INT: Talk about the segregation in the Army. MW: I was very surprised to find that there was a large amount of segregation in the Army. We had a black female company on the post and there was also a -- a white female company. And we were definitely separated. INT: Tell about going Down South for the first time. MW: The first time I, ah, went to Fort Riley, Kansas and got off of the train, it was the first time that I was -- was exposed to seeing signs that said "Colored" on the bathrooms, on the water fountains, and I cried like a baby when I saw it. INT: Why? MW: Because I -- I was in the United States Army and I didn't feel that, particularly, we in the service of the United States should be exposed to things like that. Segregation didn't disappear in the Army. INT: Wasn't it worse for someone like you? MW: It was worse for me because I had never been exposed to it. INT: You mentioned that once you were driving four white officers? MW: One day I was driving four white WACs home and we were talking about the events of the day. And one of the WACs said, "Oh, the food in the cafeteria today wasn't fit for a nigger." And the van got quiet and I slammed on the brakes and I sat there for a minute or two. One of the -- of the WACs opened the door to get out and I told her, no, don't open the door. So I drove off and as I got close to their barracks, I told them I felt that they all had the dictionary in the barrack somewhere. Please get their dictionary and look up the definition of the word "nigger" and see who it fits. And they all got out. They thanked me for takin' 'em home. (Laughs) INT: When you joined the Army, how did you think you would be treated? MW: When I ... I joined the service, I don't really feel that I thought about the way I would be treated. I -- except as a human being, a citizen of the United States wanting to serve my country. INT: How come you received The Pittsburgh Courier while in the Army? MW: My mother used to send me The Pittsburgh Courier about once a month. Sometimes she would send the whole paper or sometimes she would cut out events that she felt that I would be interested in and send. And, ah, when that happened, I used to share ... the news with the other girls. And they all seemed to enjoy reading about, ah, my back home news. INT: Why was it important to get the Courier? MW: To me, the Courier told me a lot of what was happening in my community. I couldn't get that from the white paper. Ah, I wanted to know, ah, who got married, who died, or some of the events, like, ah, what was happening to different organizations and all. And I got all that information from the Courier. INT: Were the social pages important to you? MW: Yes. The social pages was, ah, important to me because I knew quite a bit of the ... socialites. And I -- I enjoyed keeping up with what they were doing. INT: Was there ever an article about you in the Courier? MW: Yes, there was an article in the Courier about me, ah, coming home on my first ... furlough. And there was another article when I was -- discharged from the service also. INT: Talk about the importance of the Courier to black communities. MW: I think the Courier was important to the black communities because it was a way that we were exposed to the happenings in our various communities. We did not get that from the white papers. INT: What did you get? MW: We got a lot of, ah -- well, not only the, ah, world news, but social events of the white folks. And many, many times it didn't interest us. INT: Did it seem like what the Courier was doing was irresponsible in any way? MW: I don't think the Courier, ah, was, ah, irresponsible at all in exposing what was happening. I felt that it was critical that we, as black folks, should be aware of what was ... going on in our country simply because we had soldiers exposed as well as white soldiers exposed. So we had a right to know all the bad as well as the good. INT: Tell me about the paper that you had in the service. MW: When I was in the service, ah, a few of us decided to do a weekly paper. We entitled it "The WAC Weekly" and I wrote a column. I entitled my column "The Voice in the Wilderness" and, ah, we did the paper for approximately three months and I think our -- our company officers thought that we were a bit too radical. So they decided that if we wanted to continue the paper, we had to get the -- the paper edited by the company commander. Well, we decided to end the paper, because we didn't feel that we needed it -- to be edited because it was our thoughts and we wanted to expose our thoughts. INT: Talk about your paper in relationship to the Courier and other black paper's positions they were pushing during the war. MW: Yes. We were inspired by the black, ah, ah, media because at that time the exposure was -- was really on the fact that we, as military people, were not being fairly, ah, dealt with. And ah, we tried to expose it was much as we possibly could. INT: Read the two red sections and then comment on why you wrote that. MW: This is, ahm, a couple of paragraphs from one of my articles. It states: "We, the negroes, know, too, that there are a vast number of toys in the world, but we put that aside and pretend to fight for ... democracy. What is ... a democracy? What does its ... definition mean to you? I can define it as something the negro dreams of possessing." The second paragraph reads: "A medicine will cure your headache, but there is nothing yet that has been patented to cure your heartache. A real democracy can help to lighten the pain. And what's to be gained by my writing this article? Probably nothing but a desire and a privilege to express my thoughts." That ends that particular ... article. INT: Why did you write such a militant section? MW: I wrote my feelings. And I was ... careful I didn't write my feelings in its entirety. I felt that the black WAC was -- was being mistreated. And when we wrote the paper -- ah, many of us sent the papers home to our loved ones or we scattered it so that it fit in with what the black newspapers was doing at that time also. It showed a lot of people that we in the Army of the United States were not happy. INT: What happened to the black newspapers? MW: I'm not certain why the paper declined, except to say it's possible that some of the white papers began to put a little more black news in their paper. Ah, it's possible that at one time the Courier had to reduce its staff and in reducing its staff, it did not encompass all of the news that was going on in the black community. So they got some of the news from the radio and some from the white papers. INT: Did integration help or hurt? MW: It's my ... feeling, and it is a heart-felt feeling, that integration helped a lot and integration also, ah, hurt a lot. Back in the '30s and '40s, our community, the Hill District, was a ... a vibrant community. We were able to walk the streets any hour or the day or night. We were able to leave our doors open. We were able to, ah, borrow food or monies from our neighbors. The adults would speak to any child on the street. Ah, and they would not get a -- a repercussion. The adult would tell the child to go home and they would call the parent and tell them, "I told them to do so-and-so and this happened." We were exposed to much, ah, love and caring at that time. And today we miss the love and caring we had at that time. (END INTERVIEW)