African American Life in World War II Oak Ridge, Tennessee: A History Lesson

An NPS lesson in its series on the World War II home front, written by educator Sarah Nestor Lane for the NPS Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, with funding through the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the NPS.

A dance for African American teenagers in Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project, 1945. Ed Westcott, U.S. Department of Energy.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee — an American World War II Heritage City — grew up almost overnight around the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb used in the war. Many African Americans moved there for work. This lesson uses photographs, two primary sources and one secondary reading to explore what they contributed, and the wrongful discrimination they faced.

Essential question: How did African American workers contribute to the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge, and what barriers did they face living there?

Learners will: describe why people, especially African Americans, moved to Oak Ridge and how they lived; and identify examples of segregation and discrimination against African American residents and workers.

By the numbers

• 30,000 — the population housing was first planned for.
• 75,000 — Oak Ridge's population by the war's end.
• 2,000 African American workers (of 7,000 in all) lived on site.

Reading 1: The newspaper's view

On August 7, 1945, the Knoxville Journal described Oak Ridge as the locale of the war's best-kept secret. In three years, it said, a site of oak and pine and small farms 18 miles west of Knoxville had become the fifth-largest city in Tennessee, with nearly 75,000 people. In July 1945:

The paper called the houses comfortable, roomy and homey; described the Guest House, which hosted distinguished scientists and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson; listed rents — $22 to $75 a month for family houses, $10 to $15 per person in dormitories, $30 to $50 for apartments; and praised the town's choirs, band, orchestra, symphony, artists' society and little theatre.

Teacher tip: return later to the "8 percent" in hutments, and notice how little the paper says about them compared with everything else.

Reading 2: R.L. Ayers remembers

In an oral history held by the Oak Ridge Public Library, Mrs. R.L. Ayers described arriving in October 1943, summarised here:

• Getting there. Working at an Army camp in Grenada, Mississippi, she heard from a friend about good money in Tennessee. They crossed by small boat near Kingston, spent a day being processed, and were bused to the hutments, where Black people lived. Black and white people lived apart; white workers had barracks and dormitories.
• The huts were boxes with four beds, or eight when more room was needed, heated by a pot-bellied stove, with no running water, kitchen or bathroom. Washing, cooking, bathing and toilets were all in a long communal latrine. She had no second thoughts — she was far from home and broke — and told herself they would make it.
• Work. Whatever their education, Black workers could only sweep and clean; even people with college and master's degrees worked as maids, and no Black person held an office or senior job. She earned $1.47 an hour at the K-25 building — better than at home — then moved to the J.A. Jones cafeteria, where meals were free. Black men could work only in construction; her husband, from Huntsville, Alabama, was a concrete finisher.
• No family life. Married soon after arriving, she and her husband could not live together: the huts stood inside separate pens for men and women, fenced with five-foot boards topped by barbed wire, with a single guarded gate. Black families could not live together until the late '40s, and with no Black children allowed until '46 and '47, there were no schools for them. White workers' housing had running water, family homes and schools. She stressed that all this happened in a place run by the federal government.
• An ignored order. The interviewer noted that President Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802 had banned discrimination in war industries, but Oak Ridge followed "local customs" instead. Some workers may have known, she said, but few had time to talk — and it would not have helped.
• The secret. Workers were told simply to do their job, and not to talk about what they saw or heard. Everyone was asked to donate a day's overtime pay toward building the bomb.
• Afterwards. She moved to the hospital as an aide and worked there for 56 years, in the emergency department and then in anaesthesia, learning constantly by asking the doctors questions.

Reading 3: What an NPS study found

The NPS study African Americans at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge: A Historic Context Study describes the gap in everyday life:

• Recreation. White neighbourhoods were planned with pools, schools and shops; nothing comparable was ever built for African Americans. Near the hutments stood a cafeteria — essential, since the huts had no kitchens — but its short hours meant people on long or night shifts had to choose between sleeping and eating. There was also a recreation center, a one-chair beauty shop, a barbershop, the Atomic Club (a juke joint serving fried chicken) and an office where white secretaries oversaw the Black workers. The bare recreation center stood in for the theatres, gyms and community buildings of white areas, hosting old "race" films made with all-Black casts, card games, weekend dances and church services.
• Baseball. One of the few organised activities for Black men. An Oak Ridge Journal article of August 10, 1944, announced a new African American league playing on the "colored ball diamond" near the hutments and on the K-25 diamond, its five teams named for the contractors that employed the players. It may have led to the Oak Ridge Bombers, a semi-professional team organised by Robert Lee by 1944 for Black men shut out of white teams and professional baseball. The plant league disappears from the record after 1945, but the Bombers, mostly Oak Ridge workers, played into the 1960s — well after Jackie Robinson integrated professional baseball in 1947.

Questions

Readings 1 and 2, with the lesson's photographs:

• Describe the different kinds of housing, using details from the photographs and both readings. How does the newspaper's picture compare with Mrs. Ayers's?
• Mrs. Ayers blames the federal government for the discrimination at Oak Ridge. Why? Do you agree?
• How does she describe the work, and what people knew about the bomb? Did anything surprise you?

Reading 3:

• How did facilities for African American residents compare with those for white residents?
• What problem did people with unusual working hours face?
• Who were the Oak Ridge Bombers, and why is baseball significant in this story?

Going further: the Manhattan Project had several sites — research whether location affected discrimination and segregation, and look into the African American scientists who worked on the project.

Sources

• National Park Service, "(H)our History Lesson: African American Life in WWII Oak Ridge, TN," part of the series Oak Ridge, TN, WWII Heritage City. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/-h-our-history-lesson-african-american-life-in-wwii-oak-ridge-tn.htm
• Its readings: "Oak Ridge Is Locale of Best Kept Secret of War," Knoxville Journal, August 7, 1945; an oral history interview with R.L. Ayers, Oak Ridge Public Library; and National Park Service, African Americans at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge: A Historic Context Study, pages 39–40.
• Further NPS reading: African American Houses of Worship; Oak Ridge Alphabet Housing; and the Curiosity Kit on African American baseball.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.