bowen Homes and see.” So, increasingly, one day the guy with the Urban League came to me and said, “You know, you're doing what we do anyway, and I can give you a better salary.” So I took it, and I went. So I enjoyed it, it was very rewarding. That's about it. MB: Thank you very much. MC: That's a picture of the first platoon of blacks being trained at Montford Point. MB: Are you in this picture? MC: Uh-huh, I can't find me. MB: You can't find you? MC: No, I've looked and looked. Now you can see the white training officers. These are the first black . . . MB: Now you're wearing? MC: Those pith helmets. Now in this book, yes, this is the first six PFCs who were promoted, the black marines who were promoted at Camp Lejeune. I was the first person, that's Bostick [?], Davis, Hashmon [?] and Johnson. He actually stayed in and upon retirement was a sergeant major. He stayed in. These two stayed in after the war. That's Huff, and that's Allen. [All talking at once.] MC: That's Cox, Bostick, Davis, Johnson, Huff, and Allen. God, I haven't done that in years. It's just deteriorating after 50 some years, and I would hate for that to happen. Fifty-six years ago today, let me tell my wife I did that. MB: So when was this photograph taken? MC: 1943. There's a picture in my dress blues. MB: And what is this rank you've got here? MC: I was a platoon sergeant. My rank, I always acted ahead of my rank, I was acting first sergeant there. They couldn't promote you fast enough. The white troops would get so angry, boy, when I made corporal. See you made corporal, in those dress blues, you would get that blue stripe and that it, that was it. Their prime hope was to make corporal so you got a blue stripe. You came in and in a short time you had it. I remember, it was in '43. My wife and I was waiting a train to Washington, where were we, Raleigh?, and I was out and two Marines came out and said, “You haven't been in service, do you know we'll make you prove that you could wear those chevrons.” You know, that red stripe down there. My wife was standing up there, and they were ready to fight, so all you got to do is just prove it, if you can handle yourself that was it. Boy, I says, “OK, I'll take you one at a time.” One came up, he gave me his best blow, I gave him my best blow, and he went sailing back. I was in good shape. I hit the other one, he went sailing back. Both of them started getting up to come again, you know my wife's standing there, she's scared to death. Two MPs turned the corner, I was never so happy to see two MPs because I'd given my best shot and they were getting up, I guess they'd been in the Marine Corps for 15, 20 years. But “prove that you can wear those stripes.” MB: [looking at photos] Tell us when and where. MC: That's December 1944 in Pearl Harbor, Honolulu. MB: Who is that with you? MC: That is my gunnery sergeant, that's the mess sergeant. McCord. That's McCord, the gunnery sergeant, and that's Sergeant Wingate, the mess sergeant. Good cook, too, good cook. MB: And the other person is you? MC: It's me. MB: And that is in? MC: Hawaii, in Honolulu. MB: Honolulu… MC: Honolulu, 1944. MB: Tell us what this is. MC: That is a diary, and it seemed to me at one of the Marine parties, someone gave me that book, and I said I was going to keep it. I did keep it completely until January of '44, I got married and quit writing in it. I did write one entry upon discharge. But the interesting thing, the interesting thing that I see in that, and I didn't know it at the time, there is no bitterness and that is amazing to me. I interpreted everything that was happening to me without the bitterness. You know, I was frustrated quite often, I could tell every time I was frustrated with troops when they misunderstood because they would usually, during boot camp, they get so angry with you, they swear that “I ever see you, you will not live,” you know. And I know that that didn't happen, because the moment they completed, they are like, what can I give you. All my life I have traveled and I would never—I was in San Francisco one year, and, why was I there? It was a police gathering in a hotel downtown and, unbelievable, this guy came over and started talking, “I know you from somewhere, I know you from somewhere,” and was pleasant. He just kept talking, he had been a Marine. And I don't even remember his name, he remembered just my features and he was pleasant, and we started talking, “How have you been” and all of this and finally he said, “Were you in service?” I said I was in the Marine Corps, and when I said Marine Corps, he said, “Sergeant Cox,” just like that, and he carried me all over the city, introduced me, “This man made a man out of me, you know.” He was either chief of detectives or something like that of San Francisco police. But it's that kind of thing that made such an impact. My brother was, worked at Chrysler in Detroit, and one day a guy said to him, you know, “The only guy I know named Cox was Sergeant Cox in the Marine Corps, if I ever see him, I'm going to kill that SOB.” You know, that kind of thing. My brother didn't say, “That is my brother.” I was visiting one day, and all it was, we were walking somewhere, and he tried to change direction. Pretty soon that guy looked and spotted me and he said, “Sergeant Cox,” hugged me. He [my brother] said, “I don't understand that, you said you were going to kill my brother.” He said, “Man, that's the way you feel, but this man made a man out of me.” And it goes across the board like that, a guy gets through. Because you do, you see a child who is brilliant, bitter, and mean turn out to be a lovely person who can do anything, and we all do, so it makes a difference."],"dc_format":["video/quicktime"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":null,"dcterms_publisher":null,"dc_relation":null,"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":["Veterans History Project oral history recordings","Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center"],"dcterms_subject":["Segregation--United States","World War, 1939-1945--Equipment and supplies","World War, 1939-1945--Participation, African American","World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American","Iwo Jima, Battle of, Japan, 1945","Guadalcanal, Battle of, Solomon Islands, 1942-1943","Rifles","M1 carbine","Browning Automatic Pistol","Troup, Robert W., Jr., 1918-1999","Woods, Samuel A., Jr., 1893-1968","Morris Brown College","United States. Marine Corps. Depot Company, 36th","United States. Marine Corps. Defense Battalion, 51st","United States. Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944","Browning Automatic Rifle"],"dcterms_title":["Oral history interview of Mortimer Augustus Cox, tape 1 of 2"],"dcterms_type":["MovingImage"],"dcterms_provenance":["Atlanta History Center"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/318"],"dcterms_temporal":null,"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":null,"dlg_local_right":["This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required."],"dcterms_medium":["video recordings (physical artifacts)","mini-dv"],"dcterms_extent":["1:00:52"],"dlg_subject_personal":null,"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":null},{"id":"geh_vhpohr_313","title":"Oral history interview of Mortimer Augustus Cox, tape 2 of 2","collection_id":"geh_vhpohr","collection_title":"Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews","dcterms_contributor":null,"dcterms_spatial":["United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018","United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383"],"dcterms_creator":["Brown, Myers; Johnson, Ahnekii","Cox, Mortimer Augustus, 1919-2001"],"dc_date":["1999-07-26"],"dcterms_description":["In part two of this two-part interview, Mortimer Cox describes his post-war years in Atlanta, Georgia, including his education and work experience.","Mortimer Cox was a Marine in the Pacific during World War II.","MORTIMER COX VETERANS HISTORY INTERVIEW Atlanta History Center July 26, 1999 Interviewer: Myers Brown Transcriber: Stephanie McKinnell TAPE 1 of 2 Myers Brown: . . . full name, and date of birth, and place of birth, just some general information now. Mortimer Cox: All right, I'm Mortimer Augustus Cox. Why they named me that, I'll never know. I was born April 15,1919, in Birmingham, Alabama. MB: When did you first move here to the Atlanta area? MC: I moved to Atlanta June of 1946, September of 1946. I had decided to use my GI Bill for college education. It's interesting how I selected—everybody asks me why did you select Atlanta and why did you select Morris Brown College as school. I'm a son of a coal miner in the steel mills of Birmingham. Returning from the war and my experience in the Marine Corps said to me that—while my parents could not afford me the privilege of college, I graduated from high school in 1937. Knowing that I had the opportunity to utilize the GI Bill of Rights, I decided I would do that. I didn't see a future in the steel mill. On the basis of my experience in the Marine Corps, I wrote every black, historically black college in this country in a large city. I was concerned that I needed a large city in order to supplement my income because I was married at that time. Most of them in '46 was overfilled with the returning World War II veterans and I began to get , “We're full.” Finally I received a letter from Morris Brown in Atlanta, Georgia, and they said they had an opening and they would accept me. They wanted a $5 deposit on my room, incidentally. And I could afford that, so I took that. That's why I chose Atlanta. MB: When did you first hear of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and America's involvement? Do you know where you were when that happened? MC: Exactly. I'll never forget it. I was at a Sunday afternoon tea, that was what we had in my community, teas on Sunday. They were church related activities, and of course you would always go and do such exciting things as dance, maybe, but spin the bottle and kiss the girl, yes!, and we would always attend those. That was late Sunday afternoon that year, and we were there, and someone happened to turn on the radio, and we heard it on the radio, and the President was speaking, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and, of course, all of us had registered for the draft, but we were just waiting on our number to go up. All of the teenage boys were there, and the girls, and we listened for the rest of the afternoon. I don't think we spinned the bottle at all that day because we were concerned. But I can remember, I can remember the house, and quite often, if I'm in Birmingham, I'll drive past. And the lady's name was Mrs. Pittman, and as I said there's where I was December 7, 1941. But it's very clear in my mind because it changed my life. Int: When did you get drafted or enlisted? MC: In 1942, I began to think seriously, and the draft was on all young men. And, of course, I was thinking I did not want the Army because blacks were limited in the Army. I had a brother who had volunteered several years earlier and what he was doing did not impress me. Of course, the travel was always intriguing, but just the activity did not impress me. The Navy from what I had seen, I had seen blacks who were in uniform but most of them were either butlers or waited tables aboard ship. That did not appeal to me. There was a paper which was printed, a black newspaper, the Birmingham Daily World, it was a branch of the Atlanta Daily World. It was printed in Atlanta but it was primarily news about blacks in there. I saw the announcement that the Marine Corps was accepting blacks, and of course I thought this was a challenge. I realized they didn't have the kind of segregation that existed in the other major services. So I thought I would go down just to get some more information, and I went to the post office, and I found myself taking the test, and I passed the test and I was sworn in that day. I guess if I'd had to think about it, I don't know what I would have done, but when I found myself being given the oath of office and then told I was a Marine, and I was no longer subject to the draft, that of course gave me some relief. Now I did not immediately go in. I didn't know why. I went back home and from, that was June, I guess about June 12, I believe it was, and I went back home. All my friends were being drafted and were going in the service. I was home, I had heard nothing from the Marine Corps at all, and it was only in late August of '42 I received my orders. “You will report to Camp Montford Point, New River, North Carolina,” on such and such a date with a ticket aboard the train to North Carolina, and that was the first [notice] I had. When I got there, there were very few blacks. I believe I only saw about five or six blacks. That was September 1. And, of course, over the next several days they were bringing more in, so I ended up being in what we call the First Platoon of blacks, the first 40 men who began training. I was in that outfit and I began, I found myself in boot camp at that time becoming a Marine. It was very traumatic. We had a situation where there were no blacks to provide the initial training so these were all whites who were to give us the boot training, and if you know anything about what boot training incurred, it was traumatic. Those of us from the south did not have as much of a culture shock as those young men who were coming out of Chicago, out of New York, and out of the Midwest, who came and found themselves in Washington, D.C., and they'd have to move in the back of the train, so they came onboard in the camp angry. . . . Interestingly enough, most of that group of 40 men had some college, some were graduates out of college. It was a ______, why I don't know, maybe they were the ones who could pass the initial test, but they were angry and very, very hostile, so it was [difficult], because that special service group that was assigned to give us our training did it with the enthusiasm that I guess the Marines have had for 200 years prior to that, so it was an experience. It was hard to differentiate what was racial and what was required of training. The rigors of training is to get you to think as a group, so those of us who had never been into it, I had never been to a camp. Years later as I got older and began to broaden my experience, I could see that in day camp. Youngsters are taught to think as a group and be responsible for the group, so I could understand it. But I had never had that experience, and I suppose most of the youngsters who were there had not had that kind of experience so we did not know what was racial and what was training, so it was very, very difficult. Int: Did you all talk about it? MC: Very traumatic. Int: Did the southerners talk to the northerners? MC: Uh-huh. We almost took a kind of attitude that we were responsible for the group. So first of all, we felt a closeness to those black leaders who were pushing for equal opportunity for blacks, like A. Phillip Randolph and the guy who was head of the National Urban League and NAACP, who were actually talking to the President looking for opportunities for young people in service. And we felt obligations, especially those from the south. You had youngsters out of Talladega, in Talladega, Alabama, Alabama A\u0026M in Montgomery, Morehouse College and Clark [Atlanta University] here, so those educated blacks began to take an attitude that we can't let the race down. They don't want us in the Marine Corps, but we cannot fail. If we fail it will be because they just made the decision, not that we could not do it. So we began to form what we did not know were support groups at night. We would rehash those traumatic experiences that an individual had had and try to put it in perspective. And looking back during the earlier years when students began to integrate white institutions, that was one thing that I tried to get our organization, the Montford Point Marines, that's a national group of black Marines, to form those kinds of groups in the black community, to get young people to realize and see the big picture, as we would always say. You know, do your task and do it well. But it never really happened. But it was very difficult to go through that training and keep everybody concerned. MB: Now how old were you when you went to . . . MC: I tell you, I had been out of high school since 1937, so I was what, '42, 18, I was 23. MB: Were you older or younger or about the same age as most? MC: About the same age. As soon as the Marine Corps had to accept, later on in '43, the Marine Corps had to accept selective service, which was a body of men that selective service, a local selective service [office] would refer to the service, and they would be assigned out. When they began to get that kind of person, you began to get younger, more hostile blacks who didn't understand, didn't want to be in the war anyway, but they realized they had to. But that was my age. Jacksonville [North Carolina] was an experience. It was a small town that depended on the Marine barracks for its existence. But they didn't take kindly to black Marines, and the black Marines were really the ones closest to them. The Marine barracks was farther out across the railroad tracks so they viewed us as outsiders, and they felt we weren't going to be there long. I guess maybe it was assumed that “This is a trial and if they fail, it will close.” So that was our first impression. But it was, truly there were some experiences that even I remember. And being raised all my life in the south other than just going to New York or Washington to visit relatives or something, it was traumatic to me. Because there was always—in Birmingham where I was born and reared, there was always even downtown, theaters and cafés, you had all of your social organizations and your churches and school groups. But here in Jacksonville, it was a country town with very few blacks and no “black society” so it was traumatic. The bus drivers had never had to adjust to black troops. And if we wanted—the closest liberty places were either in Wilmington, New Bern or Lamar, where they had black populations, so most was ready to take a bus. But the bus drivers would always enforce segregation. You had to be in the back seat. So you formed two lines, which was unusual, you know, hard to accept because I had on the uniform just like you. But usually about four or five blacks would get on the back seat and he would fill up the bus with the white troops. So that got to be a problem, especially with those of us who were then moved up where we began to replace the special service troops and we were becoming NCO's ourselves. We had to deal with the fact that here's a youngster on leave, then he comes back AWOL and it's not his fault, because we had experienced first hand that you just couldn't get the bus. You know when only five of you can get out on that bus, you know what I mean, so they were more likely to be absent without leave. So, we increasingly began to press the commanding officer. Now it's to his credit that the person who was selected as commanding officer, Colonel Samuel Woods, accepted the position because he wanted to do it. He actually asked for the assignment, and I've heard him tell me a million times why he had, the name of the group of 51st Defense Battalion, and his pride and joy was that he, how he selected 51st. He said he selected the “5” and the “1” because of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The two persons that appear on the five and one dollar bills were most liked by blacks, and that was how he got it. But he was very, very, very fair and the only thing that really bothered me, as a colonel with the long tenure in the Marine Corps, he could look you in the eye and tell you, I can't control this, and he couldn't. But he would come up with a point with buses, he would assign the troop trucks to go to cities like New Bern and carry them on liberty. So we had our own trucks. Interestingly enough, whites who were running late and missed the last bus would be begging and pleading “let us on your bus,” because we could stay a little later, we didn't have to abide by the bus schedule. And you always assigned noncommissioned officers, so that the MPs which were old Marines that resented the blacks did not have to interface with us. So that they would always say, “Where is your NCO?” and turn them over. “I caught him doing such and such a thing.” And of course we would handle it. But it was interesting enough, I can remember one night, they found me in 1953 [43?], and I just happened to remember that because I can remember when my wife and I got our first house and quit rooming and got an apartment. They built apartments on the base for black non-coms who had a family, so the family's there. When I married, my wife and I had an apartment there. And we were laughing. In December of that year, out in Jacksonville on that coast, it was very cold. The wind is awful. Easily on a cold day you can feel little flakes of ice in the wind. But the deal is when it's cold, coal is limited. They would not let the troops, and we had to buy coal to heat the apartment, would not sell us any coal. Coal would come in and we'd go down to pick up some coal and they'd say, “No, all of this is promised.” So finally we convinced Colonel Woods, the commanding officer, we have a problem. He said what, we told him, and immediately we had a mountain of coal for the steam boiler to do the heating on the base. And he says, “That's our coal. Get you some trucks and back up the pile and get all the coal you need.” So we never bought no more coal, it was that kind of thing. But he was a thoughtful caring person. The camp was not all bad, we had some plusses. There was a young lieutenant who was assigned, he was a radical they said. I guess he was a forerunner of the so-called hippies. Robert Troop, and I had seen some movies, he was out of Hollywood, but he knew all the band leaders, the actors who were black and everything. We had a movie, but by the time we got the movies from the main base, they would be old. He had a contact in Hollywood he could call, and of course they would send movies in. Most of the band leaders then, Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, he knew them, and he would have them on the base. One of the most interesting articles, I mean incidents, on the base, is that the commanding officer of the total camp, Camp Lejeune, heard that we had a black boxer who was very good. I can't think of his name, but he was coming to give us an exhibition as the result of Lt. Troop's invitation, and everybody wanted to see it. He wanted to see the bout. He came down, and the guys, like most youngsters, are noisy. And you know how you are at a boxing gig. That bothered that CO and he issued an order for all of the troops to be quiet, and of course we said you're on our turf, you know, and this is for us and you're just a guest here. He had really turned them off because at the time he came over to see the troops, we really trained the troops to be very precise in drilling and to do it exact, and it was a thing of beauty to watch those young fellows drill. And he had, in talking to them, said—he was just returning from the Pacific. And he says, “You know, I'm just back from the Pacific. I've seen women Marines, I've seen dog Marines, and now I see you people.” And I guess he was trying to make a point, I believe in my heart, now that I reflect on it, he was trying to make a point. “Now when I see you people, I know we are at war.” And, of course, the guys are afraid to boo a general, but the next time, he was coming this particular night, and the guys say, he's going to see it by himself, we're not going, and we'll just pass over the camp. And we knew, to Colonel Woods, that was going to put him in a pretty bad light to be a camp commander and be told, the commander of the total camp is coming and none of your troops will be there, so we didn't know what to do. So we decided we would declare what we called a punishment, that you will do a camp cleaning, nobody would say anything. Well, the troops go on punishment and that was going to be our way of doing it. But the colonel came in, he sent for his non-coms then and asked them, fellows, I can't let this, guys got to be there, he's going to know something, you know. But we did relent and the troops did go, but it's that kind of thing that you had openly. Int: Where was your first assignment? MC: My first assignment as I told you, I came in to be assigned to the 51st Defense Battalion. About [1943] when the war had changed, I suppose troops were addressed [?] then. Interestingly enough the whites were gone. They kept the 51st Defense Battalion, but they realized they would have to have a cadre of troops to continue training those blacks who had come in there out of the selective service, so they set up what they called recruit depot training, and Colonel Woods took that camp, and another colonel took over the 51st Defense Battalion, and he asked me if I would be one of those who would stay. He said they like my style, they like my leadership qualities, will you stay. And, of course at that time, I had—it's interesting, the story goes back to the six blacks who made PFCs. That was the first time in the history of the Marine Corps blacks ever made it. I was one of those. And I had, by this time I think I was a buck sergeant. They had to pull the whites out and they had to put us on fast track for promotion, so we were about every three months getting a promotion, and that's unheard of in the Marine Corps. But he had asked me to stay and to serve as first sergeant of “A” company, which was the first recruit training company we were going to have, and, of course, that's when I decided to get married. I says, I'm going to be here, and he told me all about the plans for apartments, and “you'll be here for the rest of the war just training troops.” Gee, that was nice. So I accepted. It was at that point that I began to get over ___. But in 1944, the commanding officer of Camp Lejeune then returned from the Pacific to do duty back in the states, he had been out long enough, and he came over, and he had seen black troops overseas. But always under the supervision of white non-coms, and he came over and saw first sergeant, black sergeant, he was amazed. He had been on Saipan incidentally, the first activity of blacks in the Pacific, but the Japanese, they didn't know that the troops had been trained. They thought all they could do was handle supplies, but when the troops came through, they laid down, grabbed weapons and began to stop the Japanese. And, of course, at that point, there was an article in Time magazine, it was right after, it was a sailor aboard the ship who grabbed the gun and actually to, began to do like at Pearl Harbor, and all of that came back, so it began to take an attitude. His feeling was the troops would be better off, he looked around and saw a whole cadre of black non-coms that he didn't know existed. So he then said that he was going to begin to send black non-coms out. That must have been midsummer '44. And with my seniority and my connections with Colonel Woods, I would always miss it, [they'd take] somebody else, and finally Colonel Woods said, “Sergeant, they're going to get you, you're going to have to go, you've got to be selective.” And, of course, there was a company with a friend of his who was going over with the 36th, and he wanted me, and Colonel Woods wanted me to go because he felt that he could do a good deed through a friend of his. And of course I had to go, and that was traumatic, but I went and got in Pearl Harbor December 15, five days before Christmas, lonely, mad, and deserted, and not knowing what I was going to do. But it was Pearl Harbor and Honolulu at Christmas time, I guess it was nice. But we did, and of course, the rest is history, because in '44 we began doing immediately maneuvers and training immediately after Christmas and that led right up to February of '44 or '45 then isn't it?, yeah, '45. MB: Now which unit were you assigned to when you went to Pearl Harbor? MC: We were assigned with a unit of what they call a depot company, a battalion I guess it was, something new for the Marine Corps, which handled all the supplies. See, the Marine Corps prior to that had had encounters in which it would go ashore and was able to supply itself [by] scrimmages. But for the first time, the Marine Corps found itself out at Saipan which would need reinforcements, medical personnel, would be the only thing the same as the Army, because they were fighting the war just like an Army, but it was not equipped to handle that, so they began to come up with depot companies with full detail, armaments, you know, armaments and the whole ammunition supply. We had to supply all the troops as you went, remember, because they could only carry so much during initial action. So we were assigned to one of those companies, and we began to maneuver loading and reloading. We wore out the equipment during January and the first of February prior to Iwo Jima just training, so that by the time we got to Iwo Jima, we were just like the Army going aboard with the artillery, coming on in phases with the supplies, and that's what the company and I did. We handled more ammunition, we handled clothing, water, and all the wonderful brandy that they gave you, and that's another whole story, but that was nice. MB: But you were there training until February, and then in February? MC: Yes, we actually went to Iwo Jima and was there when the flag, every time you see that flag, it brought on a different kind of meaning, because I had no idea, I had . . . [TAPE changed] . . . I had nothing to compare it with. I thought it was difficult but I just thought that was war and it was only on reflection that it really, really . . . and the deaths, I had never seen that much death before in my life, and that of course bothered me, and I was certain that I was not going to get off. But— MB: When did you actually go ashore on Iwo Jima? Did ya'll go? MC: Yes. We went, it went by D-plus D-Day, D-Day is D and the day after is D-1. We went D-5 and that was because you just couldn't get ashore because everything just logged up and the what it was about D-5 when you actually see the flag raising on Iwo Jima, which the Japanese could actually pinpoint any island. They could look and see a group of men, they'd know exactly how to set their weapons and hit it, so that just naturally tied the troops up on the beaches, and you couldn't until . . . that's the importance of Mount Suribache and the flag raising. So, yes, when you saw the flag up, you knew that they had conquered the island where they could actually, it's a mountain, it's a top of the mountain, and they had pinpointed and all of our control so that once they put the flag up, that was a symbol to the troops that that was secure, then you no longer had to fear the being attacked with emplaced guns from their mountain. But we went in and they, we were, there was no place for you to hide with Marine Corps at invasions, whether you're going in D- or D-10, they needed you. But it was nasty black sand, just as black as that chair, and by the first full day with the body parts and the bodies, flies were big and it was a stink that you never would forget. MB: When you were on shore, how close did you guys deploy to the front, I mean, did you have people taking supplies up to the front or were they coming back to you? MC: No, you carried the supplies. The only man I lost in my company, I had 160 men in my company, and course I was first sergeant, I laugh about it now. First sergeants do nothing but receive the reports and hand it out, that's his responsibility. But it, there's no background. Iwo Jima's not large enough, very small island, not any larger I would say than what you call Buckhead, so that you're on the front line when you're there. So it is, it was an experience. Int: Did the company you were in, were they all black? MC: All black, yes. The officers were white. That's a whole different story. After the war, after Iwo Jima, we returned to Hawaii for rest and well, what they call R\u0026R. Rest and recreation. That was very good duty. We were stationed on the big island of Hilo, that's the big island of Hawaii, Hawaii itself . . . Honolulu is on Oahu . . . but it's the largest island, primarily sugarcane, pineapple, and bananas. We were assigned a camp for black troops. They had some trouble. Most of the Hawaiian, true Hawaiians, were at that time, back in the ‘40s, were on the big island and living in small cities around Hilo. Hilo was where most of the tourists would come in, that was a city like Honolulu is, but in the camp which is out in the suburbs, that was a Dole pineapple camp and they decided to put us in this camp as black troops, thought we'd get along with the natives better, which we did, it was just like being in Paradise, having been on Iwo Jima, that black sand, with no food, to be able to reach out of your window and pick a ripe banana, you know, for breakfast, eat all the pineapple you want, you know, it was quite well. But even that did not last because after about, I guess about two months after that, everybody said, well, we got the, right after Easter when Iwo Jima was secured, and let's see, the European war was over around August I believe it was of '45. Do I remember my history correct, I'm thinking about how I lived it. I can remember that, I can remember hearing, on that island, that Franklin Roosevelt died down in Warm Springs, that Truman became president and that we were gearing up at that time again to do the maneuvers again for another march. We did not know it at that time what it was going, or where it was going to be, but we were doing about the same thing we had done back in September, and after you've done it once, you did this before, you know what happened. But then in September the first bomb was dropped on Nagasaki [Hiroshima]. We did not know it, only then we had put together that we were getting, preparing to invade Japan. Because we began to do certain things. You would not have the sand beaches, which told us that we were going into a port. So we did some, we were praying for the second bomb, you know, and I still do not blame . . . . Historians now second-guess Truman about that second bomb but I thank him for it because we didn't, so that when they finally surrendered, we actually covered the territory that we were preparing to invade. And we went in the naval base on the southern island of Japan, Sasabo, the naval base in Japan. We actually made the occupation for that section of the island that we were going to, I imagine everybody took what they were supposed to do. But there is where the end, the war ended. I had been in now four years. I'd been overseas, I had rank, and they began to let you out based on the points system. And then December of '45 I had the points, and I applied at that point to be released. And of course I had an opportunity and I knew most of the people who were in charge, and they kept saying, you're going to go back on a nice liberty ship, you're not going to go. And finally I said I'll take anything. It was after Christmas and I told my wife I was coming home and I didn't. And I waited, I waited all of January of '46 and nothing good came through. Finally about the end of January, I said, I'll take whatever it is. And I got an LST, an LST is a flat bottomed ship that can pull up on the beach, and I came back from Japan on an LST. That was a trip that all I wanted was the United States, and I wanted to get back home again, I was ready for the war . . . . I am not a soldier, I would get the orders for the company _______. And the thing that bothered me, and I hear it now, on September, I mean on July 26, 1999, at 0100 you will . . . you know, move to such and such and report to so and so. That bothers me, you know, you have nobody enters into . . . I remember telling Colonel Woods the day I got my orders to report to the company that I had, and that was away. And my wife was there, alone, didn't know anyone there on the base, but I had not had chance enough to get the furniture and get everything moved, you know. And I was just about ready to tell him I'm not going to do it, they're going to have to shoot me or something, I'm not going to leave my wife here, you know, alone. She's never been away from home. But he said, “Sergeant, we're going to tell your wife, we're going to pack the furniture, we're going to see that she gets on a train, see that she gets home, you've got nothing to worry about.” I said, “Colonel, I believe you but I don't believe them other folks out there.” MB: Did, can you describe for me when you landed at Guadalcanal, what you were wearing, what you were carrying, uniform, equipage, head to toe? If you can. MC: Fatigues, I had fatigues, just straight fatigues. MB: Chamois or… MC: What we called the olive green, twill like, like this. It's about this color, maybe like these trousers. It was olive green. You had a helmet, a steel helmet, that was it. We left Norfolk, it was a wonderful trip for a country boy to leave Norfolk go down the Pacific and take about three or four days through the Panama Canal. Didn't even feel like it was cold, it was in October, and once you got down to Hilton Head, the sun was out, you pull off your clothes and lay on the beach on a nice new USS named after a county in New York, see they were having these liberty ships. And we just thought we were going to heaven, you know what I mean. And then load up in Panama, we had to wait because the ships went through the canal based on priority, and I guess our priority wasn't high enough. So we just sit there and you'd go on liberty one day and every other day you'd go on liberty and see the nice girls out there, I guess we had more money because we didn't have anything to do with the money we had, we were going overseas. But it was wonderful, and to experience the Panama Canal. That I really appreciated. It was only when we got to the west coast and we joined then the armada with the battleships, the destroyers, the other troop ships, and we went from Northern Japan because we went in the water then, no smoking at night, you know, no lights on the deck, always with your gear if you were on the topside. You could never go topside with the, not full gear and prepared to evacuate because you never knew when you were going to be struck with a torpedo or something. MB: Were you carrying weapons at Iwo Jima or were you wearing a sidearm? MC: I wore a sidearm, which didn't seem to be accurate enough, a .45. That wasn't enough. I finally took on a carbine which was a rifle and could be accurate up to about 200 yards, and I had fired it so I knew I could do it, and I wanted to be able to shoot. A .45 is alright for hand to hand combat, when you're close up on you, but you could miss, I could miss you firing if I wasn't very careful, this distance, with a .45. But carbines or something like that, but most troops carried that. The first sergeant was required with a sidearm. That looks good in the states, you want something maybe more effective. MB: Were the rest of the men in your company also carrying carbines? MC: All of them. You were issued a carbine in boot camp, that was yours. That was your baby, you kept it, you never let a piece of rust show on it, and you carried it with you. And the only time you could _____ that was when it wouldn't fire. MB: Everybody tells stories about the famous Marine Kbar knife, did you guys carry those Kbars? MC: No, no. We did not. See really and truly most of the weapons where Marines had been fighting hand to hand in World War II, they began to change. We began to see a change for that because that was a different kind of war, you began to go like down in the Pacific, you remember Haiti and all of that, well the Marines, the “halls of Montezuma” you know down in Mexico, all of that stuff, that was when they had the hand to hand combat. We did, when I first went in, jujitsu and all of that was in for hand to hand combat. But increasingly the Pacific did away from that, Japanese say they'll shoot you down, no hand to hand . . . MB: What kind of food did they give you? MC: Food was always good at installations like camp, good cooks, always. Yeah, I can remember I was telling you about Hilo on the big island of Hawaii there on the top of what is the mountain name, I've forgotten, it looked like Texas, and they have beef cows. We would send up every day and get steaks, steaks that were about that thick and about that big. And I had a mess sergeant who could really cook a steak, you know. And, well, that was it, they'd really be a roast and not a steak. But the food at all the installations is as nice as, I was reading either this year or last year, about the Marine Corps birthday, there's always a good meal. And I was thinking about it and how wonderful it was, but now in combat, you're going to have K rations, and all K rations taste alike. But Marine Corps, the only outfit I imagine attached to the Navy would be aboard ship because you've got an installation for cooking. MB: As far as your equipment, uniform, anything like that, was there any piece of equipment you thought was really useful, a real good thing to have, or was there stuff that you thought why on earth did they ever issue me this, this is a piece of garbage? MC: Marines always had good equipment, course you didn't put up with a rifle. See you were talking about weaponry. When I went in, we learned to fire the Thompson submachine gun. You see because it was hand to hand, you could move in a group of people. That was the kind of activity the Marine Corps had up until World War II. But in World War II and the type of activity that we had, we began to shift. I did fire, I fired the Thompson sub for, just for qualification. What else did I fire? We had the BAR, it was an automatic weapon, and of course every Marine up until the time I went through boot training had to fire the '03, that's the old rifle that you had to cock, and you had to fire and qualify with it before you got with the new rifle that had the, you know, you could fire, what, eight rounds? And with the, with the . . . MB: The M-1. MC: Right, right. The M-1 was relatively new to World War II, but you had to qualify. I qualified as a sharpshooter. Qualified as a sharpshooter on the BAR and the Thompson sub, and the '45, yeah. MB: Now after you were discharged and you took your GI Bill and you came here to Atlanta, went to school, what did you do after you got out of school? MC: After I finished school? I took all of my GI Bill, what, 48 months, I took every penny. The government does not now owe me anything, and I went four years through college. I really had the plan of being a lawyer. My plans were to finish Morris Brown and I took what they called the pre-law which was heavily history and government. And in the second year I joined my fraternity and one of my assignments as joining that fraternity, this Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, was to identify, you know . . . was to meet a person in the profession I intended to go into. I met a young attorney who had just finished Howard University and he gave me some advice and I kidded him about it. He died a couple of years ago, but I never let him forget it, he gave me a rude awakening. He said to me he wouldn't advise it. I really wanted some support and I asked him why. And he told me, unless you have a family who can buy you a law library and support your office for two years with at least a secretary, if you don't have that, I wouldn't advise you to suffer through law school. And I was angry when I left him, I was foaming, why would he talk to me like, why would he bust my dream. And I went back, but the more I began to think about it, that with my total investment, I had gone to college against my father's advice. His advice was . . .U.S. Steel had saved me, see during the war if you were drafted and you had a job, that company had to promise you a job when you returned. And they had given me that job and I think I worked about three months and finally I said I can't do this, this is too hard. And he said I was crazy, “you're married, you ought to be buying a home. Take the GI Bill and buy you a house,” you see, which is his right, eh, I can't do that. And I guess his wish is, then the last thing he told me and my wife, one more year, she was in junior college, she had been teaching with a certificate for two years college and while overseas I convinced her, you go ahead to college and finish college while you're, I'm overseas, that will give you something to do. Because she's going to go back to teach. “No, I don't want you to teach, you go back and finish college and stay with my daddy.” And she had another year, and he says if you go don't come back here. And I guess he still, I think he still viewed me as a child and I realized I wasn't ever going back and I felt if I went and went through Howard and got a law degree and had to go back home, I would have failed. So I made up my mind, I had changed my major. Well, I couldn't change it because I had a subject. I began to take courses in business administration. I never will forget, I went in a bookkeeping course and I think why am I doing this, I'm almost a junior and I'm going here taking a freshman course but I did. I took as many courses as I could and by that time my advisor said if I was going, I would decide to go the school of business at Atlanta University that I would not have to have, I could still get the courses, but I went through and did my two years for the master's at AU. And the last semester and my thesis, I did not have enough time but my counselor with the Veterans Administration said he wouldn't give me a check which I did not need, I had full time employment there, but he would pay the tuition and give me the supplies, so I was able to finish it, all of it under the GI Bill. Immediately after that, I had been selling home appliances. You couldn't buy refrigerators, washing machines, and all that right after the war and they were just coming. And I was very creative, did quite well, I think I made more money there than I ever did, you know just commission. But in conjunction with that, I had specialized—they didn't have a specialty in the school of business at Atlanta University then—but I leaned towards marketing and that's where my interest was. Well, connected with my selling, I knew every professor on the campus, knew every professional in the city, including Maynard Jackson's father, because I was selling them what they needed. So that, Johnson Publishing Company, at that time, Ebony and Jet, Johnny Johnson had, most of his advertisements in his magazines were cigarettes, beer, and maybe cold drinks, no hard advertising, automobiles and clothing and that kind of thing. And he in his wisdom decided that he wanted to go into that area, and he came looking for someone in Atlanta [to represent the magazines]. And he said everywhere he went and explained what he wanted, even on the campus, they'd tell him, “You need to see Mortimer Cox, he's just your person.” And I did, and I did quite well. I went with Johnson Publishing Company, and I enjoyed the work. It was travel. Johnny Johnson was a peculiar person, had a mind for it. For the first time in my life, you know, I traveled first class, because he said the people you need to meet are never in coach, you know. And I kind of like that. In the best hotels, I would go down and eat in the finest dining rooms, you know, and you would meet people. But it was an exciting thing. I was very instrumental in getting the Chrysler Corporation, advertising cars. Then clothing, Eagle suits, I remember that. And food, you know Chase \u0026 Sanborn Coffee, that kind of thing, just what the marketing gave me, that I would come out. Atlanta would always show, I remember distinctly in '52, Rich's downtown [store], and we ran a half-page ad with Eagle clothes, which was a good line of suits at that time. I wanted to set the same ad up into Rich's store for men on Forsyth Street and the buyer looked at me like “You're crazy, what, put an ad with a black magazine with the Rich's downtown?” Yes, what's wrong with it? I wanted to put my Ebony sign in the store. “Let me think about it.” So I went back and got all my friends and said, “You go to Rich's and ask for this outfit.” Now I knew all of them were not going to buy, but by the time I did it, the guy said he'd never seen an ad generate that kind of activity. And all these guys, they were college professors, businessmen, you know, ministers and that kind of thing, they could afford it. So then he said to me, “I've never had that.” He said “That's unusual and I sold some outfits.” He said, “I've got to do something nice with that ad, I don't know.” I said, “All I want to do is to get that ad, get a photographer and shoot it. And then you do whatever you want.” I didn't say it had to be up there for two weeks. He said, that's all you want, he said he can do that. So he sent the decorator and all, they set the window just like it. I shot it. Eagle has never figured out to this day how they couldn't get it done in New York, Los Angeles or anywhere else but here in Rich's in Atlanta. But they were impressed with that. I would have stayed with him but after I stayed with him almost two years, he wanted me to move to Detroit. I'd been to Detroit because I had a brother there, and Detroit had begun to deteriorate in terms of crime downtown in the city. I just didn't want to go. My wife had begun to teach, she had come over and gotten her masters and she was teaching in the public school system. I was doing quite well myself and I saw no reason. I finally told him, and he did terminate me right on the spot, sent me home. But my concern, he was rich, and as I looked back over, I'm in a position in a career that I could do, I knew I could do it, I knew I could be successful, but Johnson and Johnson had their own little magazine and the publisher couldn't afford me. So I had to make a choice. I can't afford the risk because I had put all my investment into having that kind of life. I left that company. He didn't fire me, he told me if I needed a recommendation, you know, and now that I'm old and I look back, I would have done the same thing. “And I'm going to pay you a good salary and I need to do what's best for the company. If you don't want to take it, I'll let you go.” Now that is just common good sense to me, as I age, of course I was angry at the time because I felt the man did me an injustice. That was the best he had, you know. But I left. On my way—I was in Chicago and he had given me two weeks termination pay and my vacation—and on my way, I bumped into a guy I knew who told me about a company in Owatana who was looking for a guy in sales, and it was Josten, in Owatana, Minnesota, just south of Milwaukee. He called a guy from Chicago, the guy says, “Hey, I'll come to Atlanta and see you.” I came back, he came and within two days I was headed back to Josten to learn their business of selling high school rings and supplies to high school students. I took that job, did well. I made more in that year than I'd ever made because I was, I could sell to schools, I could sell to high school girls. You had to do it on competition, and I was competing with white salesmen in the south. None of them could offer what I was. I was a black professional going into black high schools, and I could make a speech to some high school students that would make a principal of a white school say I was the best thing that had ever been in there, because they did not see black professionals. I was driving a new car, dressed nice, and that was it, so I had the edge on them. They were saying I wasn't a good salesman, you know what they was saying, you're not a good salesman, you've just got the edge on, you're a black salesman. And most of the other companies at that time were getting into looking for black salesmen to do that. Now I could begin to see some ripples. I could begin to see integration coming, and I said if I make this investment and establish it, if the schools integrate and you've still got white superintendents who control the schools, where would I be? Because this has never happened in this country before, so I had to make a decision. I'd better get into something a little bit moving. By this time, my wife was doing alright teaching, you know, working, and I began to say, you know, I'm getting older, I'd better start looking for a career. At this time, I guess, the housing authority was looking for a person, and they wanted a housing manager, and that was a pretty good salary at that time. My wife didn't like to travel either, so I left that job and went with the housing authority. And I guess the old sociology that I had, and I've always had an interest in people, I've always worked in my church, began to make a difference in the housing. I kept saying that these people, even though they're poor, want the same thing that you and I want where we live. They can't do it without a job, and how can they get a job, and I would ____ a guy who couldn't pay his rent. I had developed a plan where employers who were looking, and these were the people who were first line supervisors, I got to know them, and I could pick up the phone, I got this kind of guy, he'll come out and give you a good job, and I'd tell him it was a good job, it's got tenure, you can keep it and take care of your family. So increasingly, first line supervisors began to tell others, “I can get good people who want to work, call Cox out at Bowen Homes and see.” So, increasingly, one day the guy with the Urban League came to me and said, “You know, you're doing what we do anyway, and I can give you a better salary.” So I took it, and I went. So I enjoyed it, it was very rewarding. That's about it. MB: Thank you very much. MC: That's a picture of the first platoon of blacks being trained at Montford Point. MB: Are you in this picture? MC: Uh-huh, I can't find me. MB: You can't find you? MC: No, I've looked and looked. Now you can see the white training officers. These are the first black . . . MB: Now you're wearing? MC: Those pith helmets. Now in this book, yes, this is the first six PFCs who were promoted, the black marines who were promoted at Camp Lejeune. I was the first person, that's Bostick [?], Davis, Hashmon [?] and Johnson. He actually stayed in and upon retirement was a sergeant major. He stayed in. These two stayed in after the war. That's Huff, and that's Allen. [All talking at once.] MC: That's Cox, Bostick, Davis, Johnson, Huff, and Allen. God, I haven't done that in years. It's just deteriorating after 50 some years, and I would hate for that to happen. Fifty-six years ago today, let me tell my wife I did that. MB: So when was this photograph taken? MC: 1943. There's a picture in my dress blues. MB: And what is this rank you've got here? MC: I was a platoon sergeant. My rank, I always acted ahead of my rank, I was acting first sergeant there. They couldn't promote you fast enough. The white troops would get so angry, boy, when I made corporal. See you made corporal, in those dress blues, you would get that blue stripe and that it, that was it. Their prime hope was to make corporal so you got a blue stripe. You came in and in a short time you had it. I remember, it was in '43. My wife and I was waiting a train to Washington, where were we, Raleigh?, and I was out and two Marines came out and said, “You haven't been in service, do you know we'll make you prove that you could wear those chevrons.” You know, that red stripe down there. My wife was standing up there, and they were ready to fight, so all you got to do is just prove it, if you can handle yourself that was it. Boy, I says, “OK, I'll take you one at a time.” One came up, he gave me his best blow, I gave him my best blow, and he went sailing back. I was in good shape. I hit the other one, he went sailing back. Both of them started getting up to come again, you know my wife's standing there, she's scared to death. Two MPs turned the corner, I was never so happy to see two MPs because I'd given my best shot and they were getting up, I guess they'd been in the Marine Corps for 15, 20 years. But “prove that you can wear those stripes.” MB: [looking at photos] Tell us when and where. MC: That's December 1944 in Pearl Harbor, Honolulu. MB: Who is that with you? MC: That is my gunnery sergeant, that's the mess sergeant. McCord. That's McCord, the gunnery sergeant, and that's Sergeant Wingate, the mess sergeant. Good cook, too, good cook. MB: And the other person is you? MC: It's me. MB: And that is in? MC: Hawaii, in Honolulu. MB: Honolulu… MC: Honolulu, 1944. MB: Tell us what this is. MC: That is a diary, and it seemed to me at one of the Marine parties, someone gave me that book, and I said I was going to keep it. I did keep it completely until January of '44, I got married and quit writing in it. I did write one entry upon discharge. But the interesting thing, the interesting thing that I see in that, and I didn't know it at the time, there is no bitterness and that is amazing to me. I interpreted everything that was happening to me without the bitterness. You know, I was frustrated quite often, I could tell every time I was frustrated with troops when they misunderstood because they would usually, during boot camp, they get so angry with you, they swear that “I ever see you, you will not live,” you know. And I know that that didn't happen, because the moment they completed, they are like, what can I give you. All my life I have traveled and I would never—I was in San Francisco one year, and, why was I there? It was a police gathering in a hotel downtown and, unbelievable, this guy came over and started talking, “I know you from somewhere, I know you from somewhere,” and was pleasant. He just kept talking, he had been a Marine. And I don't even remember his name, he remembered just my features and he was pleasant, and we started talking, “How have you been” and all of this and finally he said, “Were you in service?” I said I was in the Marine Corps, and when I said Marine Corps, he said, “Sergeant Cox,” just like that, and he carried me all over the city, introduced me, “This man made a man out of me, you know.” He was either chief of detectives or something like that of San Francisco police. But it's that kind of thing that made such an impact. My brother was, worked at Chrysler in Detroit, and one day a guy said to him, you know, “The only guy I know named Cox was Sergeant Cox in the Marine Corps, if I ever see him, I'm going to kill that SOB.” You know, that kind of thing. My brother didn't say, “That is my brother.” I was visiting one day, and all it was, we were walking somewhere, and he tried to change direction. Pretty soon that guy looked and spotted me and he said, “Sergeant Cox,” hugged me. He [my brother] said, “I don't understand that, you said you were going to kill my brother.” He said, “Man, that's the way you feel, but this man made a man out of me.” And it goes across the board like that, a guy gets through. Because you do, you see a child who is brilliant, bitter, and mean turn out to be a lovely person who can do anything, and we all do, so it makes a difference."],"dc_format":["video/quicktime"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":null,"dcterms_publisher":null,"dc_relation":null,"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":["Veterans History Project oral history recordings","Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center"],"dcterms_subject":["Race relations--Georgia--Atlanta","African Americans--Employment--Georgia--Atlanta","College integration--Georgia--Atlanta","Woods, Samuel A., Jr., 1893-1968","Rich's (Retail store)","United States. Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944","Integration--Georgia--Atlanta"],"dcterms_title":["Oral history interview of Mortimer Augustus Cox, tape 2 of 2"],"dcterms_type":["MovingImage"],"dcterms_provenance":["Atlanta History Center"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/313"],"dcterms_temporal":null,"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":null,"dlg_local_right":["This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required."],"dcterms_medium":["video recordings (physical artifacts)","mini-dv"],"dcterms_extent":["13:36"],"dlg_subject_personal":null,"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":null},{"id":"noa_sohpcr_k-0814","title":"Oral history interview with Chandrika Dalal, July 22, 1999","collection_id":"noa_sohpcr","collection_title":"Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement","dcterms_contributor":["Jilani, Andrew","Southern Oral History Program"],"dcterms_spatial":["United States, North Carolina, Chatham County, 35.70258, -79.25535","United States, North Carolina, Chatham County, Pittsboro, 35.72015, -79.17724"],"dcterms_creator":["Dalal, Chandrika"],"dc_date":["1999-07-22"],"dcterms_description":["Chandrika Dalal discusses her experiences as an Indian immigrant in the United States. Despite her husband's alcoholism and excessive gambling in India, she agreed to move with him to the United States since she saw in the move an opportunity to improve her family's life. Upon arrival in California, she moved in with her recently emigrated brother. There, Dalal worked in her brother's hotel business. She came to appreciate the diversity and economic opportunity that California offered but later relocated with her brother to rural North Carolina. She felt more secure there than she did in California but had difficulty being accepted because of cultural and language barriers. She faced other problems, too, including what she describes as police harassment and punitive city codes that she says prevented her from earning a livelihood as a restaurateur. To earn money, she found work at the University of North Carolina as a housekeeper. Despite her husband's refusal to provide financial security for their family, Dalal upheld traditional Indian gender norms. She believed her cultural beliefs to be superior to what she saw as the moral corruption in America, which she learned about largely from television shows. Even though her daughters arrived in the United States as toddlers and assumed an American identity, she says that they still experience ethnic discrimination. In turn, says Dalal, her daughters' Americanization creates a distance between them and her family in India because they know little of Indian customs, language, and traditions, a state of affairs she greatly regrets.","The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata."],"dc_format":["text/html","text/xml","audio/mpeg"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":["eng"],"dcterms_publisher":null,"dc_relation":["Forms part of Oral histories of the American South collection."],"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":null,"dcterms_subject":["East Indian American women--North Carolina","East Indian American businesspeople--North Carolina--Pittsboro","East Indian Americans--Civil rights--North Carolina","East Indian Americans--Cultural assimilation--North Carolina","Americanization"],"dcterms_title":["Oral history interview with Chandrika Dalal, July 22, 1999"],"dcterms_type":["Text","Sound"],"dcterms_provenance":["University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/K-0814/menu.html"],"dcterms_temporal":null,"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":null,"dlg_local_right":null,"dcterms_medium":["transcripts","sound recordings","oral histories (literary works)"],"dcterms_extent":["Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 10, 2008).","Interview participants: Chandrika Dalal, interviewee; Andrew Jilani, interviewer.","Duration: 01:07:21.","This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.","Text encoded by Kristin Shaffer. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers."],"dlg_subject_personal":["Dalal, Chandrika"],"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":null},{"id":"noa_sohpcr_k-0817","title":"Oral history interview with Kanwal Rahman, July 15, 1999","collection_id":"noa_sohpcr","collection_title":"Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement","dcterms_contributor":["Bhandari, Rajika","Southern Oral History Program"],"dcterms_spatial":["United States, North Carolina, Orange County, 36.0613, -79.1206","United States, North Carolina, Orange County, Chapel Hill, 35.9132, -79.05584"],"dcterms_creator":["Rahman, Kanwal"],"dc_date":["1999-07-15"],"dcterms_description":["Kanwal Rahman left Bangladesh for the United States in 1991, looking forward to earning a public health degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The second thoughts she had as soon as she got on the plane were compounded by her workload; feeling alone and overworked, she wanted at once to return home. She stayed on, however, determined to prove her worth and hopeful that she might use her success to benefit her home country. Eight years later, at the time of this interview, Rahman has found her niche, and some good friends, in the Chapel Hill area. But she has not lost that sense of connection with Bangladesh, and feels acutely the sense of separation from her family there. In this interview, she reflects on her experience and her efforts at adjustment. One of the most difficult adjustments to make was embracing the American ethic of independence, the opposite of the interdependent, even dependent, posture she learned as one of five daughters of a very successful father. In making this adjustment, Rahman uncovered hidden strengths, but concedes, too, that she worries for her future as a single Asian woman in America. This concern dramatizes her enduring connection to Bangladeshi culture and the way in which assimilation challenges the core of at least one immigrant's sense of self.","The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata."],"dc_format":["text/html","text/xml","audio/mpeg"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":["eng"],"dcterms_publisher":null,"dc_relation":["Forms part of Oral histories of the American South collection."],"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":null,"dcterms_subject":["Bangladeshi Americans--North Carolina--Chapel Hill","Women immigrants--North Carolina--Chapel Hill","Bangladeshi Americans--Cultural assimilation--North Carolina--Chapel Hill","Americanization","Autonomy (Psychology)--United States"],"dcterms_title":["Oral history interview with Kanwal Rahman, July 15, 1999"],"dcterms_type":["Text","Sound"],"dcterms_provenance":["University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/K-0817/menu.html"],"dcterms_temporal":null,"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":null,"dlg_local_right":null,"dcterms_medium":["transcripts","sound recordings","oral histories (literary works)"],"dcterms_extent":["Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 25, 2008).","Interview participants: Kanwal Rahman, interviewee; Rajika Bhandari, interviewer.","Duration: 00:44:17.","This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.","Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers."],"dlg_subject_personal":["Rahman, Kanwal"],"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":null},{"id":"geh_vhpohr_316","title":"Oral history interview of Lorenzo Bell, tape 1 of 2","collection_id":"geh_vhpohr","collection_title":"Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews","dcterms_contributor":null,"dcterms_spatial":["Austria, Vienna, Vienna, 48.20849, 16.37208","Italy, 42.833333, 12.833333","United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018","United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383","United States, Georgia, Richmond County, Augusta, 33.47097, -81.97484","United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, Philadelphia, 39.95233, -75.16379"],"dcterms_creator":["Brown, Myers; Johnson, Ahnekii","Bell, Lorenzo, 1925-2001"],"dc_date":["1999-07-09"],"dcterms_description":["In part one of this two-part interview, Lorenzo Bell recalls his experiences as a black soldier in Italy and Austria during World War II. He describes his training and life in an artillery unit, and relates experiences as a black soldier in a segregated army.","Lorenzo Bell was a soldier in Italy during World War II.","VETERANS HISTORY INTERVIEW LORENZO BELL Atlanta History Center – July 9, 1999 Transcribed by Stephanie McKinnell Myers Brown: First of all, would you state your name and today's date, and that'll do it for the first question. Lorenzo Bell: Alright, my name is Lorenzo Bell. The date is July 9, 1999. MB: What was your place of birth and where did you grow up? LB: What was my place of birth and where did I grow up? I was born in Augusta, Georgia. I grew up during my early teen years in Augusta, Georgia. I was later, after my 17th birthday, I migrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. MB: What year were you born? LB: What year I was born? It was 1925. MB: When you moved to Philadelphia, what prompted that move to Philadelphia? Did your family move there, or did you move there by yourself? LB: When I moved to Philadelphia, and what prompted my move to Philadelphia was I wanted to get a good government job. My family did not move there. I was there living with an aunt on my mother's side. MB: What did you do once you moved to Philadelphia? LB: When I was in Philadelphia, what did I do when I was in Philadelphia? First I was 17 years old. I had to go get a working permit from a local school to be able to work. After obtaining the working permit, I got a job working in the shipyard, well the navy yard actually, in Philadelphia. And I worked as a sheet metal mechanic helper. And I worked on the battleship USS Wisconsin, which it took three years to complete. MB: Was that the only ship you worked on, did you just focus on working on that one? LB: Yeah, the only ship we worked on and what we focused on was mostly the USS Wisconsin. MB: Were there other African-Americans that were working on the same project with you? LB: Sure, there was a quite a few. MB: As you were doing the work there at the shipyard, were the, was there must interaction between the blacks and the whites working on the ships, or did everybody kind of stay to themselves, how did that work? LB: Well, what I actually was going on while I was working the shipyard, everybody had to mingle. Everybody had a job to do, and they had a supervisor who would come around in the morning and would tell them what the blueprints, what had to be done. There was no controversy. Most time that was spent, that I spent was going checking out tools. And after checking out tools, I would come back to the job and would assist the mechanic. MB: What year did you start working in the shipyard? LB: I started working in the shipyard in 1944, no, let me see, I started working in the shipyard in 1943, it was September of 1943. MB: When was your birthday, when did you turn 18? LB: I turned 18, well, when did I turn 18? It was that November 8, 1944. I turned 18 in Philadelphia. But because my friends were going in the service, I moved my age up, instead of November 8, I moved to October 16 in order to get in the service, and then I was drafted earlier. MB: What day did you actually get drafted, when did you… LB: In January, I don't know what year did I actually get, I believe I got drafted in January of '44. But I was set on the a three-week leave to get business and everything straightened out, so I had to return to service on the 17th of February, 1944. MB: And you wanted to do the war? LB: Sure I wanted to go into the, did I want to get into the war, sure I wanted to go. Because all the boys at that time were leaving, they wanted to go into the service. Matter of fact, I asked for the navy because I had been working on the ships, and what they gave me?, army. MB: And how did you get drafted, because I would think working in the shipyard would have been a protected war industry? LB: How did I get drafted, because I'm a nonessential worker. Only essential workers were deferred, given a draft status. Or if I had been 4F, that's what they classified that wasn't qualified physically to go into the service. MB: Once you were drafted, you went through those number of weeks where you had to get everything in order. Where were you sent for your basic training? LB: My basic, well it was, sent me for my basic training, I was sent to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Yeah it has always been our fort. And we did about 6-8 weeks of basic training. MB: What basic training, and you actually got into some wartime experiences, when you look back did you think your basic training had you prepared you for that? LB: When I look back to see whether my basic training prepared us, yeah we were well prepared because most of the recruits at that time were just out of high school, and they were mostly boys from the, from the east coast. We were fairly small because they selected us for a field artillery, and at that time you didn't have any blacks in the field artillery. It was considered as a high branch of service. The only thing that the blacks was selected to go in the most was quartermasters or a trucking outfit or some rear echelon duties. So we were considered privileged. In taking basic training, there was another white outfit called the 16th field artillery. We were called the 16th separate field artillery. So that was a disparity among the two groups. MB: Were the drill instructors, were they white or black? LB: Our drill instructors were white at basic training, yeah our drill instructors, they were white. MB: Did you want to go into the war even though you knew you might be doing trucking or quartermaster? LB: Did I want to go into war? MB: Even though you knew you might be doing a lower type of job? LB: Did I want to go in the war knowing that I might take a lower type of job? Sure, I wanted to go into the war because we felt that was a privilege, and we took pride in serving our country because the black press had been pleading, why couldn't we, we was Americans, why couldn't we take part in the war. They had papers such as the Pittsburg Courier, the Chicago Defender, the Amsterdam News, they were all _____ why the Negro couldn't fight, it was his country as much as anybody else's. MB: Right. So when did you actually get your assignment to the field artillery? Did that happen as you went in? LB: I actually got my assignment to the field artillery when we passed basic training, we were shipped to Ft. Wachucka, Arizona while we was assigned to the 92nd Buffalo Division. And this Buffalo Division was the forerunner of the cavalry during the Indians, during the wars with the Indians and their troops were Buffalo soldiers helped in the struggle then, so we was the forerunner, it was the forerunner of our outfit. MB: Give us your full regiment, company, battalion, division, give us the whole nomenclature all the way up the chain. LB: All right, you want the whole nomenclature of my outfit. OK, we went to the Ft. Wachucka, AZ, we was assigned to the 92nd Division. The division consists of infantrymens, artillery mens, medics, and you have certain breakdowns, which I have a book that will break it all down to you. But in my outfit, we had, the five we had in the artillery, that was four battalions: 597, 598, 599, and 600. OK, the 597 and 598 battalions, they were, had the 105mm howitzer. The 598 and 600 had the 155mm howitzers. And each battalion had a ____ that was in charge, and each battalion had four companies: Co A, Co B, Co C, and Co D. I don't exactly know how many men at that time consisted of, but I'd say around 10 men to a company. MB: Which company were you in? LB: I was in B company. MB: Of the? LB: 598, which company was I in, Co B, 597 field artillery, 92nd Division. MB: When were you first deployed outside of the United States? LB: Well, we left, we were first deployed outside of the United States when we went to Italy. I believe it was in September of '44. We went in from ____, Italy. We went immediately to a camping area, and we stayed there for about a week, living in what we call shelter halves. Each man had a half of a tent, and boy did it rain in Italy during that time. It seemed like the monsoon season hit Italy when we was there. Then we got assigned, so each artillery had to support an infantry battalion or regiment rather, and that was their job. We stayed in the rear echelon somewhat between 6 and 7 miles behind the infantry. And our job was to supply the infantry or whoever with fire when it was needed. They would call down a fire mission and say battery B 20 rounds charge 5 side wheel ___ 5 command. Each shell has 7 charges, powder bags. Alright, you had a gun, you had a man that opened the breech, and you had a man that was put the shells together, put the shells and drop the charges in, and pass it along and slid in the breech, and you had a man to close the breech. Then a man would pull the lanyard cord to fire the gun. My job, I was a gunner. So therefore, when a command came down, battery B elevate 15 degrees or depress 20 degrees right so many degrees or left so many degrees. My job was to get on that gun straddle the leg and look through the sites which was somewhat centered to a surveillance pole which have red lights facing and we would aim on it. The enemy couldn't see the light but we could see the light because we were facing it. And line off of that particular sight which we were going to depress or elevate so many degrees. And then after we got that, we commenced firing whenever the order came down. COUNTER 182 But each charge would determine how far the shell was going. If you put five shells that means that we're going to shoot five miles. Seven shells was the maximum. If you wanted to shoot seven miles. Mission would come down, like if the infantry sent out a patrol and they got caught, they wanted a smoke screen. So they had to bail them out. We _____ the fire. If a convoy, enemy convoy came on, they said if we see an enemy convoy because we had a man up in the observation, up near the front line, that would call down for a fire mission on the convoy. After we completed the mission, the call would come down, mission competed. MB: The infantry unit you were supporting was an all black unit as well? LB: An all black unit, because we were, the unit we supported, it was an all black unit. But there were times we went along with the Japanese division, yeah the Nissei division, the 442nd. It was one of the most, it was actually a sacrificial lamb. More Nissei's that any other soldier got purple hearts than any other soldiers during World War II. They was fierce fighters. We were assigned tot he 5th Army, General Mark Clark's army. And also was assigned to us the 750th tank battalion, we were with them also. They had an _____ which the aircraft were flown on the aircraft, and we was assigned with that outfit. But the Germans, we were fighting the Germans, but the Germans had what they ____, and I remember they were screaming ammunition. The Germans what they would do is paint a bullet with the red cross and they had their guns on half tracks. They would load our guns from the side of a building and fire on us and load them back and we couldn't tell where the muzzle blast was coming from. But we couldn't fire on them unless we got instructions from Washington or the command headquarters because we was thinking that they was a hospital. That's the kind of tactics they were using on us. MB: How much were you subjected to incoming German anti-battery fire? LB: We were subjected to incoming German battery fire practically every afternoon. During that time we had to go back about two miles to get our food. Two or three men at a time. German's would see us going back, and they would, with a large man would fire on us and they would pin us down sometimes. We had to wait ____ to get our food. We used to laugh about our guys only old men was in service with us. They were, some was 40 years old. But what had happened was, _____ back to get defense jobs and they got caught in the draft, and they were complaining about they couldn't run until the Germans started firing on us, and boy. We were due. We went into a place, we had to first dig those guns in, cover them up with cover with sandbags on the side. We'd be _____ made place for ourselves. And then we would dig a big hole in the ground maybe 5 feet, 6 feet, or maybe about 8, and get logs and put over the top and fill sandbags and put a tarpaulin over it. And that's what we stayed in. We had candles and flashlights while we was fighting. And we fought in shifts. We had twelve hour shifts. We would fight 12 hours, then the next crew would relieve us. We didn't stay on the front line the whole time, next shift would come on. They would stay from 12 to 12 the next day then we went on at 12 the next day till 12 at night. That's the way the war was fought. MB: What were you issued as far as personal sidearms, were you issued Garands or M-1 carbines, or just revolvers, or did you carry anything? LB: Well our personal weapons that we were issued were 30-30 carbines. Semiautomatics. We had a clip that would hold 15 rounds. Some would have another clip wallet to the back so all they'd have to do is flip clips and actually we could have 16 rounds because we could keep one round up in the chamber and that would give us 15 more rounds of ammunition. MB: What did you think of that gun, was it good? LB: Yeah, it was pretty good. There was a lot of play in, course you had to be steady with it. It had a lot of recoil and it would jump around, but as far as it being accurate, it was really accurate. MB: Did everybody on the gun crew have one? LB: Sure, everybody had a gun. He had to carry the gun at all times and keep it, keep his gun, you know maintenance on his gun. That was required every day. Same thing about this howitzer. After we fired a fire mission, we had to go and swab them out and clean them up. Because they would tell us we was indispensable, but those guns, it would take months to get a gun but they could get a new troop. So we kept our equipment in good shape. During the rain, we would take the guns and turn them down. ______ shoulder, turn the barrel down to carry that way. MB: Ya'll had 105's, right? LB: Yeah, we had 105's, that what ammunition we had. MB: How often did you have to move the guns? Did ya'll move them forward as the infantry advanced or did ya'll pretty much stay put? LB: How often did we move the guns? Depending on how often they actually advanced. Sometimes we would stay in one position for two months just mainly firing on convoys and what have you. Then as the infantry, in one case, going through I think it was Luka, Italy, we advanced so fast, we went into an area before the infantry got there. So _____ told our commander that if he didn't get us back as quickly as he could, he was going to court martial everything, every button he had on his outfit. But we usually stayed in a position place for quite a long time. We stayed in a town like Pisa for quite some time until all the people there knew us almost by name. COUNTER 298 MB: How did the Italian people see you, how did they respond to you? LB: Well, how did the Italians respond to us, at first they were a little curious. Because there had been so much propaganda. Some of the troops that came through, the white troops, had told them that we were cowboys, we ate babies, we had tails, don't have no dealing with us. But when we got to a town and we took up time with the children and there was a lot of candy and cigarettes that we would give. At time for our meals some of the fellows, you know, see we didn't get but one mess of food, he would get two, he would come back for seconds in order to feed the children and their families. So _____ when we came there, and they cried when we left. We go out, a typical example would be a radio. When we came, when we went up the coast up to Genoa, we came back to _____, and that was a posted sign off limits. There was one time I was young, which was ______ spoke up for his troops. He tore the sign down and said my troops help took this town, and this will be their town, so he put that town off limits to nothing but the 92nd division. MB: You had mentioned to us in a previous conversation about how your unit managed to get back Columbus' ashes or something like that, can you tell us that story? LB: Yeah, up in Genoa, Italy, I guess it was during his birthday, some of the Italians had taken Columbus' ashes and hid them in the mountains. So we had a big ceremony and we restored the ashes. The 92nd division, they had a black choir with probably from the 40's and 50's and probably into the 60's was called Wings over Jordan, a singing group. I think they was from out of Cleveland, Ohio, but I know it was Ohio. And they came over and helped us in the celebration, and that was quite a feat for us. That brought back a lot of good feelings among everyone. I may also mention that in order to keep the morale up, we had shows that come over. There was a show called Shuffle Along that _____ Cicily. OK, then we had sport events. We had football, spaghetti bowl between the Japanese soldiers and the 92nd division troops, in the 92nd division. And we had USO's. MB: Who won the football game? LB: I can't recall, I don't believe we did, but anyway, I can't recall. Because we had one player that he played football in Atlanta, his name was John Moody. Moody, he played on that team, but he had been a Morris Brown student before going in the service? Int: Did it make you feel better, did you like it when… MB: Sure, sure, it built our morale, it really helped our morale. And when we went over and we saw the black red cross, USO workers. And we saw a lot of blacks that came out of Ethiopia was there, because you know at one time Italy went down in Ethiopia. They was there. So whenever you see a black that would make us feel good. We took, we felt proud, you know. You would see such shows, blacks, it would built our morale up. Int: Did you get lots of letters, when did the mail come? LB: Well, when did the mail come and the letters that we got? Int: ______ stay in touch with you all? LB: No, it wasn't hard to get in touch with us, but the mail had to come through the APO. We would get it, sometimes it would be a month late. People would send us packages, they ____ some two and three months earlier. And we could never mention where exactly we were, we would always say somewhere in Italy in order to, in order to offset the enemy. Int: You weren't allowed to say where you were? LB: We were not allowed to say where we were, but we could just only say somewhere in Italy. And our APO No. was a New York, APO New York. That was the European theater of operations. Int: You said that you were called colored, did the Italians and the Germans have any names for you? LB: We were called colored, other names, did Germany have names for us? The Germans had a lady they called American Axis Sally, and they would throw leaflets telling us why we were over there fighting, we did not have anything to fight for. Int: They just passed out to black soldiers? LB: They passed it out, leaflets. Int: Not to everybody, just the black soldiers. LB: Well they did drop it from the air. They'd drop it and it would tell us why are you over here fighting? The Germans are not your enemy, the Americans are your enemy, that's who you should be fighting. They were trying to ____ our morale down, but we didn't go for that, we didn't accept that. But the Italians never did, the Italians accepted us COUNTER 428 TAPE 1 SIDE B COUNTER 001 …. as their liberators. Some of the ____ they were just there, thought they were just there. They didn't try to win friends, __________. I don't mean to be sounding like I'm being prejudiced or biased or anything, but that's the truth. And we were there, they were just amazed, they would come up to us and rub our skin because, they had never seen a black before. And they would come up touching your back, thought you had tails, and after they find out we were human same as anybody else and how they acted, they were very friendly and had no trouble out of them. Now occasionally a guy would pull a few tricks like selling cigarettes, they were gypping them out of cigarettes or something like that sometimes. I still have a ten pack of cigarettes in a carton they would have five backs and maybe had some sodas or something in the bottle. When they open it up and pay for it, they find no cigarettes. Anyway ___________________ at the bar. A black soldier was no good, you know that black soldier was no good. But we had our own club that we'd go to and had trucks that would carry us every night or every day whenever we wanted to go. MB: Was there, kind along the same line that you asked, I don't know if we picked it up, but US troops, they referred to you as colored units, is that right? LB: Right. The US troops referred to us as colored units. Colored or Negro. At that time, we didn't have any blacks known as blacks or Afro-Americans, we were known as colored or Negro. MB: Was that a term you found particularly offensive, or what would you have, if that wasn't acceptable, what would you have preferred to have been called? LB: At that time, do I consider those terms to be offensive? No, because we had been conditioned for a long time that we were colored. And whenever we signed any kind of major, or paper, or any value, you made a race, we always would be colored and later would be either Negro. That was accepted during that time, that was an accepted name. But the one name that we could not accept was the n-word, nigger. Now we were offended a lot of time by that name, we were called that. Int: Did anyone call you that? LB: Oh sure. Sure. Did anyone call us that name, niggers, oh sure. Let me give you one incidence in the United States. We were traveling from Ft. Bragg coming through Atlanta. We ate at the, on Decatur Street at a place called the Metropolitan Café. We had meal tickets. The white troops went to Rich's, they ate at the Magnolia Room. So _____ back up to Union Station, we were going to Arizona, it was a troop train. When we got to Little Rock, Arkansas, now this is as vivid to me as if it were happening today. The porter came through and said he would have pull the _________. We wanted to know why, and he said it would best if we pull the ________. Now I know at that time, we couldn't even have, it might have started it out going through Little Rock, AK. We could not be on a troop train. So we met a lot of racism. Course there was a cloud at that time of the South but we met a lot of racism. Not only did the fight the war over there we had, some of the troops had to fight a war right here. I recall a time, one incidence, here in Georgia, a black _____ came through, I don't know exactly what time it, but he got shot just driving through the town, so there has always been hostility during that time. So things haven't always been like that anymore, you know. Int: Did you sometimes see the colored troops that were left over in uniforms and supplies, brand new stuff? LB: Oh sure. Well most of our equipment was new, the equipment was new, we got new equipment. Course that's the thing about it, a lot of time we were hard… Well the equipment that we got, once a week if we could, we would go back to the rear echelon and take a shower, and we'd get a clean outfit, everything clean, socks. At night we would take socks off and put them to our chests and dry them out because we were in a lot of snow over there, and we got clean. Int: So almost every week you got like a different uniform? LB: Yeah if we could get back to the rear echelon, we'd get sprayed and get a different uniform, I mean a change of uniform, clean uniform. MB: Was there any, well talking about uniforms, was there any particular piece of uniform or equipment that you thought was a really good thing to have? I mean, on the same token, was there any piece that you thought was worthless and lot of guys threw them away and got lost or something like that? LB: Well any good uniform that I though was valuable or we could use or wasn't no good, for example, when I went in the service, everybody was issued these, what they call thermal underwear now. I never could get any because they didn't have my size. And I went through the entire army without having a thermal underwear. Int: Were they too small? LB: Yeah, because of my size, I never did get them. See you would get in what you were issued. If you were issued a sweater, what were those kind of jackets that we had?, I can't recall the name of them now. If ______, that's what you got. There was one case that in Italy, they had some troops over there from, called Sengalese, they were from out of Africa. There were ____ with the British, yeah, I think they was attached to the British. They would, they went barefoot, and they were going on the front lines, sneak up on the enemy and cut his neck and like an outpost and sneak up and wake the enemy up and he would just panic to see that, but they were getting paid by the ears, and then _____ they were cut. And so one asked me for a jacket, he had one of these British ____ jackets from, field jacket, and I didn't know what he was saying, he ______ and so I didn't want to do, and he got so mad and said they ever pull this knife, these swords, whatever they call them, sabers, or whatever, they're going to have cut _____ after they cut themselves. So I gave him my jacket, so I went a long time without one. COUNTER 92 MB: So when you were talking about what you ate, you usually went back to the rear and ate, two or three miles. So usually you were getting hot food, right, from a kitchen, or were you eating C-rations? LB: Well, the food that we were getting when we went back to the rear echelon, it was usually hot food. Now, most food that we got was dehydrated food such as eggs, milk, and each day, we got a bar of candy, chocolate candy, and a pack of cigarettes. And at that time, they had a different brand of cigarettes, I think such as Lucky Strikes, Camels, and ______. There were seven guys in the group that had been smoking the same brand of cigarettes. By me not smoking _______ Camels, I'd always give them to somebody else or something like that. The only time that we ate C-rations we were moving so fast that we couldn't get nothing else and we got C-rations. But the infantry, they were the ones that got most of the C-rations. Int: What was your favorite piece that you ended up using the most of your equipment, was there something that you used everyday? LB: Well, the favorite piece of the equipment that I had to use everyday, I would say was my helmet. The reason I say my helmet, because we would take what I call a can of canned heat and light it and put the helmet over it and get hot water to shave with. We had a net to go over our helmet to camouflage. Also we had a net that go around our gun to correspond with the terrain, so that would be most important that I used everyday. MB: When you moved the gun, were the guns moved by deuce and a half's or? LB: When they moved the guns, the guns were moved by we had _____ movers, 2 ½ ton trucks. And we rode. We didn't walk. We rode everywhere we went. The infantry was all the unfortunate, we were fortunate to ride. And we had this song about When the Caissons Go Rolling Along, we roll along in the trucks. MB: What was your first engagement, what was the first time you guys actually participated in combat action? LB: What was the first time that we participated in combat? I believe I was in Pisa, Italy. We got our first dose of comat. MB: That would have been in, when? LB: That was in '45 I believe it was, '45 because we stayed in the area a long time without doing anything, just waiting to be called, and that was in '45. I don't know why I think it was, I can't say exactly what month it was in, because we had our big push in November of '45 I think it was, but we had been fighting before then, but we got the enemy pushed and we kept them going. But occasionally we, now I came in contact in Pisa with some misfortunates to a lot of the troops, but I was fortunate. There was a guy in our outfit named Howard Bellamy from Indianapolis, Indiana, which you call ____town. We were in Pisa, and we decided to go to the USO. While we were in the USO\u003c Bellamy said lets go get some vino, you know that's the word, Italian word for wine. And you got the blanco and the rose, so we would go into town and get some wine. We'd been gone about 15 minutes and the USO blowed up. But this is what happened. They had stowed some mines from the sea, the New Guinean sea I think it was, into the basement, and some kind of way they were set off. I had one buddy, his name was Bill, and he was from Memphis, but he got saved because he was sitting on a piano stool and it blew him behind the piano, but we missed that incidence just by about 15 minutes. Because we decided to go to get wine. MB: In your company, did everybody survive the war? LB: My company was very fortunate. We had one sergeant which we told him if you have anything wrong with your lines, your sight, do it before nightfall. And he didn't adhere to the command to the request. And he went out that night and he got shot. And there was one incident where that the Germans fired into our position between where we were staying, but it happened to be a dud, didn't go off. MB: So if all of those counter artillery barrages, they really didn't accomplish much except to keep ya'll pinned down? LB: Keep us pinned down mostly. And kept us away from getting at the food or what have you. But we didn't know effective with ours because we had the air force over there with us. We had, I think the 332nd Air group with us, they came out of Tuskeegee. They were very effective, and they called them the, what was it, the word for black in German, you know the German air force called Luftwaffe, but they were very fortunate in supplying our air power. MB: Where were you when you heard the Germans had surrendered, and where did you get that information? LB: It happened in '44? Oh, where was I when the Germans surrendered. I believe we were up near around Genoa and we heard that the Germans had surrendered. And we said now we know when we'll be going back home. So in November I think of that year, the deactivated the 92nd division and they started this points system which is points, so many points for each 6 months you stayed in service. And if was rumored that the unit was going to come back to the United States as a whole, but some of the guys said that they came back to the United States, it wasn't going to be the same because there was going to be a lot of destruction because they felt like they were entitled to a lot more than they were going to get, so they decided they would deactivate the outfits and send them on a points system. So therefore, I was shipped, and a few more of us were shipped to Vienna, Austria by freight, packed in like cattle, on a freight car to Vienna, Austria to join the 3478th trucking company, it was a supply company. MB: What did you do once you were there? LB: When we were there, and what did we do when we were there in Austria? We hauled supplies, we got stuff like for the armored troops, we got American liquor for the officers, we went to place in the mountains that people needed rations and food to carry them the food, and the 5th Army rest center up in, I think that was ______ Garden, one of those places, that we carried food and picked up supplies. Int: Everyone that was doing that was black? LB: Was everything doing that with us, yeah they were black. They were black. Now when we were in Austria, the city was divided into four zones, sections. There's a section for the French, a section for the Russians, a section for the English, and a section where I was stationed. And we went from one section to another section, we had to use a pass to go through. The Russians were the only troops that were allowed to carry artillery pieces, I mean, their guns all the time. We couldn't carry guns, they carried their guns all the time. So we would make different areas like _________ and take up supplies in the trucking outfit. Go ____________ and pick up different things for the outfit, and I got to become dispatcher for the outfit. I was assistant dispatcher, and the ______ so my job was in charge of to make sure all the vehicles were in good running order and keep a record of a, a log of the maintenance work to be done and make sure each vehicle had two drivers assigned, make a report on what details each man was supposed to carry out and perform and then turn in that report to headquarters every day. MB: When did you finally get discharged? LB: I was discharged, when did I finally get discharged? I was discharged in June 11, 1946, at Ft. Dix, New Jersey. Because I went back to Philadelphia for a brief stay, then I came back to Augusta. MB: How did you end up coming to Atlanta, and when did you come to Atlanta? LB: How did I end up coming to Atlanta? Alright, my first wife, I put emphasis on first because this is my third wife, but anyway, my first wife she was an Atlantan, and she wanted to come back home, and I had been working at Camp Gordon and they had a reduction in force, and so I came to Atlanta to seek employment, and that's how I got here to Atlanta. When I got to Atlanta, my first job was with the Atlanta Broom Company. That's where I worked for a while. My father-in-law, he was instrumental in getting that job for me. And then I was __________ to work as a food chemist _______ called the Dairy Tech Corporation. It was out there in Sage Hill, it was __________ right down from Channel 5, I call it channel 5, and we was manufacturing chemists for ______ ice cream plants, and I got that job, I stayed there almost 25 years, but we moved to Doraville after I was there about 18 years, we moved up to Doraville. MB: What year then did you move to Atlanta? COUNTER 264 LB: I came to Atlanta in I think it was September or October 1953. And I've been here ever since. MB: I have heard, and I don't know how true it is, maybe you can clear it up for us, that the white officers that were put in charge of all black units generally tend to be southerners, was there any truth to that? LB: Was all white troops that was put in charge of the blacks was southerners? Well I can't say all but the majority was southerners. Now, I must give this due respect that all those white officers, were not all you might call racist because one of the best officers that I met, he was from Mississippi, white officer. Most of your racists came from your top brass because they wanted perfection. What they did, this is what happened. They conscripted a lot of the troops, the black troops, prior to World War II, they had a work going on called the CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps, and the guys in this, the government were paying them money to dig sewers and ditches and drains, and whatever. So when the war started, they got those guys. Threw them in the army. None of them was _________, a lot of them had never worn a suit of clothes until they got in the army, _____ or something like that. So they tried to teach them in schools, at Ft. Wachita they had these schools, and they would teach them how to be a good soldier, how to comply with the law, what it meant to be a private. Private Pete was a good boy, Private Pete was a good soldier, and that kind of basic, they taught them how to read. So naturally when they perform on the battlefield, there was a little cowardice, there was a little frightening, but as a whole, they stood up and fought. There was some misjudgments when one of our generals, he directed fire and killed a lot of his own men because he _________ should have been. When things went wrong, the black officers got the ____ for it because a lot of them were incompetent. I'm not saying this out of context, you got outfit put together real quick because ________ Jones _____ he was the brother-in-law of __________ who was chief of staff under President Truman. And he wanted to make a big showing, he wanted to make esprit de corps out of his black troops. He wanted to make a big showing. When he took over, and when we got assigned to the 5th army under General Mark Clark, he too, himself, he wanted to be like this General Patton. He wanted to be another Patton, and he wanted everything in perfection, and if something went wrong, he always thought that the troops were not _________ couldn't do a good job. And our General, he felt that regardless of how much education some of the black soldiers had, they still weren't qualified to do a good job. And the only time he really spoke up for us was when we went into the town of _________ and he declared the town off limits to everybody except the 92nd division since they took that town it was their town. But he felt, to show how incompetent he was, during the Korean war, they sent him to the Korean war and he failed. Int: You got a good conduct medal because of what, good conduct? LB: I got a good conduct medal, yeah I got a good conduct medal and I got two campaign medals. The good conduct medal was for being out of trouble, not getting intoxicated, not getting in fights, and you know, getting along with your fellow soldiers? Int: Did a lot of people get in fights? LB: Oh yeah, there was quite a few scuffles, you know, there was a lot of people, and whenever you find a bunch of men together, there's going to be ribbing and get drunk and resent one another, you know, so there was a few scuffles. There was nothing that the MPs couldn't handle because they ruled with an iron fist. We had MPs in our outfit, you couldn't compromise with them. Well, I ain't going to say bad as storm troopers but they used some of those tactics you know what I mean? MB: Your MPs in the 92nd Division, were they black or white MPs. LB: The MPs of the 92nd Division, they were black. But they were ________ to the _____ the white _____, the were _____. They couldn't hear nothing but he said do, and that was carry out, that was the law, they were the law. But there was a lot of incompetence, but in spite of all that, soldiers fought well in my outfit, but the ______ 92n was one of the best field artillery outfits all around, we got highly recommendation, we got highly praised. General Coburn, he was one of the best qualified, he was a white general. We had a lot of officer was a little mediocre, you know frightened. Who wouldn't be frightened when you face an enemy like those Germans were fierce fighters. But the propaganda, one thing I said, propaganda didn't get to us. We received the Stars and Stripes everyday telling us what's going on on the western front, what was happening over in the Pacific and how it was trying to tear morale down, so we didn't pay any attention, and what General Patton was going, how he was advancing, so we got information. COUNTER 409 TAPE II SIDE A COUNTER 000 Int: When you got back home, did you feel like you got respect from everybody or did you feel like white Americans didn't feel like you did? LB: When I got back home did I feel like I had the respect of everybody? I was still young. All I wanted to do was get me a good job and get married. I say that was all I wanted to do, and I got, I went in as a boy, I came out as a man. I lost all my young teenage years, from 18, I lost those. So I didn't know anything about 20 years old, 19 years old, those years went by me, I was in service, so all I wanted to do was get me a job and settle. But there was a buddy of mine, he enticed me into going to school, he said lets go back to school, he said the government will pay you to go to school. So we got enrolled in college and we were getting $65 a month I think it was for going to school. And after I got married, the amount increased to $102 or something like that a month. But anyway I… [tape repeats until COUNTER 32] went to that school and got interested in school so I stayed in school. But my first primary reason, I just wanted to get out of the service and get home. But I can't say whether I got the respect. Because when I get home, things were very cheap then. They had a system they called the 52/20. They would try to place you in the same type of work you were doing before you went in the service. So what we would do, we had to go down to the unemployment office and sign up each week if you were, couldn't find no job, you would get $20 a week until you got a job. So the jobs at that time, base salary at that time was averaging $20 a week on the job. By the time we took our social security, we were getting something like $18 or something. So we said what the heck, we working for $18 something week and I'm going to get $20 and not work. So we refused those little old jobs, it was menial work like working in the brickyard or some menial task, and it was supposed to give you some _____ of the work you were doing when you was in the service like truck drivers, that's what they put me down for. My spec called for me being a truck driver after I went through that trucking outfit. I couldn't get the jobs so we stayed around and got the little money every week. So there was no jobs much to do at that time, but there was no welfare. Everybody was working because ______ was so cheap then. MB: So when you went to school, was that on the GI Bill? LB: When I went to school, that was on the GI Bill. MB: And where did you go to school? LB: I went to Payne College down in Augusta, GA. MB: What was your degree in, did you graduate from Payne? LB: No, I was lacking two hours. MB: Two hours? LB: Two hours. I got married and I was lacking two hours. Then I came to Atlanta, and I was going to transmit my transcript and do up here and got connected as a food chemist and didn't want to leave, so my major was social studies and my minor was secondary education. But I never pursued it because this guy that I got with, he trained me into doing chemical work in this ice cream and dairy supply company. And I stayed there for almost 25 years. MB: When did you go and work for Oglethorpe? LB: Went to Oglethorpe back in 1981. MB: And you just… LB: I started out as a custodian, there was an opening for maintenance, they put me in the maintenance, and I stayed there until 1990, and I retired in December of 1990. I came back as a part time worker in July of 1991, and I stayed there about six years, stayed there until nineteen, got away now, but anyway, I went back to my old job and worked there six weeks and I couldn't make it. There was so many new products and there was a little animosity among some of the workers because I came in, they made me a production manager and they though that it should have been given to somebody within the position that had been there, and so they wouldn't tell me nothing, you know wouldn't work for me, so I gave it up and went back to Oglethorpe. The job, my position was still open, so I stayed at Oglethorpe until March of ‘9_, as a part time worker, maybe working three days a week, because I was on social security. At that time I could only make so much money. MB: We'll stop this. Mr. Bell tell us a little bit about this piece. LB: Alright about this piece here, that piece was made from a shell, a 105 mm howitzer shell. I contacted with an Italian machinist. He wanted some shells to make to some equipment some stuff he wanted to make, and he asked me what would I like to some memorabilia, and I said, well could you make you a little wine glass or wine, and so he made this with the shell from a casing of one of our mm howitzer shells, and he put my name on it, and _____, Italy on it. MB: Can you turn it a little bit so we can see what's on the other side there, you're going the right way. Yeah, keep turning it. So an Italian fellow made this? LB: Yeah, he made this for me, he was a machinist and he had, after you get the names on it, show you how the top comes off. MB: Go ahead and show us how the top screws off. LB: Alright the top screws off, you see the screws up in there, and here you see you got a, just like a wine glass. You know over there, if you go to their house and they're having a meal, they'll ask you ____, and just like to me wine to them just like we drink water here, and if you left you'll insult them if you didn't accept the wine. And they made some very good wine. But anyway, this is supposed to symbolize the shell, like our shells, that was the shell part that came out and this was the housing where they sit, and but they were like that, so that's what this is symbolizing. You see how the bottom, work piece of art he did on the bottom left. They said Italia, _____ Italia in Italy. MB: This picture here… LB: Tell you about this picture here, this picture here was salute to a 48 states, I think that was during Independence Day. And this is my outfit, that's _____ 597th field artillery. But I think I am missing from this picture, I think I was on details or something. You may note each gun has someone ____ that's how they had ____ gun, we had four guns in our company, B company. And each other company had four guns. This is my outfit, it was during a ceremony we had over there, down in Pisa, Italy. I don't know what the occasion was, we always had some kind of celebration or ceremony for something that happened back in the states. But anyway, if you see ______ the little guys with their eyes squatted, that's my picture. MB: We're going to try to focus in on your picture. Tell us about this little photograph here. LB: This was a photograph where the ashes were being carried to the next resting place of Columbus. They had been brought down from the hills where the Italians hid them during the German occupation, campaign there. So this is being taken away now to the final place, where the second place, where they're going to put them back to the original place and store it, I don't know where the resting place was, but this is going back to the original place. MB: OK, tell us about this photograph. LB: This picture was the soldiers is giving the ashes that were brought down from the hills to put them on the caisson to be carried out to its original resting place. And that's the division chaplain, he was giving the invocation ceremony, and the group that was behind there was a famous Wings Over Jordan, that was the famous black choir that used to sing during the 50's, 40's and 50's. Come on the radio every Sunday morning, they were noted for their spiritual singing, and they were over to help us celebrate. The soldiers holding ashes and… MB: OK, what is this? LB: This is the Wings Over Jordan choir, they came all the way to Genoa, Italy, to help us celebrate this occasion, a momentous prestigious occasion. They were a singing group, sang back in the 40's and 50's and it was a famous spiritual group. And so they came over, and that's what they were doing. And we were really proud to see them, anybody from the United States at home, it made us, it lifted our morale, it was a great morale booster to see them come all the way overseas to be with us. That was the band that played for all occasions for the division, the entire division would march and do ___ the band was there to play. MB: All African-American band? LB: All African-American band. 597th Field artillery, 92nd Division. MB: Where was this picture taken? LB: That picture was taken in Pisa, Italy. MB: Are you in this picture? LB: Yeah, I'm somewhere but I don't know where it is, I wouldn't be able to find me, I think I'm on the tail end. Because usually they would have the tall men in the front and let it escalate down, and I'm in the background or somewhere, I don't know where I am in that picture. MB: So was this taken in probably '45? LB: Yes, in '45. MB: Tell me about this again. LB: This was some kind of ceremony we was having, Verazze, Italy, I don't know what occasion it was for, I can't recall, but it was for some kind of occasion. That was part of the band, some kind of victory celebration, probably some kind of victory celebration. MB: Alright, who are these fellows? LB: These are members of the 347th trucking outfit. This picture was taken in Vienna, Austria. This is taken in '45, well very end of '45, '46?, I can't remember. '46. MB: Are you in this picture? LB: I am in this picture. MB: Which one are you? LB: There I am right there. MB: Right there. LB: Uh huh. MB: Do you know who any of these other fellows are? LB: No I don't. I know this guy he was from Kansas City. This guy here, he was from New York. Mel, he was from North Carolina. This guy here, he was from St. Louis I think. But I don't know. Johnny, he was from New York, but I don't know where they are, I never heard them anymore. Once we left… MB: Tell me what this is. LB: This here is a pass for, it says Vienna, Austria, back in 1946, the latter part of '45 and early part of '46. Each soldier needed a pass to get through the four different sections, mainly the northern section, the French section, the British section, and the western section. They would need a pass to go from one section to the other, with your name on it and on the other side… MB: Yeah, go ahead and turn it over for us. LB: OK. On this side you see here, the note that you've got the four different country flags. And each, there's writing in Russian, French, and American. MB: And you said something about when you were in Vienna that Americans and the French and British weren't allowed to carry weapons? LB: No we were not, only the Russians, they're the only ones that carried weapons. And also the Russians, when we was in that trucking outfit, we had to take our steering gear and ________ a chain to the ________ and loop it around the steering gear and lock it whenever we'd get out of the truck because the Russians were stealing the trucks. MB: The Russians were stealing the American trucks? LB: The American trucks. They were taking them. And the Russians, they didn't ask for anything, like they wanted something, they would just take it. MB: How did the Russians respond to you, both being black and also as an American? LB: We were the, we would ask them different questions. They would say _____ the won't, they would just take it. But they didn't, they were very friendly, but they would give us schnapps, not schnapps, vodka, the ___ vodka, sometimes we would exchange vodka with them for gasoline, gasoline for vodka they wanted gasoline, but anything they wanted they would take it, they didn't ask. Didn't have the courtesy to ask. COUNTER 242"],"dc_format":["video/quicktime"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":null,"dcterms_publisher":null,"dc_relation":null,"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":["Veterans History Project oral history recordings","Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center"],"dcterms_subject":["Artillery--United States","World War, 1939-1945--Participation, African American","World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American","105mm Caliber gun","United States. Army. Infantry Division, 92nd","United States. Army. Field Artillery Battalion, 597th","United States. Army. Regimental Combat Team, 442nd","Wings over Jordan (Choir : Cleveland, Ohio)","Philadelphia Naval Shipyard (Philadelphia, Pa.)","United States. Army--Artillery","United States. Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944","Buffalo Soldiers"],"dcterms_title":["Oral history interview of Lorenzo Bell, tape 1 of 2"],"dcterms_type":["MovingImage"],"dcterms_provenance":["Atlanta History Center"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/316"],"dcterms_temporal":null,"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":null,"dlg_local_right":["This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required."],"dcterms_medium":["video recordings (physical artifacts)","mini-dv"],"dcterms_extent":["1:50:00"],"dlg_subject_personal":null,"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":null},{"id":"geh_vhpohr_317","title":"Oral history interview of Lorenzo Bell, tape 2 of 2","collection_id":"geh_vhpohr","collection_title":"Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews","dcterms_contributor":null,"dcterms_spatial":["Austria, Vienna, Vienna, 48.20849, 16.37208","Italy, Varazze, 44.3592996, 8.5753273","United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018","United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383"],"dcterms_creator":["Brown, Myers; Johnson, Ahnekii","Bell, Lorenzo, 1925-2001"],"dc_date":["1999-07-09"],"dcterms_description":["In part two of this two-part interview, Lorenzo Bell describes his experiences as a black soldier in Italy and Austria at the end of World War II. He describes his post-war life and the racism he encountered at home.","Lorenzo Bell was a soldier in Italy during World War II.","VETERANS HISTORY INTERVIEW LORENZO BELL Atlanta History Center – July 9, 1999 Transcribed by Stephanie McKinnell Myers Brown: First of all, would you state your name and today's date, and that'll do it for the first question. Lorenzo Bell: Alright, my name is Lorenzo Bell. The date is July 9, 1999. MB: What was your place of birth and where did you grow up? LB: What was my place of birth and where did I grow up? I was born in Augusta, Georgia. I grew up during my early teen years in Augusta, Georgia. I was later, after my 17th birthday, I migrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. MB: What year were you born? LB: What year I was born? It was 1925. MB: When you moved to Philadelphia, what prompted that move to Philadelphia? Did your family move there, or did you move there by yourself? LB: When I moved to Philadelphia, and what prompted my move to Philadelphia was I wanted to get a good government job. My family did not move there. I was there living with an aunt on my mother's side. MB: What did you do once you moved to Philadelphia? LB: When I was in Philadelphia, what did I do when I was in Philadelphia? First I was 17 years old. I had to go get a working permit from a local school to be able to work. After obtaining the working permit, I got a job working in the shipyard, well the navy yard actually, in Philadelphia. And I worked as a sheet metal mechanic helper. And I worked on the battleship USS Wisconsin, which it took three years to complete. MB: Was that the only ship you worked on, did you just focus on working on that one? LB: Yeah, the only ship we worked on and what we focused on was mostly the USS Wisconsin. MB: Were there other African-Americans that were working on the same project with you? LB: Sure, there was a quite a few. MB: As you were doing the work there at the shipyard, were the, was there must interaction between the blacks and the whites working on the ships, or did everybody kind of stay to themselves, how did that work? LB: Well, what I actually was going on while I was working the shipyard, everybody had to mingle. Everybody had a job to do, and they had a supervisor who would come around in the morning and would tell them what the blueprints, what had to be done. There was no controversy. Most time that was spent, that I spent was going checking out tools. And after checking out tools, I would come back to the job and would assist the mechanic. MB: What year did you start working in the shipyard? LB: I started working in the shipyard in 1944, no, let me see, I started working in the shipyard in 1943, it was September of 1943. MB: When was your birthday, when did you turn 18? LB: I turned 18, well, when did I turn 18? It was that November 8, 1944. I turned 18 in Philadelphia. But because my friends were going in the service, I moved my age up, instead of November 8, I moved to October 16 in order to get in the service, and then I was drafted earlier. MB: What day did you actually get drafted, when did you… LB: In January, I don't know what year did I actually get, I believe I got drafted in January of '44. But I was set on the a three-week leave to get business and everything straightened out, so I had to return to service on the 17th of February, 1944. MB: And you wanted to do the war? LB: Sure I wanted to go into the, did I want to get into the war, sure I wanted to go. Because all the boys at that time were leaving, they wanted to go into the service. Matter of fact, I asked for the navy because I had been working on the ships, and what they gave me?, army. MB: And how did you get drafted, because I would think working in the shipyard would have been a protected war industry? LB: How did I get drafted, because I'm a nonessential worker. Only essential workers were deferred, given a draft status. Or if I had been 4F, that's what they classified that wasn't qualified physically to go into the service. MB: Once you were drafted, you went through those number of weeks where you had to get everything in order. Where were you sent for your basic training? LB: My basic, well it was, sent me for my basic training, I was sent to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Yeah it has always been our fort. And we did about 6-8 weeks of basic training. MB: What basic training, and you actually got into some wartime experiences, when you look back did you think your basic training had you prepared you for that? LB: When I look back to see whether my basic training prepared us, yeah we were well prepared because most of the recruits at that time were just out of high school, and they were mostly boys from the, from the east coast. We were fairly small because they selected us for a field artillery, and at that time you didn't have any blacks in the field artillery. It was considered as a high branch of service. The only thing that the blacks was selected to go in the most was quartermasters or a trucking outfit or some rear echelon duties. So we were considered privileged. In taking basic training, there was another white outfit called the 16th field artillery. We were called the 16th separate field artillery. So that was a disparity among the two groups. MB: Were the drill instructors, were they white or black? LB: Our drill instructors were white at basic training, yeah our drill instructors, they were white. MB: Did you want to go into the war even though you knew you might be doing trucking or quartermaster? LB: Did I want to go into war? MB: Even though you knew you might be doing a lower type of job? LB: Did I want to go in the war knowing that I might take a lower type of job? Sure, I wanted to go into the war because we felt that was a privilege, and we took pride in serving our country because the black press had been pleading, why couldn't we, we was Americans, why couldn't we take part in the war. They had papers such as the Pittsburg Courier, the Chicago Defender, the Amsterdam News, they were all _____ why the Negro couldn't fight, it was his country as much as anybody else's. MB: Right. So when did you actually get your assignment to the field artillery? Did that happen as you went in? LB: I actually got my assignment to the field artillery when we passed basic training, we were shipped to Ft. Wachucka, Arizona while we was assigned to the 92nd Buffalo Division. And this Buffalo Division was the forerunner of the cavalry during the Indians, during the wars with the Indians and their troops were Buffalo soldiers helped in the struggle then, so we was the forerunner, it was the forerunner of our outfit. MB: Give us your full regiment, company, battalion, division, give us the whole nomenclature all the way up the chain. LB: All right, you want the whole nomenclature of my outfit. OK, we went to the Ft. Wachucka, AZ, we was assigned to the 92nd Division. The division consists of infantrymens, artillery mens, medics, and you have certain breakdowns, which I have a book that will break it all down to you. But in my outfit, we had, the five we had in the artillery, that was four battalions: 597, 598, 599, and 600. OK, the 597 and 598 battalions, they were, had the 105mm howitzer. The 598 and 600 had the 155mm howitzers. And each battalion had a ____ that was in charge, and each battalion had four companies: Co A, Co B, Co C, and Co D. I don't exactly know how many men at that time consisted of, but I'd say around 10 men to a company. MB: Which company were you in? LB: I was in B company. MB: Of the? LB: 598, which company was I in, Co B, 597 field artillery, 92nd Division. MB: When were you first deployed outside of the United States? LB: Well, we left, we were first deployed outside of the United States when we went to Italy. I believe it was in September of '44. We went in from ____, Italy. We went immediately to a camping area, and we stayed there for about a week, living in what we call shelter halves. Each man had a half of a tent, and boy did it rain in Italy during that time. It seemed like the monsoon season hit Italy when we was there. Then we got assigned, so each artillery had to support an infantry battalion or regiment rather, and that was their job. We stayed in the rear echelon somewhat between 6 and 7 miles behind the infantry. And our job was to supply the infantry or whoever with fire when it was needed. They would call down a fire mission and say battery B 20 rounds charge 5 side wheel ___ 5 command. Each shell has 7 charges, powder bags. Alright, you had a gun, you had a man that opened the breech, and you had a man that was put the shells together, put the shells and drop the charges in, and pass it along and slid in the breech, and you had a man to close the breech. Then a man would pull the lanyard cord to fire the gun. My job, I was a gunner. So therefore, when a command came down, battery B elevate 15 degrees or depress 20 degrees right so many degrees or left so many degrees. My job was to get on that gun straddle the leg and look through the sites which was somewhat centered to a surveillance pole which have red lights facing and we would aim on it. The enemy couldn't see the light but we could see the light because we were facing it. And line off of that particular sight which we were going to depress or elevate so many degrees. And then after we got that, we commenced firing whenever the order came down. COUNTER 182 But each charge would determine how far the shell was going. If you put five shells that means that we're going to shoot five miles. Seven shells was the maximum. If you wanted to shoot seven miles. Mission would come down, like if the infantry sent out a patrol and they got caught, they wanted a smoke screen. So they had to bail them out. We _____ the fire. If a convoy, enemy convoy came on, they said if we see an enemy convoy because we had a man up in the observation, up near the front line, that would call down for a fire mission on the convoy. After we completed the mission, the call would come down, mission competed. MB: The infantry unit you were supporting was an all black unit as well? LB: An all black unit, because we were, the unit we supported, it was an all black unit. But there were times we went along with the Japanese division, yeah the Nissei division, the 442nd. It was one of the most, it was actually a sacrificial lamb. More Nissei's that any other soldier got purple hearts than any other soldiers during World War II. They was fierce fighters. We were assigned tot he 5th Army, General Mark Clark's army. And also was assigned to us the 750th tank battalion, we were with them also. They had an _____ which the aircraft were flown on the aircraft, and we was assigned with that outfit. But the Germans, we were fighting the Germans, but the Germans had what they ____, and I remember they were screaming ammunition. The Germans what they would do is paint a bullet with the red cross and they had their guns on half tracks. They would load our guns from the side of a building and fire on us and load them back and we couldn't tell where the muzzle blast was coming from. But we couldn't fire on them unless we got instructions from Washington or the command headquarters because we was thinking that they was a hospital. That's the kind of tactics they were using on us. MB: How much were you subjected to incoming German anti-battery fire? LB: We were subjected to incoming German battery fire practically every afternoon. During that time we had to go back about two miles to get our food. Two or three men at a time. German's would see us going back, and they would, with a large man would fire on us and they would pin us down sometimes. We had to wait ____ to get our food. We used to laugh about our guys only old men was in service with us. They were, some was 40 years old. But what had happened was, _____ back to get defense jobs and they got caught in the draft, and they were complaining about they couldn't run until the Germans started firing on us, and boy. We were due. We went into a place, we had to first dig those guns in, cover them up with cover with sandbags on the side. We'd be _____ made place for ourselves. And then we would dig a big hole in the ground maybe 5 feet, 6 feet, or maybe about 8, and get logs and put over the top and fill sandbags and put a tarpaulin over it. And that's what we stayed in. We had candles and flashlights while we was fighting. And we fought in shifts. We had twelve hour shifts. We would fight 12 hours, then the next crew would relieve us. We didn't stay on the front line the whole time, next shift would come on. They would stay from 12 to 12 the next day then we went on at 12 the next day till 12 at night. That's the way the war was fought. MB: What were you issued as far as personal sidearms, were you issued Garands or M-1 carbines, or just revolvers, or did you carry anything? LB: Well our personal weapons that we were issued were 30-30 carbines. Semiautomatics. We had a clip that would hold 15 rounds. Some would have another clip wallet to the back so all they'd have to do is flip clips and actually we could have 16 rounds because we could keep one round up in the chamber and that would give us 15 more rounds of ammunition. MB: What did you think of that gun, was it good? LB: Yeah, it was pretty good. There was a lot of play in, course you had to be steady with it. It had a lot of recoil and it would jump around, but as far as it being accurate, it was really accurate. MB: Did everybody on the gun crew have one? LB: Sure, everybody had a gun. He had to carry the gun at all times and keep it, keep his gun, you know maintenance on his gun. That was required every day. Same thing about this howitzer. After we fired a fire mission, we had to go and swab them out and clean them up. Because they would tell us we was indispensable, but those guns, it would take months to get a gun but they could get a new troop. So we kept our equipment in good shape. During the rain, we would take the guns and turn them down. ______ shoulder, turn the barrel down to carry that way. MB: Ya'll had 105's, right? LB: Yeah, we had 105's, that what ammunition we had. MB: How often did you have to move the guns? Did ya'll move them forward as the infantry advanced or did ya'll pretty much stay put? LB: How often did we move the guns? Depending on how often they actually advanced. Sometimes we would stay in one position for two months just mainly firing on convoys and what have you. Then as the infantry, in one case, going through I think it was Luka, Italy, we advanced so fast, we went into an area before the infantry got there. So _____ told our commander that if he didn't get us back as quickly as he could, he was going to court martial everything, every button he had on his outfit. But we usually stayed in a position place for quite a long time. We stayed in a town like Pisa for quite some time until all the people there knew us almost by name. COUNTER 298 MB: How did the Italian people see you, how did they respond to you? LB: Well, how did the Italians respond to us, at first they were a little curious. Because there had been so much propaganda. Some of the troops that came through, the white troops, had told them that we were cowboys, we ate babies, we had tails, don't have no dealing with us. But when we got to a town and we took up time with the children and there was a lot of candy and cigarettes that we would give. At time for our meals some of the fellows, you know, see we didn't get but one mess of food, he would get two, he would come back for seconds in order to feed the children and their families. So _____ when we came there, and they cried when we left. We go out, a typical example would be a radio. When we came, when we went up the coast up to Genoa, we came back to _____, and that was a posted sign off limits. There was one time I was young, which was ______ spoke up for his troops. He tore the sign down and said my troops help took this town, and this will be their town, so he put that town off limits to nothing but the 92nd division. MB: You had mentioned to us in a previous conversation about how your unit managed to get back Columbus' ashes or something like that, can you tell us that story? LB: Yeah, up in Genoa, Italy, I guess it was during his birthday, some of the Italians had taken Columbus' ashes and hid them in the mountains. So we had a big ceremony and we restored the ashes. The 92nd division, they had a black choir with probably from the 40's and 50's and probably into the 60's was called Wings over Jordan, a singing group. I think they was from out of Cleveland, Ohio, but I know it was Ohio. And they came over and helped us in the celebration, and that was quite a feat for us. That brought back a lot of good feelings among everyone. I may also mention that in order to keep the morale up, we had shows that come over. There was a show called Shuffle Along that _____ Cicily. OK, then we had sport events. We had football, spaghetti bowl between the Japanese soldiers and the 92nd division troops, in the 92nd division. And we had USO's. MB: Who won the football game? LB: I can't recall, I don't believe we did, but anyway, I can't recall. Because we had one player that he played football in Atlanta, his name was John Moody. Moody, he played on that team, but he had been a Morris Brown student before going in the service? Int: Did it make you feel better, did you like it when… MB: Sure, sure, it built our morale, it really helped our morale. And when we went over and we saw the black red cross, USO workers. And we saw a lot of blacks that came out of Ethiopia was there, because you know at one time Italy went down in Ethiopia. They was there. So whenever you see a black that would make us feel good. We took, we felt proud, you know. You would see such shows, blacks, it would built our morale up. Int: Did you get lots of letters, when did the mail come? LB: Well, when did the mail come and the letters that we got? Int: ______ stay in touch with you all? LB: No, it wasn't hard to get in touch with us, but the mail had to come through the APO. We would get it, sometimes it would be a month late. People would send us packages, they ____ some two and three months earlier. And we could never mention where exactly we were, we would always say somewhere in Italy in order to, in order to offset the enemy. Int: You weren't allowed to say where you were? LB: We were not allowed to say where we were, but we could just only say somewhere in Italy. And our APO No. was a New York, APO New York. That was the European theater of operations. Int: You said that you were called colored, did the Italians and the Germans have any names for you? LB: We were called colored, other names, did Germany have names for us? The Germans had a lady they called American Axis Sally, and they would throw leaflets telling us why we were over there fighting, we did not have anything to fight for. Int: They just passed out to black soldiers? LB: They passed it out, leaflets. Int: Not to everybody, just the black soldiers. LB: Well they did drop it from the air. They'd drop it and it would tell us why are you over here fighting? The Germans are not your enemy, the Americans are your enemy, that's who you should be fighting. They were trying to ____ our morale down, but we didn't go for that, we didn't accept that. But the Italians never did, the Italians accepted us COUNTER 428 TAPE 1 SIDE B COUNTER 001 …. as their liberators. Some of the ____ they were just there, thought they were just there. They didn't try to win friends, __________. I don't mean to be sounding like I'm being prejudiced or biased or anything, but that's the truth. And we were there, they were just amazed, they would come up to us and rub our skin because, they had never seen a black before. And they would come up touching your back, thought you had tails, and after they find out we were human same as anybody else and how they acted, they were very friendly and had no trouble out of them. Now occasionally a guy would pull a few tricks like selling cigarettes, they were gypping them out of cigarettes or something like that sometimes. I still have a ten pack of cigarettes in a carton they would have five backs and maybe had some sodas or something in the bottle. When they open it up and pay for it, they find no cigarettes. Anyway ___________________ at the bar. A black soldier was no good, you know that black soldier was no good. But we had our own club that we'd go to and had trucks that would carry us every night or every day whenever we wanted to go. MB: Was there, kind along the same line that you asked, I don't know if we picked it up, but US troops, they referred to you as colored units, is that right? LB: Right. The US troops referred to us as colored units. Colored or Negro. At that time, we didn't have any blacks known as blacks or Afro-Americans, we were known as colored or Negro. MB: Was that a term you found particularly offensive, or what would you have, if that wasn't acceptable, what would you have preferred to have been called? LB: At that time, do I consider those terms to be offensive? No, because we had been conditioned for a long time that we were colored. And whenever we signed any kind of major, or paper, or any value, you made a race, we always would be colored and later would be either Negro. That was accepted during that time, that was an accepted name. But the one name that we could not accept was the n-word, nigger. Now we were offended a lot of time by that name, we were called that. Int: Did anyone call you that? LB: Oh sure. Sure. Did anyone call us that name, niggers, oh sure. Let me give you one incidence in the United States. We were traveling from Ft. Bragg coming through Atlanta. We ate at the, on Decatur Street at a place called the Metropolitan Café. We had meal tickets. The white troops went to Rich's, they ate at the Magnolia Room. So _____ back up to Union Station, we were going to Arizona, it was a troop train. When we got to Little Rock, Arkansas, now this is as vivid to me as if it were happening today. The porter came through and said he would have pull the _________. We wanted to know why, and he said it would best if we pull the ________. Now I know at that time, we couldn't even have, it might have started it out going through Little Rock, AK. We could not be on a troop train. So we met a lot of racism. Course there was a cloud at that time of the South but we met a lot of racism. Not only did the fight the war over there we had, some of the troops had to fight a war right here. I recall a time, one incidence, here in Georgia, a black _____ came through, I don't know exactly what time it, but he got shot just driving through the town, so there has always been hostility during that time. So things haven't always been like that anymore, you know. Int: Did you sometimes see the colored troops that were left over in uniforms and supplies, brand new stuff? LB: Oh sure. Well most of our equipment was new, the equipment was new, we got new equipment. Course that's the thing about it, a lot of time we were hard… Well the equipment that we got, once a week if we could, we would go back to the rear echelon and take a shower, and we'd get a clean outfit, everything clean, socks. At night we would take socks off and put them to our chests and dry them out because we were in a lot of snow over there, and we got clean. Int: So almost every week you got like a different uniform? LB: Yeah if we could get back to the rear echelon, we'd get sprayed and get a different uniform, I mean a change of uniform, clean uniform. MB: Was there any, well talking about uniforms, was there any particular piece of uniform or equipment that you thought was a really good thing to have? I mean, on the same token, was there any piece that you thought was worthless and lot of guys threw them away and got lost or something like that? LB: Well any good uniform that I though was valuable or we could use or wasn't no good, for example, when I went in the service, everybody was issued these, what they call thermal underwear now. I never could get any because they didn't have my size. And I went through the entire army without having a thermal underwear. Int: Were they too small? LB: Yeah, because of my size, I never did get them. See you would get in what you were issued. If you were issued a sweater, what were those kind of jackets that we had?, I can't recall the name of them now. If ______, that's what you got. There was one case that in Italy, they had some troops over there from, called Sengalese, they were from out of Africa. There were ____ with the British, yeah, I think they was attached to the British. They would, they went barefoot, and they were going on the front lines, sneak up on the enemy and cut his neck and like an outpost and sneak up and wake the enemy up and he would just panic to see that, but they were getting paid by the ears, and then _____ they were cut. And so one asked me for a jacket, he had one of these British ____ jackets from, field jacket, and I didn't know what he was saying, he ______ and so I didn't want to do, and he got so mad and said they ever pull this knife, these swords, whatever they call them, sabers, or whatever, they're going to have cut _____ after they cut themselves. So I gave him my jacket, so I went a long time without one. COUNTER 92 MB: So when you were talking about what you ate, you usually went back to the rear and ate, two or three miles. So usually you were getting hot food, right, from a kitchen, or were you eating C-rations? LB: Well, the food that we were getting when we went back to the rear echelon, it was usually hot food. Now, most food that we got was dehydrated food such as eggs, milk, and each day, we got a bar of candy, chocolate candy, and a pack of cigarettes. And at that time, they had a different brand of cigarettes, I think such as Lucky Strikes, Camels, and ______. There were seven guys in the group that had been smoking the same brand of cigarettes. By me not smoking _______ Camels, I'd always give them to somebody else or something like that. The only time that we ate C-rations we were moving so fast that we couldn't get nothing else and we got C-rations. But the infantry, they were the ones that got most of the C-rations. Int: What was your favorite piece that you ended up using the most of your equipment, was there something that you used everyday? LB: Well, the favorite piece of the equipment that I had to use everyday, I would say was my helmet. The reason I say my helmet, because we would take what I call a can of canned heat and light it and put the helmet over it and get hot water to shave with. We had a net to go over our helmet to camouflage. Also we had a net that go around our gun to correspond with the terrain, so that would be most important that I used everyday. MB: When you moved the gun, were the guns moved by deuce and a half's or? LB: When they moved the guns, the guns were moved by we had _____ movers, 2 ½ ton trucks. And we rode. We didn't walk. We rode everywhere we went. The infantry was all the unfortunate, we were fortunate to ride. And we had this song about When the Caissons Go Rolling Along, we roll along in the trucks. MB: What was your first engagement, what was the first time you guys actually participated in combat action? LB: What was the first time that we participated in combat? I believe I was in Pisa, Italy. We got our first dose of comat. MB: That would have been in, when? LB: That was in '45 I believe it was, '45 because we stayed in the area a long time without doing anything, just waiting to be called, and that was in '45. I don't know why I think it was, I can't say exactly what month it was in, because we had our big push in November of '45 I think it was, but we had been fighting before then, but we got the enemy pushed and we kept them going. But occasionally we, now I came in contact in Pisa with some misfortunates to a lot of the troops, but I was fortunate. There was a guy in our outfit named Howard Bellamy from Indianapolis, Indiana, which you call ____town. We were in Pisa, and we decided to go to the USO. While we were in the USO\u003c Bellamy said lets go get some vino, you know that's the word, Italian word for wine. And you got the blanco and the rose, so we would go into town and get some wine. We'd been gone about 15 minutes and the USO blowed up. But this is what happened. They had stowed some mines from the sea, the New Guinean sea I think it was, into the basement, and some kind of way they were set off. I had one buddy, his name was Bill, and he was from Memphis, but he got saved because he was sitting on a piano stool and it blew him behind the piano, but we missed that incidence just by about 15 minutes. Because we decided to go to get wine. MB: In your company, did everybody survive the war? LB: My company was very fortunate. We had one sergeant which we told him if you have anything wrong with your lines, your sight, do it before nightfall. And he didn't adhere to the command to the request. And he went out that night and he got shot. And there was one incident where that the Germans fired into our position between where we were staying, but it happened to be a dud, didn't go off. MB: So if all of those counter artillery barrages, they really didn't accomplish much except to keep ya'll pinned down? LB: Keep us pinned down mostly. And kept us away from getting at the food or what have you. But we didn't know effective with ours because we had the air force over there with us. We had, I think the 332nd Air group with us, they came out of Tuskeegee. They were very effective, and they called them the, what was it, the word for black in German, you know the German air force called Luftwaffe, but they were very fortunate in supplying our air power. MB: Where were you when you heard the Germans had surrendered, and where did you get that information? LB: It happened in '44? Oh, where was I when the Germans surrendered. I believe we were up near around Genoa and we heard that the Germans had surrendered. And we said now we know when we'll be going back home. So in November I think of that year, the deactivated the 92nd division and they started this points system which is points, so many points for each 6 months you stayed in service. And if was rumored that the unit was going to come back to the United States as a whole, but some of the guys said that they came back to the United States, it wasn't going to be the same because there was going to be a lot of destruction because they felt like they were entitled to a lot more than they were going to get, so they decided they would deactivate the outfits and send them on a points system. So therefore, I was shipped, and a few more of us were shipped to Vienna, Austria by freight, packed in like cattle, on a freight car to Vienna, Austria to join the 3478th trucking company, it was a supply company. MB: What did you do once you were there? LB: When we were there, and what did we do when we were there in Austria? We hauled supplies, we got stuff like for the armored troops, we got American liquor for the officers, we went to place in the mountains that people needed rations and food to carry them the food, and the 5th Army rest center up in, I think that was ______ Garden, one of those places, that we carried food and picked up supplies. Int: Everyone that was doing that was black? LB: Was everything doing that with us, yeah they were black. They were black. Now when we were in Austria, the city was divided into four zones, sections. There's a section for the French, a section for the Russians, a section for the English, and a section where I was stationed. And we went from one section to another section, we had to use a pass to go through. The Russians were the only troops that were allowed to carry artillery pieces, I mean, their guns all the time. We couldn't carry guns, they carried their guns all the time. So we would make different areas like _________ and take up supplies in the trucking outfit. Go ____________ and pick up different things for the outfit, and I got to become dispatcher for the outfit. I was assistant dispatcher, and the ______ so my job was in charge of to make sure all the vehicles were in good running order and keep a record of a, a log of the maintenance work to be done and make sure each vehicle had two drivers assigned, make a report on what details each man was supposed to carry out and perform and then turn in that report to headquarters every day. MB: When did you finally get discharged? LB: I was discharged, when did I finally get discharged? I was discharged in June 11, 1946, at Ft. Dix, New Jersey. Because I went back to Philadelphia for a brief stay, then I came back to Augusta. MB: How did you end up coming to Atlanta, and when did you come to Atlanta? LB: How did I end up coming to Atlanta? Alright, my first wife, I put emphasis on first because this is my third wife, but anyway, my first wife she was an Atlantan, and she wanted to come back home, and I had been working at Camp Gordon and they had a reduction in force, and so I came to Atlanta to seek employment, and that's how I got here to Atlanta. When I got to Atlanta, my first job was with the Atlanta Broom Company. That's where I worked for a while. My father-in-law, he was instrumental in getting that job for me. And then I was __________ to work as a food chemist _______ called the Dairy Tech Corporation. It was out there in Sage Hill, it was __________ right down from Channel 5, I call it channel 5, and we was manufacturing chemists for ______ ice cream plants, and I got that job, I stayed there almost 25 years, but we moved to Doraville after I was there about 18 years, we moved up to Doraville. MB: What year then did you move to Atlanta? COUNTER 264 LB: I came to Atlanta in I think it was September or October 1953. And I've been here ever since. MB: I have heard, and I don't know how true it is, maybe you can clear it up for us, that the white officers that were put in charge of all black units generally tend to be southerners, was there any truth to that? LB: Was all white troops that was put in charge of the blacks was southerners? Well I can't say all but the majority was southerners. Now, I must give this due respect that all those white officers, were not all you might call racist because one of the best officers that I met, he was from Mississippi, white officer. Most of your racists came from your top brass because they wanted perfection. What they did, this is what happened. They conscripted a lot of the troops, the black troops, prior to World War II, they had a work going on called the CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps, and the guys in this, the government were paying them money to dig sewers and ditches and drains, and whatever. So when the war started, they got those guys. Threw them in the army. None of them was _________, a lot of them had never worn a suit of clothes until they got in the army, _____ or something like that. So they tried to teach them in schools, at Ft. Wachita they had these schools, and they would teach them how to be a good soldier, how to comply with the law, what it meant to be a private. Private Pete was a good boy, Private Pete was a good soldier, and that kind of basic, they taught them how to read. So naturally when they perform on the battlefield, there was a little cowardice, there was a little frightening, but as a whole, they stood up and fought. There was some misjudgments when one of our generals, he directed fire and killed a lot of his own men because he _________ should have been. When things went wrong, the black officers got the ____ for it because a lot of them were incompetent. I'm not saying this out of context, you got outfit put together real quick because ________ Jones _____ he was the brother-in-law of __________ who was chief of staff under President Truman. And he wanted to make a big showing, he wanted to make esprit de corps out of his black troops. He wanted to make a big showing. When he took over, and when we got assigned to the 5th army under General Mark Clark, he too, himself, he wanted to be like this General Patton. He wanted to be another Patton, and he wanted everything in perfection, and if something went wrong, he always thought that the troops were not _________ couldn't do a good job. And our General, he felt that regardless of how much education some of the black soldiers had, they still weren't qualified to do a good job. And the only time he really spoke up for us was when we went into the town of _________ and he declared the town off limits to everybody except the 92nd division since they took that town it was their town. But he felt, to show how incompetent he was, during the Korean war, they sent him to the Korean war and he failed. Int: You got a good conduct medal because of what, good conduct? LB: I got a good conduct medal, yeah I got a good conduct medal and I got two campaign medals. The good conduct medal was for being out of trouble, not getting intoxicated, not getting in fights, and you know, getting along with your fellow soldiers? Int: Did a lot of people get in fights? LB: Oh yeah, there was quite a few scuffles, you know, there was a lot of people, and whenever you find a bunch of men together, there's going to be ribbing and get drunk and resent one another, you know, so there was a few scuffles. There was nothing that the MPs couldn't handle because they ruled with an iron fist. We had MPs in our outfit, you couldn't compromise with them. Well, I ain't going to say bad as storm troopers but they used some of those tactics you know what I mean? MB: Your MPs in the 92nd Division, were they black or white MPs. LB: The MPs of the 92nd Division, they were black. But they were ________ to the _____ the white _____, the were _____. They couldn't hear nothing but he said do, and that was carry out, that was the law, they were the law. But there was a lot of incompetence, but in spite of all that, soldiers fought well in my outfit, but the ______ 92n was one of the best field artillery outfits all around, we got highly recommendation, we got highly praised. General Coburn, he was one of the best qualified, he was a white general. We had a lot of officer was a little mediocre, you know frightened. Who wouldn't be frightened when you face an enemy like those Germans were fierce fighters. But the propaganda, one thing I said, propaganda didn't get to us. We received the Stars and Stripes everyday telling us what's going on on the western front, what was happening over in the Pacific and how it was trying to tear morale down, so we didn't pay any attention, and what General Patton was going, how he was advancing, so we got information. COUNTER 409 TAPE II SIDE A COUNTER 000 Int: When you got back home, did you feel like you got respect from everybody or did you feel like white Americans didn't feel like you did? LB: When I got back home did I feel like I had the respect of everybody? I was still young. All I wanted to do was get me a good job and get married. I say that was all I wanted to do, and I got, I went in as a boy, I came out as a man. I lost all my young teenage years, from 18, I lost those. So I didn't know anything about 20 years old, 19 years old, those years went by me, I was in service, so all I wanted to do was get me a job and settle. But there was a buddy of mine, he enticed me into going to school, he said lets go back to school, he said the government will pay you to go to school. So we got enrolled in college and we were getting $65 a month I think it was for going to school. And after I got married, the amount increased to $102 or something like that a month. But anyway I… [tape repeats until COUNTER 32] went to that school and got interested in school so I stayed in school. But my first primary reason, I just wanted to get out of the service and get home. But I can't say whether I got the respect. Because when I get home, things were very cheap then. They had a system they called the 52/20. They would try to place you in the same type of work you were doing before you went in the service. So what we would do, we had to go down to the unemployment office and sign up each week if you were, couldn't find no job, you would get $20 a week until you got a job. So the jobs at that time, base salary at that time was averaging $20 a week on the job. By the time we took our social security, we were getting something like $18 or something. So we said what the heck, we working for $18 something week and I'm going to get $20 and not work. So we refused those little old jobs, it was menial work like working in the brickyard or some menial task, and it was supposed to give you some _____ of the work you were doing when you was in the service like truck drivers, that's what they put me down for. My spec called for me being a truck driver after I went through that trucking outfit. I couldn't get the jobs so we stayed around and got the little money every week. So there was no jobs much to do at that time, but there was no welfare. Everybody was working because ______ was so cheap then. MB: So when you went to school, was that on the GI Bill? LB: When I went to school, that was on the GI Bill. MB: And where did you go to school? LB: I went to Payne College down in Augusta, GA. MB: What was your degree in, did you graduate from Payne? LB: No, I was lacking two hours. MB: Two hours? LB: Two hours. I got married and I was lacking two hours. Then I came to Atlanta, and I was going to transmit my transcript and do up here and got connected as a food chemist and didn't want to leave, so my major was social studies and my minor was secondary education. But I never pursued it because this guy that I got with, he trained me into doing chemical work in this ice cream and dairy supply company. And I stayed there for almost 25 years. MB: When did you go and work for Oglethorpe? LB: Went to Oglethorpe back in 1981. MB: And you just… LB: I started out as a custodian, there was an opening for maintenance, they put me in the maintenance, and I stayed there until 1990, and I retired in December of 1990. I came back as a part time worker in July of 1991, and I stayed there about six years, stayed there until nineteen, got away now, but anyway, I went back to my old job and worked there six weeks and I couldn't make it. There was so many new products and there was a little animosity among some of the workers because I came in, they made me a production manager and they though that it should have been given to somebody within the position that had been there, and so they wouldn't tell me nothing, you know wouldn't work for me, so I gave it up and went back to Oglethorpe. The job, my position was still open, so I stayed at Oglethorpe until March of ‘9_, as a part time worker, maybe working three days a week, because I was on social security. At that time I could only make so much money. MB: We'll stop this. Mr. Bell tell us a little bit about this piece. LB: Alright about this piece here, that piece was made from a shell, a 105 mm howitzer shell. I contacted with an Italian machinist. He wanted some shells to make to some equipment some stuff he wanted to make, and he asked me what would I like to some memorabilia, and I said, well could you make you a little wine glass or wine, and so he made this with the shell from a casing of one of our mm howitzer shells, and he put my name on it, and _____, Italy on it. MB: Can you turn it a little bit so we can see what's on the other side there, you're going the right way. Yeah, keep turning it. So an Italian fellow made this? LB: Yeah, he made this for me, he was a machinist and he had, after you get the names on it, show you how the top comes off. MB: Go ahead and show us how the top screws off. LB: Alright the top screws off, you see the screws up in there, and here you see you got a, just like a wine glass. You know over there, if you go to their house and they're having a meal, they'll ask you ____, and just like to me wine to them just like we drink water here, and if you left you'll insult them if you didn't accept the wine. And they made some very good wine. But anyway, this is supposed to symbolize the shell, like our shells, that was the shell part that came out and this was the housing where they sit, and but they were like that, so that's what this is symbolizing. You see how the bottom, work piece of art he did on the bottom left. They said Italia, _____ Italia in Italy. MB: This picture here… LB: Tell you about this picture here, this picture here was salute to a 48 states, I think that was during Independence Day. And this is my outfit, that's _____ 597th field artillery. But I think I am missing from this picture, I think I was on details or something. You may note each gun has someone ____ that's how they had ____ gun, we had four guns in our company, B company. And each other company had four guns. This is my outfit, it was during a ceremony we had over there, down in Pisa, Italy. I don't know what the occasion was, we always had some kind of celebration or ceremony for something that happened back in the states. But anyway, if you see ______ the little guys with their eyes squatted, that's my picture. MB: We're going to try to focus in on your picture. Tell us about this little photograph here. LB: This was a photograph where the ashes were being carried to the next resting place of Columbus. They had been brought down from the hills where the Italians hid them during the German occupation, campaign there. So this is being taken away now to the final place, where the second place, where they're going to put them back to the original place and store it, I don't know where the resting place was, but this is going back to the original place. MB: OK, tell us about this photograph. LB: This picture was the soldiers is giving the ashes that were brought down from the hills to put them on the caisson to be carried out to its original resting place. And that's the division chaplain, he was giving the invocation ceremony, and the group that was behind there was a famous Wings Over Jordan, that was the famous black choir that used to sing during the 50's, 40's and 50's. Come on the radio every Sunday morning, they were noted for their spiritual singing, and they were over to help us celebrate. The soldiers holding ashes and… MB: OK, what is this? LB: This is the Wings Over Jordan choir, they came all the way to Genoa, Italy, to help us celebrate this occasion, a momentous prestigious occasion. They were a singing group, sang back in the 40's and 50's and it was a famous spiritual group. And so they came over, and that's what they were doing. And we were really proud to see them, anybody from the United States at home, it made us, it lifted our morale, it was a great morale booster to see them come all the way overseas to be with us. That was the band that played for all occasions for the division, the entire division would march and do ___ the band was there to play. MB: All African-American band? LB: All African-American band. 597th Field artillery, 92nd Division. MB: Where was this picture taken? LB: That picture was taken in Pisa, Italy. MB: Are you in this picture? LB: Yeah, I'm somewhere but I don't know where it is, I wouldn't be able to find me, I think I'm on the tail end. Because usually they would have the tall men in the front and let it escalate down, and I'm in the background or somewhere, I don't know where I am in that picture. MB: So was this taken in probably '45? LB: Yes, in '45. MB: Tell me about this again. LB: This was some kind of ceremony we was having, Verazze, Italy, I don't know what occasion it was for, I can't recall, but it was for some kind of occasion. That was part of the band, some kind of victory celebration, probably some kind of victory celebration. MB: Alright, who are these fellows? LB: These are members of the 347th trucking outfit. This picture was taken in Vienna, Austria. This is taken in '45, well very end of '45, '46?, I can't remember. '46. MB: Are you in this picture? LB: I am in this picture. MB: Which one are you? LB: There I am right there. MB: Right there. LB: Uh huh. MB: Do you know who any of these other fellows are? LB: No I don't. I know this guy he was from Kansas City. This guy here, he was from New York. Mel, he was from North Carolina. This guy here, he was from St. Louis I think. But I don't know. Johnny, he was from New York, but I don't know where they are, I never heard them anymore. Once we left… MB: Tell me what this is. LB: This here is a pass for, it says Vienna, Austria, back in 1946, the latter part of '45 and early part of '46. Each soldier needed a pass to get through the four different sections, mainly the northern section, the French section, the British section, and the western section. They would need a pass to go from one section to the other, with your name on it and on the other side… MB: Yeah, go ahead and turn it over for us. LB: OK. On this side you see here, the note that you've got the four different country flags. And each, there's writing in Russian, French, and American. MB: And you said something about when you were in Vienna that Americans and the French and British weren't allowed to carry weapons? LB: No we were not, only the Russians, they're the only ones that carried weapons. And also the Russians, when we was in that trucking outfit, we had to take our steering gear and ________ a chain to the ________ and loop it around the steering gear and lock it whenever we'd get out of the truck because the Russians were stealing the trucks. MB: The Russians were stealing the American trucks? LB: The American trucks. They were taking them. And the Russians, they didn't ask for anything, like they wanted something, they would just take it. MB: How did the Russians respond to you, both being black and also as an American? LB: We were the, we would ask them different questions. They would say _____ the won't, they would just take it. But they didn't, they were very friendly, but they would give us schnapps, not schnapps, vodka, the ___ vodka, sometimes we would exchange vodka with them for gasoline, gasoline for vodka they wanted gasoline, but anything they wanted they would take it, they didn't ask. Didn't have the courtesy to ask. COUNTER 242"],"dc_format":["video/quicktime"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":null,"dcterms_publisher":null,"dc_relation":null,"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":["Veterans History Project oral history recordings","Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center"],"dcterms_subject":["Racism--United States","World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American","World War, 1939-1945--Participation, African American","Moody, John, 1918-","Wings over Jordan (Choir : Cleveland, Ohio)","Paine College","United States. Army. Transport Service, 347th","United States. Army. Infantry Division, 92nd","United States. Army. Field Artillery Battalion, 597th","United States. Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944","Buffalo Soldiers","347th Quartermaster Truck Company"],"dcterms_title":["Oral history interview of Lorenzo Bell, tape 2 of 2"],"dcterms_type":["MovingImage"],"dcterms_provenance":["Atlanta History Center"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/317"],"dcterms_temporal":null,"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":null,"dlg_local_right":["This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required."],"dcterms_medium":["video recordings (physical artifacts)","mini-dv"],"dcterms_extent":["18:53"],"dlg_subject_personal":null,"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":null},{"id":"bcas_bcmss0837_1029","title":"\"Compliance Handbook for the Revised Desegregation and Education Plan, Title VII, Title IX, ADA, Section 504 or Other Similar Requirements of the Civil Rights Law of 1964 as Amended,\" Little Rock School District","collection_id":"bcas_bcmss0837","collection_title":"Office of Desegregation Management","dcterms_contributor":null,"dcterms_spatial":["United States, 39.76, -98.5","United States, Arkansas, 34.75037, -92.50044","United States, Arkansas, Pulaski County, Little Rock, 34.74648, -92.28959"],"dcterms_creator":null,"dc_date":["1999-07"],"dcterms_description":null,"dc_format":["application/pdf"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":["eng"],"dcterms_publisher":["Little Rock, Ark. : Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. 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District Court (Arkansas: Eastern District)"],"dc_date":["1999-07"],"dcterms_description":null,"dc_format":["application/pdf"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":["eng"],"dcterms_publisher":["Little Rock, Ark. : Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. Central Arkansas Library System"],"dc_relation":null,"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":["Office of Desegregation Monitoring records (BC.MSS.08.37)","History of Segregation and Integration of Arkansas's Educational System"],"dcterms_subject":["Little Rock (Ark.)--History--20th century","Special districts--Arkansas--Pulaski County","Arkansas. Department of Education","Joshua Intervenors","Little Rock School District","Education--Arkansas","Education--Evaluation","Education and state","Educational law and legislation","Educational planning","School management and organization","Education--Standards","Magnet schools","School improvement programs"],"dcterms_title":["Court filings concerning the Pulaski Educational Cooperative, June 19, 1999, order concerning proposed change in grade structure and number of seats at magnet schools, and ADE motion concerning monitoring"],"dcterms_type":["Text"],"dcterms_provenance":["Butler Center for Arkansas Studies"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://arstudies.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/bcmss0837/id/1735"],"dcterms_temporal":null,"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":null,"dlg_local_right":["Available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any other use requires permission from the Butler Center."],"dcterms_medium":["judicial records"],"dcterms_extent":null,"dlg_subject_personal":null,"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":"District Court, motion for extension of time to respond to the Court's June 18, 1999, order and to Pulaski County Special School District's (PCSSD's) motion re: the Pulaski Educational Cooperative; District Court, Arkansas Department of Education's (ADE's) response to the Court's June 19, 1999, order concerning proposed change in grade structure and number of seats at magnet schools; District Court, Arkansas Department of Education's (ADE's) response to motion re: the Pulaski Educational Cooperative; District Court, order; District Court, Joshua intervenors' response to motion to relieve Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) motion concerning monitoring; District Court, Little Rock School District (LRSD) notice of appeal; District Court, Pulaski County Special School District (PCSSD) notice of appeal; District Court, three orders; District Court, reply to Arkansas Department of Education's (ADE's) response to motion re: the Pulaski Educational Cooperative and supplement to Pulaski County Special School District's (PCSSD's) motion; District Court, order; District Court, notice of filing, Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) project management tool  The transcript for this item was created using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and may contain some errors.  IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS WESTERN DIVISION JUL 1 1999 OFFICE Of DESEGREGATION MONITORING LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT PLAINTIFF v. No. LR-C-82-866 PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1, et al. DEFENDANTS MOTION FOR EXTENSION OF TIME TO RESPOND TO THE COURT'S JUNE 18, 1999 ORDER AND TO PCSSD'S \"MOTION RE THE PULASKI EDUCATIONAL COOPERATIVE The Arkansas Department of Education (\" ADE\") hereby moves the Court for a - brief extension of time, to and including Friday, July 9, 1999, in which to respond to (a) the Court's June 18, 1999 order concerning a proposed change in the grade structure and number of seats at the magnet schools for 1999-2000, and (b) PCSSD's \"Motion re the Pulaski Educational Cooperative.\" The motion is made on the following grounds: 1. On June 18, 1999, this Court entered an order concerning a proposed change in the grade structure and number of seats at the magnet schools for the 1999- 2000 school year. The court's order allowed the parties to and including July 6, 1999, to file any objections to the MRC's proposal. 2. On June 23, 1999, PCSSD served by mail a document entitled \"Combined Motion and Memorandum re the Pulaski Educational Cooperative.\" ADE's response to - this motion is due on or before July 7, 1999. 3. Undersigned counsel for ADE has been out of town on vacation from June 23, 1999, through July 5, 1999. ADE will therefore require a short extension of time, to and including Friday, July 9, 1999, within which to file its response to this Court's June 18, 1999 order and to PCSSD's motion concerning \"the Pulaski Educational Cooperative.\" WHEREFORE, ADE respectfully requests that the Court enter an order extending ADE's time, to and including July 9, 1999, to respond to (a) the Court's June 18, 1999 order concerning a proposed change in the grade structure and number of seats at the magnet schools for 1999-2000, and (b) PCSSD's \"Motion re the Pulaski Educational Cooperative.\" Respectfully Submitted, WINSTON BRYANT Attorney General Assistant Atto e G neral 323 Center Street, Suite 200 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 (501) 682-2007 Attorneys for Arkansas Department of Education 2 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I, Timothy Gauger, certify that on July 6, 1999, a copy of the foregoing document will be served by U.S. mail, postage prepaid, on the following person(s) at the address(es) indicated: M. Samuel Jones, III Wright, Lindsey \u0026 Jennings 2000 NationsBank Bldg. 200 W. Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201 John W. Walker John Walker, P.A. 1723 Broadway Little Rock, AR 72201 Richard Roachell 401 W. Capitol, Suite 504 Little Rock, AR 72201 Christopher Heller Friday, Eldredge \u0026 Clark 2000 Regions Center 400 W. Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201-3493 Stephen W. Jones Jack, Lyon \u0026 Jones 3400 TCBY Tower 425 W. Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201 Ann Brown 201 E. Markham, Ste. 510 Little Rock, AR 7220i 3 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS WESTERN DIVISION JIJl 1 2 1999 OFFICE OF DESE-aRfGATION MONITCREiG LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT PLAINTIFF v. No. LR-C-82-866 PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1, et al DEFENDANTS ADE'S RESPONSE TO THE COURT'S JUNE 18, 1999 ORDER CONCERNING PROPOSED GIANGE IN GRADE STRUCTIJRE AND NUMBER OF SEATS AT THE MAGNET SCHOOLS The Arkansas Department of Education (\" ADE\") submits this response to the - Court'c _. ... ne 18, 1999 order. In that order the Court notes that the Magnet Review Committee, by letter dated May 7, 1999, seeks the Court's approval \"of a change in the grade structure and number of seats at the magnet schools for the 1999-2000 school year.\" The MRC' s May 7 letter to the Court assumes that the proposed changes in grade structure and number of seats will result in a significant increase in the State's share of funding for the magnet schools. Among other things, the MRC' s letter indicates that \"the costs associated with changes in seating will create an initial increase of $129 per student above the current funding level,\" and estimates that the State's share of funding for the magnet schools for 1999-2000 will increase by at least $567,270 over the State's current level of funding.1 ADE does not object to the proposed changes in grade structure for the magnet schools, nor does ADE object to an increase in the number of seats in the magnet schools for 1999-2000. ADE does object to the MRC' s proposal, however, to the extent it implies that the increases in enrollment will result in an increase in the State's funding level for the magnet schools. While the Settlement Agreement does not place any limits on the number of students who might attend the magnets, the Settlement Agreement does set specific limits on the State's funding obligations for the magnet schools. Paragraph II.D. of the \u0026tttlement Agreement provides that \"The State will have no further obligation to contribute any additional funds to magnet schools other than under paragraph II. E. below.\" Paragraph ILE of the Agreement states, in pertinent part, that the State \"will continue to pay ... [t]he State's portion of magnet school operational costs for the six existing magnet schools .... \" Paragraph II.D. of the Settlement Agreement further provides: 1 It is not clear precisely how large this increase in funding will be. The State's funding level for 1998-99 as used in the MRC's projection does not take into account the 7.25% increase in salaries given to LRSD teachers in March, 1999, and the State's \"proposed funding'' level for 1999-2000 used in the MRC's projection does not take into account \"possible changes in salaries and basic operating costs for the 1999-2000 school year.\" It is clear from the MRC's May 7 letter, though, that the MRC assumes that some increase in the State's funding obligation can be expected due solely to the grade level\" restructuring and the increase in the number of seats. 2 Any reference to the six existing magnet schools in this settlement shall mean, for funding purposes, up to their present seating capacities. These seating capacities are as follows: Carver 613 Williams 515 Gibbs 351 Booker 660 Mann 935 Parkview 991 The Settlement Agreement thus makes it clear that, no matter how many students actually attend the magnet schools, the State's' funding obligations for the magnet schools are limited to its share of, for example, the costs associated with a maximum of 991 students at Parkview, 935 students at Mann, and so on. To the extent the MRC's May 7 letter implies that the State's share of magnet school funding will be increased due to the addition of 209 seats at Parkview, such an additional burden on the State would be in direct contravention of the Settlement Agreement. The costs associated with magnet student enrollment in excess of the seating capacities set forth in the Settlement Agreement should be borne either by the  LRSD, whose decision to restructure its schools necessitated the restructuring of the magnets and the concomitant changes in seating capacity, or by the Districts collectively. 3 Respectfully Submitted, MARK PRYOR Attorney General ~/4 /4~~-:: :r== TIMO (G. GApGER #95019 . Assistant Atto~ General 323 Center Street, Suite 200 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 (501) 682-2007 Attorneys for Arkansas Department of Education CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE L Timothy Gauger, certify that on July 9, 1999, a copy of the foregoing document will be served by U.S. mail, postage prepaid, on the following person(s) at the address(es) indicated: M.SamuelJones,m Wright, Lindsey \u0026 Jennings 2000 NationsBank Bldg. 200 W. Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201 John W. Walker John Walker, P.A 1723 Broadway Little Rock, AR 72201 Richard Roachell 401 W. Capitol, Suite 504 Little Rock, AR 72201 Christopher Heller Friday, Eldredge \u0026 Oark 2000 Regions Center 400 W. Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201-3493 Stephen W. Jones Jack, Lyon \u0026 Jones 3400 TCBY Tower 425 W. Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201 ~ Ann Brown 201 E. Markham, Ste. 510 Little Rock, AR 72201 ~ fi~~1fu~ ?1- -  ,., . ,, IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS WESTERN DIVISION RECEIVED JUL 1 2 1999 OFFICE OF DESEGREGATION MONITORING LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT PLAINTIFF v. No. LR-C-82-866 PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1, et al DEFENDANTS ADE'S RESPONSE TO \"MOTION RE THE PULASKI EDUCATIONAL COOPERATIVE\" In this motion the PCSSD seeks an order requiring the State to distribute funds to an as-yet-to-be-formed education service coorr:!'c1tive1 (\"co-op\") that would serve only the three Districts. The motion is premised or .. PCSSD's belief that an appropriation contained in Act 1392 of 1999 entitles them to funds for such a co-op, and that conditional language restricting the disbursement contained in the appropriation is \"at variance with the requirements of the Settlement Agreement\" PCSSD's motion must be denied. This Court lacks jurisdiction to give PCSSD the relief it requests. Because the State has been dismissed from this action, this Court's jurisdiction over the State is 1 Education service cooperatives are \"intermediate service units in the state's elementary and secondary education system\" that are eligible to receive and spend state and federal funds. They exist to provide to school districts that choose to use them assistance in meeting accreditation standards, using educational resources more efficiently through cooperation among school districts,_ and promoting coordination between school districts and the ADE in the provision of certain services. See Ark. Code Ann.  6-13-1002 limited to enforcing the terms of the Settlement Agreement (see Kokkanen u. Guardian Life Ins. Co., 128 L.Ed.2d 391 (1994), and PCSSD does not allege that the State has breached the settlement agreement The Settlement Agreement does not compel or require the State to fund a co-op for the Districts. Indeed, quite the opposite is true - the Settlement Agreement acknowledges that state funding for a Pulaski County co-op had ceased, and that the co-operative had been dissolved, before the Agreement was signed. Settlement Agreement, section Ill E. (\"State funding for the Pulaski County Education Service [Cooperative] has ceased and the funds were reallocated to the Metropolitan Supervisor by order of the Court\"). PCSSD' s motion is in reality a somewhat convoluted request that the Court direct ADE to do what PCSSD 1'e1i~ves is required under State law. This Court must deny PCSSD's motion because PCSSD's attempt to enforce State law is not within the Court's Kokkonen-type jurisdiction over the State, and there is no other independent basis upon which this Court can base subject matter jurisdiction over such a claim. Such a state-law claim against the State is also barred by the Eleventh Amendment See, e.g., Pennhurst State School \u0026 Hosp. v. Halderman, 79 LEd.2d 67 (1984) (federal-court claims against state officials based upon alleged violations of state law are barred by Eleventh Amendment); Angela R. u. Clinton, 999 F.2d 320, 325 (8th Or. 1993) (Eleventh Amendment bars federal courts from granting relief against state officials for violations of state law). Finally, even if this Court could exercise jurisdiction over PCSSD's claim, the motion must be denied because the Districts are not entitled to form a co-op and receive funds for such a co-op under either the Settlement Agreement or State law. Appropriations merely authorize the release of funds from the treasury, subject to other applicable laws including the Revenue Stabilization Act and other substantive law. Further, appropriations, by themselves, do not require that funds actually be disbursed. In this instance, the provisions of Act 1392 and the provisions of other substantive state law prohibit the release of funds for a Pulaski County co-op. Act 1392 prohibits the release of funds for a Pulaski County co-op because as of this date, no order has been entered by this Court relieving the State of its obligation to provide funds for the operation of the ODM. See Act 1392 of 1999,  17.2 In addition, the General Assembly has not amended or repealed other provisions of State law that prohibit the formation of a new, sixteenth CO-l.'P that would serve only the three Districts. See, e.g., Ark. Code Ann.  6-13-1002 (authorizing State Board of Education to establish \"no more than fifteen\" cooperatives); Ark. Code Ann.  6-13-1003(b)(l) and (b)(2) (cooperatives must include at least three counties and include at least ten school districts).3 2 PCSSD attempts to sidestep this restriction by arguing that the language conditioning the release of the funds  is \"at variance with the requirements of the Settlement . Agreement and must therefore fail and be severed from the Act\"  The problem with PCSSD' s theory is that the conditional language is consistent With the Settlement . Agreement As noted earlier, the Settlement Agreement does not require that the State fund a Pulaski County co-op, and the special language in the Act recognizes that the State's obligation to fund ODM can only be modifi~ by an order from this Court  3 Thus, even if PCSSD were correct that the contingency language in Section 17 of Act . 1392 is both inconsistent with the Settlement and can be severed from the Act the provisions of Ark. Code Ann.  6-13-1002 and 1003 would nonetheless prohibit the  formation of a new \"16th co-op\" that would serve only the three Districts. For the foregoing reasons, ADE respectfully requests that PCSSD's motion be denied, and that the ADE be awarded its costs and attorneys' fee incurred in responding to this motion. Respectfully Submitted, MARK PRYOR Attorney General TIMOT q_ GAUGER #95019 Assistant Attorney G~neral --- 323 Center Street, Suite 200 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 (501) 682-2007 Attorneys for Arkansas Department of Education CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE L Timothy Gauger, certify that on July 9, 1999, a copy of the foregoing document will be served by U.S. mail, postage prepaid, on the following person(s) at the address(es) indicated:  M. Samuel Jones, ill Wright, Lindsey \u0026 Jennings 2000 NationsBank Bldg. 200 W. Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201 John W. Walker John Walker, P.A. 1723 Broadway Little Rock, AR 72201 Richard Roachell 401 W. Capitol, Suite 504 Little Rock, AR 72201 Christopher Heller Friday, Eldredge \u0026 Oark 2000 Regions Center 400 W. Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201-3493 Stephen W. Jones Jack, Lyon \u0026 Jones 3400 TCBY Tower 425 W. Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201 ~ Ann Brown 201 E. Markham, Ste. 510 Little Rock, AR 72201 FILED U.S. DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT ARKANSAS IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS WESTERN DIVISION JUL 1,3 1999 ~~~E~~- ~~~K,p C~AK OEPC~ LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT, Plaintiff, VS. PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL DISTRICT No. 1, et al., Defendants. MRS. LORENE JOSHUA, et al., Intervenors, KA THERINE KNIGHT, et al., lntervenors, * * * * * * No. LR-C-82-866 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ORDER Without objection, the motion of the Arkansas Department of Education (\"ADE\") for an Order relieving it of its obligation to file a July 1999 semiannual monitoring report is hereby granted. In addition, the Court grants nunc pro tune AD E's motion for an extension of time until and including July 9, 1999, in which to respond to (a) this Court's June 18, 1999 Order - concerning a proposed change in the grade structure and number of seats at the magnet schools for 1999-2000, and (b) PCSSD's \"Motion re the Pulaski Educational Cooperative.\" .-f1\\_ IT IS SO ORDERED this _j.d::_ day of 4--= 1999. 9;1'rruo~j- UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT rH1s DOCUMENT ENTER C(.,MPUIJil WITH RULEED ON DOCKET SHEET fN ':)N L 3/ q Cl 58 AND/OR 79(1) FRCP   / BY m::: __j 2 u.s~(L, ,,,.f;,p C:ASTCR. ':,.;.;,': . .:_ v,111r,r .N DI~,, ,,1.,' ,, /~/1,l\"S \"S ' ,~, I-\\ IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUL l 1 1 EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS 1999 WESTERN DIVISION ~;~MES \\V McCORM,iCK, CLERK LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT RECEIVED DEP. CLERK PLAINTIFF V. NO. LR-C-82-866 PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1, et al. ,II 11 1 5 1999 OFFICE OF DESEGREGATION M0NITOR~~FENDANTS JOSHUA INTERVENORS' RESPONSE TO MOTION TO RELIEVE ADE MOTION CONCERNING MONITORING The Joshua Intervenors respond to the ADE motion concerning monitoring, served on June 28, 1999, as follows. The ADE motion was filed belatedly, rendering the request fait accompli. The - Joshua Intervenors respectfully request that ADE be ordered to file not later than Wednesday, August 4, 1999, their proposed new monitoring and reporting plan. Intervenors further respectfully request that the Court give priority to the development and approval of a new monitoring plan and require that the first report pursuant to that plan be filed not later than November 3, 1999. By: Respectfully submitted, JOHN W. WALKER, P.A. 1723 Broadway Little Rock, Arkansas 72206 (501) 374-3758 -1- Robert Pressman 22 Locust A venue Lexington, Mass 02421 (781) 862-1955 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I hereby certify that a copy of the foregoing has been mailed, postage prepaid to the following counsel or record, postage prepaid on this 14th day of July, 1999. Mr. Tim Humphries Assistant Attorney General 323 Center Street, Suite 200 Little Rock, Arknasas 72201 Mr. M. Samuel Jones, ill Wright, Lindsey \u0026 Jennings 2000 NationsBank. Plaza 200 W. Capitol Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Mr. Richard Roachell 401 W. Capitol, Suite 504 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 -2- Mr. Christopher Heller Friday, Eldredge \u0026 Clark 2000 First Commercial Bldg. 400 W. Capitol Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Mr. Stephen W. Jones Jack, Lyon \u0026 Jones 3400 TCBY Towers 425 W. Capitol Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Ms. Ann Brown 201 E. Markham, Ste. 510 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS WESTERN DIVISION LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT V. LR-C-82-866 PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1, ET AL MRS. LORENE JOSHUA, ET AL KATHERINE KNIGHT, ET AL JUI 1 6 1999 OFFICE OF DESEGREGATION MONITORING NOTICE OF APPEAL FILED U.S. DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT ARKANSA\u003c:; JUL 141999 JAMfil W, MaQQAMAGK, \"!:.EA ijy'-----~-- DEP.CLERK PLAINTIFF DEFENDANTS INTERVENORS INTERVENORS The Little Rock School District (LRSD) hereby gives notice of its appeal from the order of the district court filed on June 16, 1999 which denied LRSD's request for certain damages related to teacher retirement and health insurance payments from the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE). Appeal is taken to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. This notice is filed based upon the understanding that the Arkansas Department of Education intends to appeal this court's decision awarding prejudgment interest to the districts on their claims concerning teacher retirement and health insurance. If ADE does not pursue such an appeal, this notice of appeal may be withdrawn. Respectfully submitted, LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT FRIDAY, ELDREDGE \u0026 CLARK 2000 First Commercial Bldg. 400 West Capitol Street Little Rock, AR 72201 (501) 376-2011 Christopher Heller J. Clay Fendley CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE A I certify that a copy of the foregoing has been served on the W following on this 14th day of July, 1999 : Mr. John W. Walker JOHN WALKER, P.A. 1723 Broadway Little Rock, AR 72206 Mr . Sam Jones WRIGHT, LINDSEY \u0026 JENNINGS 2200 Worthen Bank Bldg. 200 West Capitol Little Rock, AR 72201 Mr. Steve Jones JACK, LYON \u0026 JONES, P.A. 3400 TCBY Tower 425 Capitol Avenue Little Rock, AR 72201 Mr. Richard Roachell Roachell Law Firm 401 West Capitol, Suite 504 Little Rock, AR 72201 2 Ms. Ann Brown Desegregation Monitor Heritage West Bldg., Suite 510 201 East Markham Street Little Rock, AR 72201 Mr. Timothy G. Gauger Office of the Attorney General 323 Center Street 200 Tower Building Little Rock, AR 72201 3 EDWARD L . WRIGHT ( 1903 1977) ROBERTS . LINDSEY (1913-1991) ISAAC A , SCOTT , JR . JOHN G . LILE WRIGHT, LINDSEY \u0026 JENNINGS I LP ATTORNEYS AT LAW JOHN 0 . DAVIS JUDY SIMMONS HENRY KI MBERLY WOOD TU CKER RAY F COX . JR . GOROON S. RATHER. JR. TERRY L . MATHEWS DAVID M. POWELL ROGER A . GLASGOW C. DOUGLAS BUFORD. JR . PATRICK J . GOSS ALSTON JENNINGS . JR . JOHN R. TISDALE KATH LYN GRAVES M. SAMUEL JONES Ill JOHN WILLIAM SPIVEY Ill LEE J, MULOROW N.M. NORTON CHARLES C . PRICE CHARLES T . COLEMAN JAMES J . GLOVER EDWIN L . LOWTHER . JR . CHARLES L. SCHLUMBERGER WALTER E . MAY GREGORY T. JONES H. KEITH MORRISON BETTINA E . BROWNSTEIN WALTER McSPADDEN ROGER 0 . ROWE NANCY BELLHOUSE MAY Mr. John Walker John Walker, P.A. 1723 Broadway Little Rock, Arkansas 72206 Ms. Ann Brown ODM Heritage West Building, Suite 510 201 East Markham Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Mr. Richard Roachell Roachell Law Firm 401 W. Capitol, Suite 504 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 RE: PCSSD Dear Counsel and Ms. Brown: 200 WEST CAPITOL AVENUE SUITE 2200 LITTLE ROCK , ARKANSAS 7220 1-3699 (501) 371-0808 FAX (501) 376-9442 WEBSITE : www .wlj .com OF COUNSEL ALSTON JENNINGS RONALD A . MAY M. TODD WOOD Writer 's Direct Dial No . 501-212-1273 mj ones@wlj .com July 15, 1999 Mr. Christopher Heller Friday, Eldredge \u0026 Clark TROY A. PR ICE PATRICIA A. SI EVERS JAMES M. MOODY . J R. KATHRYN A PRYOR J . MARK DAVIS CL AIRE SHOWS HANCOCK K EVIN W. KENNEDY JERRY J . SALLINGS FRED M. PERKINS Ill WILLIAM STUART JACKSON MICHAEL 0 . BARNES STEPHEN R. LANCASTER JUDY ROBINSON WILBER BETSY MEACHAM KY LE R. WILSON C. TAO BOHANNON DONS. McKI NNE Y MICHELE SIMMONS ALLGOOD KRISTI M. MOODY J . CHARLES DOUGHERTY M SEAN HATCH PHYLLIS M. McK ENZIE ELISA MASTERSON WHITE JANE M. FAULKNER ROBERT W. GEORG E J ANDREW VI NES 400 W. Capitol, Suite 2200 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Mr. Stephen W. Jones Jack, Lyon \u0026 Jones 3400 TCBY Tower 425 West Capitol Avenue Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Mr. Timothy Gauger Assistant Attorney General 323 Center Street, Suite 200 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 JUI 1 6 1999 OFFICE OF DESEGREGATION MONITORING Enciosed is a copy of Notice of Appeal which is being filed today. MSJ/ao Encl. 115616-v1 Cordially, WRIGHT, LINDSEY \u0026 JENNINGS LLP IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS WESTERN DIVISION LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT V. NO. LR-C-82-866 PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL SCHOOL IRi,,.-  ---- \\fEO DISTRICT NO. 1, ET AL. t' MRS. LORENE JOSHUA, ET AL. 11\\ J' ,.:'.gg KATHERINE KNIGHT, ET AL. \\ l\u0026\u0026REGI '\\TORlNG NOTICE OF APPEAL PLAINTIFF DEFENDANTS INTERVENORS INTERVENORS The Pulaski County Special School District (PCSSD) hereby gives notice of its appeal from the order of the district court filed on June 16, 1999, which denied PCSSD's request for certain damages related to teacher retirement and health insu-rJ~J ~'::ll ~,( ~..l , _',; ; -~ i ' .,.  l s U:i~1-~ ~- ' .... .., payments from the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE). 11 5268-v1 Respectfully submitted, WRIGHT, LINDSEY \u0026 JENNINGS LLP 200 'Nest Capitol Avenua, Suite 2200 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201-3699 (501) 371-0808 FAX: (501) 376-9442 By ~ M. amue Jones Ill (7~060) orneys or Pulaskl..eounty Special cha istrict CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE On July 1..5, 1999, a copy of the foregoing was served by U.S. mail on each of the following: Mr. John W. Walker John W. Walker, P.A. 1723 Broadway Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Mr. Christopher Heller Friday, Eldredge \u0026 Clark 2000 First Commercial Building Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Ms. Ann Brown ODM Heritage West Building, Suite 510 201 East Markham Street Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Mr. Richard W. Roachell Roachell and Street First Federal Plaza 401 West Capitol, Suite 504 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Mr. Timothy Gauger Assistant Attorney General 323 Center Street, Suite 200 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 Mr. Stephen W. Jones 3400 TCBY Tower 425 West Capitol Avenue Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 2 - RECEIVEt' JUL .2 o 1999 OFFICE Of DESEGREGATION MONITORING IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS WESTERN DIVISION LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT, * * Plaintiff, * * * vs. * No. LR-C-82-866 * * * * PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL * DISTRICT No. 1, et al., * * Defendants. * * * MRS. LORENE JOSHUA, et al., * * Intervenors, * * * KATHERINE KNIGHT, et al., * * Intervenors, * ORDER JUL 181999 Before the Court is a motion by the Pulaski County Special School District (\"PCSSD\") for approval of a new school site (doc.#3266]. In its motion, which was filed June 9, 1999, PCSSD states that it'proposes to close both Bates and Fuller Elementaries and combine that student enrollment at a new site located at the northwest comer of 14S1h Street and Highway - 67/167 proximate to the Siemen's facility with no change of geo codes. The time for filing a response to this motion bas passed without a responsive pleading from any of the parties. Having considered the matter, and without objection from any of the parties, the Court finds that PCSSD's motion to approve the new school site described herein should be and hereby is granted. IT IS SO ORDERED this ii:_ ~ay of fl-4- 1999. ~~ UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 2 FILED U.S. DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT ARKANSAS iN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS WESTERN DIVISION JUL t 9 1999 JAMES f\" ~RMACK, CLERK LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT, Plaintiff, VS . PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1, et al., Defendants, MRS. LORENE JOSHUA, et al., Intervenors, KATHERINE KNIGHT, et al. , Intervenors. * * * * * * * * * * * * * ORDER By: \\. i~U I) '\u003c'1'. -~ OEP CLERK No. LR-C-82-866 RECEIVED JUL 2 o 1999 OFFICE OF  DESEGREGATION MONITORING Pulaski County Special School District (\"PCSSD\") filed a petition requesting that the Court grant PCSSD unitary status and release it from further court supervision [docket no. 3253]. The Joshua intervenors responded [docket no. 3253], and PCSSD replied to the response [docket no. 3260]. After careful consideration, the Court denies the petition and for reasons that follow will not, at this time, issue detailed findings regarding its decision. I. On October 14, 1997, PCSSD filed its first petition for unitary status, requesting release from federal court supervision over its desegregation efforts. 1 After receiving notice that the parties contemplated settlement discussions, the Court denied PCSSD's petition, without prejudice, noting the District's freedom to refile the petition if settlement efforts failed .2 1 Docket no. 3057. 2 Docket no. 3211. Presently hefore the Court is PCSSD's second petition requesting a declaration of unitary status. Additionally, PCSSD filed a document entitled \"Pulaski County Special School District Post Unitary Commitments,\" which sets forth actions PCSSD pledges to carry out in the event the Court grants the District unitary status. The commitments call for a dispute resolution process, whereby the Joshua intervenors could, as a last resort, seek the Court's assistance in resolving compliance issues.3 Thus PCSSD envisions that once it attains unitary status, the Court could retain jurisdiction over this matter. PCS SD explains it provided for the Court's continued jurisdiction \"as further evidence of its good faith view of desegregation issues and as such as a further matter for the district court to consider in assessing formal relinquishment of supervision .... \"4 However, the Court finds the provision for continued jurisdiction inapposite to whether PCSSD has achieved unitary status. This Court's jurisdiction depends on the existence of a constitutional violation. Once the PCSSD achieves unitary status and thus complies with the command of the Constitution, this Court's jurisdiction ends. See Swann v. Charlotte- Mecklenburg Bd of Educ. 91 S. Ct. 1267, 1276, 1284 (1971). The Joshua intervenors assert that PCSSD has not achieved unitary status and cite their prior submissions addressing PCSSD's 1997 petition to support their position.5 However, the intervenors believe the proposed commitments represent a \"renewed and more targeted\" plan that 3 Docket no. 3235, Attachment A, Pages 8-9. 4 Docket no. 3260, Page 3. 5 Docket no. 3079 (Opposition Response by Joshua to PCSSD's Motion for Release); Docket no. 3196 (Joshua's Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law Concerning PCSSD's Motion for Release). 2 could serve as a new or-amended desegregation plan. With the sole exception of a provision concerning the duration of the cornmitments,6 the intervenors embrace PCSSD's proposed plan. In the past, the Court has encouraged the parties to amend their plan, if it would further their goals, and agrees that the proposed commitments would provide the basis for an acceptable amended plan and might even be suitable as a plan itself. II. The Court finds that PCSSD has not achieved unitary status and must deny the District 's petition. In light of the Joshua intervenors' recommendation that PCSSD's post-unitary commitments function as a basis for a revised desegregation plan, and the Court's desire to facilitate agreement among the parties, the Court will not, at this time, issue specific findings regarding its decision to deny the District's petition. If the parties can agree, such an agreement is preferable to court directives. See Little Rock Sch. Dist. v. Pulaski County Special Sch Dist., 921 F.2d 1371, 1383 (8th Cir. 1990). As the parties are in agreement on all items except duration, it would be wasteful of their resources and effort to litigate the many issues concerning unitary status. In any event, duration will be determined, for the most part, by whether the District has achieved its desegregation goals. m. THEREFORE, PCSSD's petition for release from court supervision is hereby denied [docket no. 3253]. FURTHER, the parties have 120 days from entry of this Order to submit an amended desegregation plan for the Court's approval. 6 If the parties desire, the Court is willing to conduct a hearing concerning the duration of an amended plan. 3 FURTHER, in the event the parties do not reach an agreement, the Court will issue detailed findings regarding its denial of PCSSD's petition for unitary status. FINALLY, the time to appeal this Order will run from the date such detailed findings are filed. !TIS SO ORDERED 11-!IS / 'f ./i_DAY OF \u003c;)-, t2\" , 1999 ~)t;c UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT fHIS DOCUMENT ENTERED ON DOCKET SHEET IN XiMPLJANCE Wirf ~LE 58 AND/n::1:1) FRCP , 1N '7//CJ  BY - I 4  IN THE UNITED ST A TES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS WESTERN DIVISION LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT, Plaintiff, FiLED U.S. DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT ARKANSAS JUL 1 9 1999 JAMES w. M~cc MACK, CLERK By: \\/_ - u ,'\\f\\\\ll,\"- 1 DP ClERll vs. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * No. LR-C-82-866 PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL DISTRICT No. I, et al., Defendants. MRS. LORENE JOSHUA, et al., Intervenors, KA THERINE KNIGHT, et al., Intervenors, ORDER -JUL 21 1999 om:Ecr DESBHC-\\1 ~ ;roNITORI IJG Before the Court are a number of motions from the Little Rock School District (\"LRSD\"), the Pulaski County Special School District (\"PCSSD\"), and the North Little Rock School District (\"NLRSD\") relating to attorney's fees and costs [see doc. #'s 3199, 3200, 3201 , and 3218]. The Arkansas Department of Education (\"ADE\"), in tum, has before the Court a motion to defer consideration of LRSD's, PCSSD's, and NLRSD's respective motions for attorney's fees and - costs [doc.#3209]. 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