INT: Who was Robert Vann? PW: Well, during World War I, Robert Vann had started this newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier. It was a small newspaper. It was of no real significance in the country. There were a lot of black newspapers that were the same size. He wasn't particularly radical and, ah, after the war, though, he saw the chance to start making his newspaper bigger. He wanted to earn more money and, ah, he did several things. One of 'em is he started the first national black newspaper in terms that he had like 15 editions. He had one in New York. He had one in St. Louis, one in Los Angeles, one in Chicago. All around the country in these black communities, suddenly they were getting The Pittsburgh Courier, which was different from any other black newspaper. Ah, he also, ah, in an attempt to, ah, get more circulation -- and he had to have circulation because advertising was low at this particular time -- he, ah, would run one position one week. There next week he would change and run another position, anything to get more circulation. Well, by the time you reach World War II, his newspaper's the biggest black newspaper in the country and it's growing substantially and it -- it like goes even more during World War II. It is "the" leading black newspaper by the time World War II arrives. INT: What motivated him to be such an operator? PW: Ah, Rob-- Robert Vann was an operator and, ah, he was criticized some for the way he changed positions, but this was a man who, ah, knew Pittsburgh. He was from Pittsburgh. He, ah, saw a chance to make money and, ah -- and -- and saw a chance to become really a substantial black in the country. And -- and I think those are the things that motivated him to be a leader in his particular field. INT: Talk about the ads, this kind of double--edged sword. PW: Yeah, they, ahm, had a chance getting ads. The problem was that, ah, what I would call white-owned companies really did not want to advertise with the black press. The feeling was, and this continued right into the start of World War II -- the feeling was that, ah, that many blacks didn't have money to buy the products that were being advertised. Ah, certainly blacks had a higher illiteracy rate and -- and white advertisers played on that a lot. And the feeling was that so many blacks worked for whites that if the magazine was there or the newspaper was there, they were gonna see the ad anyway. So -- so why advertise in the black press? Well, ah, the consequence of that was there were only several big or large black businesses in the country. There were several insurance businesses. There were several in the cosmetics field. And besides those, no one had much ed-- much money to advertise in the black press. A few of the white-owned companies, like Coca-Cola, occasionally placed an ad. But as a result of this, as a result of -- of not having many of these ads, the black newspapers right up to World War II depended on circulation. That was the thing that kept them alive. And as a result, they were constantly looking for ways to increase circulation. Ah, if it meant changing your position the next week, if that would get you more circulation, they would do that. They were looking for things to play up, injustices to play up. Ah, the black press, and particularly The Pittsburgh Courier, went after the fact that there weren't, ah, many blacks in the Army late in the '30s. They pressed that and by the time World War II arrives, the Army, ah, is ten percent black and the country's ten percent black. So these are the kind of issue that they're looking for and they're looking for these to build up circulation. And, of course, the importance of this is the fact if you look at the white press, the white press makes its money by advertising, not circulation. The black press makes it by circulation, not advertising. So the two were totally different until World War II arrived. INT: Did that set up a special relationship between a newspaper and its readers? PW: Well, it does set a -- a special relationship because the -- ah, the publishers of the black newspapers had to write things that blacks wanted to see. They had to pay attention to that or they were likely to -- ah, to lose their circulation, because you had The Chicago Defender that was nipping at people's heels this whole time. You had other papers, like The Cleveland Call and Post, you had The Atlanta Daily World. All of these papers were seeking circulation like crazy. And because they were -- they were doing that, if you didn't please your readers, you were gonna lose it real fast because the blacks couldn't go and read the white newspapers and get what they wanted unless it was a famous sports star, like a Joe Lewis or an entertainment star like a Lena Horne. I mean they --these people appeared in the white press, but that was about the only blacks that appeared there unless they committed a crime. And so as a result, there was a lot of attention paid to writing things that your readers wanted to see and perhaps the black -- I think it's correct to say the black publishers paid more attention to that maybe even than the white publishers. INT: At this point the publishers are making money, but the reporters are making very little ... PW: Yeah. The -- the salaries were low, but what choice did they have? Ah, until you get to the 1950s, the white press really doesn't start hiring blacks a whole lot and so these people were kind of trapped. I mean if they wanted to work as journalists, they had to work on the black press. Ahm, at the same time until you get to World War II, the publishers don't have a lot of money to pay. Ah, once you get to World War II and they start getting more advertising, things kind of change. But un-- until that point, the -- the reporters and the editors are kind of trapped on the black press. There really is nowhere else if they want to pursue this field. INT: What was the excess profit tax? PW: In, ah -- in the early 1940s the government noticed that a lot of corporations in the country were starting to make large profits, ah, principally because of World War II which had started in 1939. And so they were selling things to, ah, German, ah, firms. They were selling things to English firms, to Italian firms, all these other countries that were in the war. The US was not in the war yet. As a consequence, ah, Congress passes this Excess Profits Tax in the early 1940s. And the excess profits tax was aimed at corporations which are suddenly making a lot more money than they had made several years before, and the idea was that you can either take this excess money and you can pay it back to the federal government in more taxes or you can find a, ah, brand-new way to spend this money. So suddenly what happened was a bunch of these white-owned firms, which had never advertised or rarely advertised in the black press, suddenly they thought, "Geez, let's just --instead of givin' it back to the IRS, let's just advertise in the black press." And so suddenly you have a host of companies which start doing it regularly. I mean we're talking about -- about firms that still today are well known. We're talking about Wrigley Spearmint Gum. We're talk about Arrid Cream. We're talkin' about Pine Sol. We're talkin' about Vaseline. We're talkin' about all kinds of beer companies, tobacco companies. And all of these start advertising like crazy in -- in the black press. And -- and this continues through the whole war. The interesting point is, when the war ends, the excess profit tax ends and everybody wonders, "Well, geez, are all these companies going to desert the black press again?" Well, two-thirds of 'em stayed there. And that -- and from --from that time until the present, the black press has had advertising from what I might call white-owned companies. In looking at the ads that appear in the black press in World War II, several points are interesting. One was that hardly anything was advertised that costs more than eight dollars. Ah, obviously, the advertisers felt the blacks could afford to go to the movies or they could buy this cigarette or they could buy this beer or they could buy Vaseline or by Wrigley's Spearmint gum, but -- but they couldn't afford to buy high-cost items. So -- so virtually nothing that costs above eight dollars was advertised. The other thing that -- that was interesting about these, ah, ads that -- that appeared was that, ah, many of the advertisers seemed to forget who their audience was. Ah, they would continue using the same white figures in these ads that they used in -- in magazines like Life and Time and the New York Times and others. There were some of the companies, like Vaseline, went to black -- black actors and it was very interesting to see how some companies realized this was important and some didn't. Well, when you look at all this advertising in the, a black press that appeared, ah, starting in World War II and continued after the war, the thing that was really interesting about that was it posed a real problem for black publishers. Ah, the black publishers, ah, were suddenly making more money than they have ever made before. I mean it was just rolling in. It was like a gold mine with all this advertising coming in. At the same time, ah, they were facing pressure from the government to, ah, tone down their black publications and they didn't want to take a chance of, ah, not toning down a publications and then having to go to court and then losing the advertising. So the advertising was kind of a double sword. I mean it gave 'em a lot of money. At the same time it put pressure on 'em, just like the government was putting pressure on 'em, to tone down their publications. And so consequently, as the war goes on, they do tone down their publications somewhat, but they continue to complain about injustices. And the interesting thing is if you look at the black publication, there's no sign that the readers ever noticed that anything changed in the black press, but if you're paying attention, things changed because they quit --ah, they quit, ah, criticizing the federal government and, instead, the criticism goes to like individual congressmen, state governors, companies that are discriminating against blacks. But the federal government, it tones down. And clearly one of the reasons is all this advertising they're getting. INT: What was the difference between the black press and the white press as illustrated through the Dorie Miller? PW: Well, Dorie Miller was a, ah, mess boy on a ship at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed on December 7th, 1941. And, ah, he was a mess boy because that's all you could be in the Navy at that partner time. Well, the Japanese planes come over, they start bombing the ships. He runs up to the deck from the kitchens down below. He finds his captain, who's been fatally wounded. He takes care of him and then he grabs a machine gun and fires at the Japanese zeros flying overhead until there's no more bullets left. Well, ah, this story got out, ah, about, ahm, oh, a month after Pearl Harbor. Dorie Miller becomes a national hero for blacks, ah, just as there are white heroes at Pearl Harbor, but Dorie Miller's treated differently. A bunch of the white heroes get Congressional Medals of Honor. They're immediately brought back to this country. They're --they're brought around the country to try to sell more war bonds. Dorie Miller gets the Navy Cross, the highest award given by the Navy. He's refused the Congressional Medal of Honor, and they don't bring him back to this country until the summer of 1942. Well, as a result of this, the black press started complaining bitterly. It played up what Dorie Miller had done. It suddenly had a black hero in World War II. You had no other black heroes in World War II. At this particular time you don't have any black heroes in World War II until the Marines land at Guada Canal in August of 1942 and suddenly some book CBs, the engineering, ah, team of the Navy, have to help fight off some of the -- some of the Japanese and the blacks again play this kind of thing up. But the difference is that the black press plays up things that happen to blacks and if it doesn't happen to blacks, it almost doesn't happen. It's -- it's an advocacy press. It's writing about blacks. The whites are writing -- the white papers are writing about the war. The black papers aren't writing about the war unless it's happening to blacks. So consequently, if you -- if you talk about what the black press is writing through the late winter and the early spring and the summer of 1942, they're writing what blacks are doing in the Army camps, blacks and whites are fighting each other in the Army camps. They're -- they're killing each other off. They're writing about these kinds of things, but they're not writing about the fighting. They wrote about Dorie Miller. They write about Guada Canal. INT: What would be the general feeling of the black people of the United States on the outbreak of the war? PW: Well, the interesting thing, and I'm saying this for someone who, ah, remembers Vietnam very well -- the interesting thing when you go back and look at it is how, ah -- and it was almost stunning to me -- is -- is how much blacks wanted to fight in this war. I mean they really felt this was their country. They wanted to defend the war. They wanted to be a part of this war. Well, they go down and they try to sign up for the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard says, "We've never had blacks. You can't be in the Coast Guard." They go down and want to sign up in the Marines. Marines tell 'em the same thing. "We've never had black Marines. You can't be in the Marines." Ah, they want to go down and be in the Army Air Corps, which is now what we call the Air Force, "No, we've never had black pilots. You can't do this." The Navy they're told, "If you want to serve, all you can do is work in the kitchens." And the Army, which is 10 percent black, says, "Yeah, we'll take you, but only in the proportion to what the country is." It's ten percent black. So the Army's ten percent black. So for every nine whites or other types that are taken, and "We'll take one black man." And so blacks stream into the Army at a very slow rate. And -- and so this enthusiasm that blacks have when the war starts quickly starts to become tainted because blacks, ah, find out that -- that --and they can't hardly believe -- the fact that here, supposingly, the country, the very life of the republic is threatened and yet the country's turning away blacks who want to fight in this war. And so consequently, it starts to change and blacks start to become angry and they start to question these injustices to blacks. And so -- so it's a very -- it's a very interesting thing where the enthusiasm is very great at the start of the war and then it starts to tone down just a little as they have all kinds of injustices. For instance, in, ah -- right -- right after Pearl Harbor, the, ah, Red Cross refused to take blood from blacks. Blacks stream into the Red Cross stations. They won't take it. You're a black person. And blacks argue, ah, correctly, that, say, Type A from the black person's the same as Type A from a white person. And a month later, under tremendous pressure, the Red Cross relents and says, "Okay, we'll take your blood, but we'll only give it to black people." That didn't satisfy blacks either. I mean all of these injustices keep on happening and the black press is playing up all of 'em. And the important thing is, the black press says, "This time, unlike World War I, we aren't backing down. We are not going to just join the government in this war and stop complaining." They did it in World War I. They said, "We aren't doing it this time." INT: Why did the Double V Campaign catch on? PW: I -- I think the Double V Campaign caught on because its timing was great. For instance, you had blacks who -- who were feeling that there were injustices against them and they were starting to, ah, look for ways to, ah, express the things that they felt. And so you had the Double V, which stands for a double victory, victory over totalitarian forces overseas, victory over those same types of forces in this country, and they're talking about poll taxes in the South. They're talking about the fact that 13 blacks get lynched in the country in 1942. They're talking about the fact that blacks can't go to many public schools. They're not getting the same pay even though they have the same education as white workers. I mean there's all these kind of things. They're talking about the -- the Red Cross which, ah, will take their blood but only give it to black people. I mean they expressed all sorts of things, but --but it caught on, one, because it expressed real simply what they felt. The Pittsburgh Courier had a neat diagram which was this Double V with an Eagle in the middle, which -- and people loved this kind of diagram. Ah, it caught on to the -- to the extent that 200,000 blacks, ah, black people signed up for this thing by the summer of 1942, each one of 'em payin' The Pittsburgh Courier a nickel to belong to these Double V clubs, and you had women walking around with Double V's on their dresses. You had a new hairstyle called the Doubler where black women would walk around in weave two -- two V's in their hair. You had Double V baseball games, Double V flag-waving ceremonies, Double V gardens. I mean it's just Double V this, Double V this, Double V this. And the Pittsburgh Courier, which was looking for circulation, played this to the hilt, I mean to the hilt to the point where like 14 percent of their newspaper at one point was nothing but the Double V. I mean one-seventh of that newspaper, of their available space was the Double V and they played it to the hilt. And -- and I think that -- that the reason it caught on was because it expressed very simply the kind of, ah, ah, problems that blacks faced, expressed very simply that "This is what we want to do for this country. Why are these problems here?" I mean it just -- it just expressed very simply the kind of things. And -- and the -- the Double V with the two V's in the eagle was a very catchy kind of design. There was even a Double V song. INT: Why did the government see the Double V Campaign as a threat? PW: The government saw the Double V as a threat because they weren't sure they could win the, ah, war without blacks. Blacks made up ten percent of the country and the government was not at all sure, particularly in early '42 until the summer of '42, that they could win without ten percent of the population. So you had the Double V being played up which played up the injustices in the country as well as injustices overseas. And the government felt that if these injustices are played up, maybe blacks will refuse to, ah, support the war. Maybe they'll even go out and blow up power plants, railroad lines. They never did this, but -- but the feeling was -- I mean that was expressed in government documents. "We don't know what's gonna happen. We don't know if we can win without ten percent of the country." And, consequently, the Double V, which is being flashed out there every week by The Pittsburgh Courier and they were signing up people like crazy for this thing -- the government saw this as an incredible threat. INT: How did J. Edgar Hoover become interested in the black press?. PW: Well, J. -- J. Edgar Hoover originally started his interest in the black press in the period from 1919 to 1921, which is called the Red Scare period in American history. And, ah, he looks at a bunch of these black publications. By now, he's compiling information on subversive type characters for the Justice Department. He looks at a bunch of these black publications. They're clearly socialist. So he decided that the black press is, ah, clearly dangerous. And he draws a conclusion that's really kind of fantastic when you think of it now. He says that the black press has extreme influence with black people because he doesn't think black people are very smart. And so he -- he draws this conclusion and immediately for the rest of his life he thinks black people, and particular the black press, are dangerous. And so he looks at this socialism threat and, to him, socialism, communism, fascism, hell, they're all the same, same to -- to Hoover. And so --so -- this -- this gets him going, too. So he goes through the entire period between 1919 and 1921 to World War II and you have communists are coming into black newspapers, they're placing ads. The black newspapers are running stories about a communist rally here and there. And so this immediately makes the black press suspect. So Hoover looks at 'em through the entire period. They get to World War II and, ah, you still have the comm-- communists who are trying to, ah, ah, curry black favor. He still continues to look at 'em. He has his agents sitting outside the black newspapers in cars. They're just paying attention who comes in. Is this a communist agent? Is this someone that --that might support the Japanese? And -- and they're keeping track of it and then the agents will walk in these black newspapers and they'll harangue the editors and the reporters and -- and they'll tell 'em, you know, "You can't write this stuff. This is hurting the war effort." I remember Frank Bolden, who was a reporter for The Pittsburgh Courier, said that after they'd walk out, the reporters and editors would just laugh and say, "That's Hoover's flunkies and we're not going to pay any attention to 'em." But you come to World War II and things change. Ah, the minute the bombs drop at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, the Espionage Act kicks in from World War I, and the Espionage Act basically says you can't do anything that will, ah, hurt the war effort by saying something or printing something that will hurt the --the government in proceeding properly with the war. And the minute that kicks in, it gives Hoover the right to go to the Justice Department and say -- and say to them, "Let's take some of these black newspapers and let's take 'em to court under the Espionage Act because they're violating it." So constantly through the war, he's going to the Justice Department and trying to get the Justice Department to agree to an Espionage Act indictment of the black press. He -- he -- he continues this right through 1945 and the Justice Department every single time turns him down and refused to do that. And so Hoover, with all of his investigations, is held in check by the Justice Department. INT: How did the FBI threaten the black press during World War II? PW: During, ah, World War II, the black press was constantly threatened in various ways by the, ah, FBI. One of the things they did was they would send a check to a black newspaper and say, "We want to subscribe to your newspaper. Send it for the next year to the FBI Building in Washington, D.C." And this just frightened the publishers out of their mind, I mean knowing that their paper every week was going to the FBI Building and the FBI was looking at it. Well, that was subtle censorship. There was nothing wrong with it, but I guarantee you the FBI knew what they were doing when they did that kind of thing. They also had agents who constantly visited with individual reporters, who visited, ah, publishers, talked to 'em, say, "You gotta stop writing this stuff. This stuff is hurting the war effort. If you don't stop writing it, we're going to try to take you to court under the Espionage Act." I mean all of this is going on at the same time and it's all going on because the -- the FBI, ah, ah, sees all these things that the black press is writing. They're writing about the fact the blacks and whites are shooting at each other in the Army camps and killing each other off there. They're writing about the fact that the black press early in the war is complaining that there's no blacks in the Marines, no blacks in the Coast Guard, no black Army Air Corps pilots. Then you have Army Air Corps pilot who come in, in the spring of 1942. The government refused to send 'em overseas until the summer of 1943. The black press complains about that. I mean these complaints are constantly going on and the FBI says, "This is hurting the war effort. This is against the Espionage Act." INT: Talk about the number of different agencies that investigated the black press ... PW: At -- at one time early in World War II, ah, one government official expressed amazement at how many different agencies were investigating the black press. Ah, you know, and there were such things -- some of 'em were very large. You had the Justice Department and FBI. You had military intelligence. You had the Post Office Department, Office of Facts and Figures, Office of War Information. I mean the list just went on and on and on and on. And, ah, all of these -- all of these agencies were doing it independent of each other. They weren't pooling information, and so they were constantly stumbling over each other because this agency would have this amount of information and this one would have this amount of information. And -- and this person that made this comment about "Look at all of this that's going on," was just amazed that they weren't pooling information. And, in fact, they never did kind of pool information. Occasionally the FBI would share something with military intelligence and vice-versa. But there was this incredible activity that was going on in really large government agencies which were all investigate the black press at the same time. INT: Talk about the stakes of the battle between Hoover and the black press. PW: Well, the stakes were very high. If, ah, Hoover had his way and was allowed to take the black press to court under the, ah, Espionage Act, the black press, ah, certainly could lose a lot of influence, could lose a lot of circulation, ah, Hoover would escalate power even more. I mean -- I mean both sides had something to lose here, where if they were successful in this kind of thing. Ah, the black press, ah, was -- was at the point where it was getting a lot more advertising. If it went to court, it was almost sure to lose a bunch of this white-owned advertising, ah, the big white-owned corporations that were advertising in it. So there was a lot at stake. And, ah, both sides knew it. INT: Bolden said Hoover had Roosevelt's ear ... PW: J. Edgar Hoover goes and talks a lot to, ah, Franklin Roosevelt. He has Roosevelt's ear. Roosevelt's more than glad to have all of his investigations, have all of his information, and -- and I mean that's been clear since the 1930s. I mean that isn't new in terms of World War II. And so, consequently, the black press has a very potent enemy in J. Edgar Hoover. Ahm, however, the -- the thing that J. Edgar Hoover has to do is he has to also go through the Attorney General of the United States, ah, Frances Biddle, and Frances Biddle and J. Edgar Hoover aren't the buddies the J. Edgar Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt are. INT: Describe Biddle to me. PW: Well, Biddle was a very interesting character. Ah, he became Attorney General in, ah, September of 1941, right before the US got into World War II. He came from one of the two most prominent families in the United States at that time. They were the Cabbotts of Boston and the Biddles of Philadelphia. And this was before the Kennedy's rose to the stature they would in the '50s and '60s. And, ah, so he had one relative who had been the first Attorney General of the United States. He had another one who had been like head of the second bank of the United States. I mean this guy was steeped in tradition. He was also steeped in other things, though. He grew up in a family where -- where he was fairly well off. He wasn't wealthy. Ah, he had, ah, black people who worked as servants in his home when he was grow up. And then later when he was an adult, he -- he still had black people that worked in his home and -- and he always treated 'em very well. He -- he -- there is no indication that he made any distinctions between blacks and whites in terms of their value. His wife as a famous poet in her own right. She wrote poetry about black people. And, ah, that got a lot of attention. And so you have this man who -- who made no distinctions between anyone based on the color of their skin. You had a man who believed very strongly in the Constitution of the United States. And -- and, to him, the Constitution was color-blind. Everybody has the same rights. And that was the important thing about -- about Biddle, and he was willing to, ah, gamble his job on defending the Constitution for what it was and was willing to stand up to anyone, including Roosevelt, in terms of defending that Constitution. INT: Give a physical description of Biddle. PW: Yeah. Fran-- Frances Biddle was a very interesting type of guy. I mean he -- he was in high school a, ah, fairly accomplished boxer, ah, but you wouldn't know it from the way he looked. By the time he was Attorney General he was balding and, ah, had a freckled forehead, a very long, skinny neck. He looked like an intellectual and many people, many journalists noted he looked like a poet. He, ah, wore, ah, bright bow ties. He would wear bright-colored jackets. I mean this guy felt because he was a Biddle, he could dress any way he wanted to and that was fine. I mean it's just kind of this background of his made him this special kind of person who would do things that --that other people wouldn't do. And I think one story that's very interesting, for instance, is in World War II, ah, he lived in Georgetown and he would go to the Justice Department sometimes by going down to Wisconsin Avenue and boarding the trolley. Now how many Attorney Generals of the United States are you going to see ridin' a trolley or -- or a bus? I doubt that you'll see any, but it was no big deal for him. He'd just go down there and ride the trolley and people thought, "Well, this is strange for an Attorney General." He thought nothing of it at all. In the spring of 1942, an issue that became bigger and bigger in the black press was the fact that you had the black soldiers at these Southern Army camps and white military police shooting and killing each other in a bunch of these Army camps. And the black press just played this up to the hilt on the front pages. It reached its kind of height when one of the papers snuck a photographer into one of these camps during one of these pitched battles and took a bunch of pictures and came back and they plastered 'em on the front page, which angered the government. So in May of 1942, ah, Franklin Roosevelt, after a cabinet meeting, ah, told his Attorney General, Frances Biddle, "I want you to talk to some of these black publishers and see -- see about toning down what they're writing. They're hurting the war effort." So in, ahm, June, mid-June, 1942, John Sengstacke, the publisher of The Chicago Defender and -- and the top publisher, if you want to call him that, of the black press, came to the Justice Department building in Washington and he entered a room. Biddle was there to meet him. And spread out on this table were all these black newspapers playing up the fact that blacks and whites were -- were killing each other at these Army camps and -- and among these papers was The Cleveland Call and Post which had carried a famous quote back in the spring that had upset the government where one of these black soldiers had written the publisher of The Cleveland Call and Post and, ahm -- and has name wasn't used, but he had this quote that everybody remembered. It said, "Kill a cracker in Germany or kill one in Georgia. What's the difference?" And the government paid a lot of attention to that. So, Sengstacke walked in the room at the Justice Department and there were all these papers laid out on the table, included his own. And, ah, he, ah, looks at these newspapers. They're all playing up the fact the blacks and whites are killing each other off at these Army camps in the South. And, ah, Biddle says, "See these newspapers? These are hurting the war effort and if you don't stop writing this stuff, we're gonna take some black publishers to court under the Espionage Act." Well, Sengstacke, who is incredibly tough and was also a college graduate, like, ah, Biddle, although he didn't go to Harvard and Harvard Law School, ah, says to, ah, Biddle -- he says, "Look, we've been writin' this stuff since the 1820s, since black newspapers started in this country, and we don't intend to stop now. And if you don't like it, just take us to court under the Espionage Act." And you -- you've got to realize what an incredible thing that is for Sengstacke to say to Biddle because Biddle's the Attorney General of the United States, the top law officer. He clearly has the right to take 'em to court if he wants to. Ah, well, ahm, over the next 45 minutes or an hour, the two men calmed down. At the end of that time, Biddle tells, ah, Sengstacke, he says, "Look, we're not gonna take you to court under the Espionage Act, you or the other black publishers, if you don't write anything that's more critical than what you're writing right now on the federal government. However, I hope that you and the other black publishers will tone down what you're writing." And he also promised that he would get black, ah, reporters into these press conferences of white officials. That was another little kind of thing that happened. Well, Sengstacke leaves there. He knows at that particular point that they're not going to be taken to court under the Espionage Act unless they write something a lot worse than what they're writing at that particular point. And he goes out and tells the other black publishers and from that point on, the black press knows that it's not going to get taken to court under the Espionage Act. INT: Did the World War II period start the push toward civil rights? PW: If -- if you look at what happened to -- to black people and the black press in World War II, it was astonishing the things that happened for the good. For instance, a study was done after the war, ah, by a black man who worked at the Labor Department. And he looked at the years 1942, '43, and '44 and he found that in those three years, blacks made more job-related gains in just three years than they had made in the previous 75 years combined. I mean that's a staggering figure when you think about it. When you look at the black press, they make gains, too. The circulation of the black press goes up -- the entire black press -- goes up 50 percent during the war from 1.2 million to 1.8 million. You have a time in 1944 when you have the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association becomes the first group of blacks in US history to meet with a -- with a US President. I mean 1944, and it took that long, I mean that's astonishing that it took that long for a -- for a US President to meet with a group of blacks. He had met with individual black people at times, but never a group of blacks. And then a week later you have your first black White House correspondent, the first time in the history of the country that a black person can go to the press conference of the US President and go to every single one of 'em and cover 'em just like all those white reporters were covering for years and years and years, for centuries. And it's -- it's interesting to see those kinds of thing happen. You have the black -- you have the black newspapers get all the advertising. So -- so when you get to the end of the war, it -- it's amazing what they've got. The black people are making more money than they've ever made. They've got greater jobs than they've ever had. The black -- the black, ah, newspapers have more circulation than they've ever had. World War II was an incredible boost toward getting more equal rights for black people than what you had before the war started. INT: Talk about the black press during World War II and its role as a catalyst to the civil rights movement. PW: If you look at the black press in World War II, the black press really was a catalyst and -- and kind of a start-up for the Civil Rights Movement. I mean you look at the black papers in that time and they -- they aren't talking about civil rights. I mean they're not using those words, but the things that they're -- they're trying to get for the black community and black people are civil rights. And black press during this period of World War II is becoming more and more powerful. They continue that power to about 1948 be-- before they started losing it, circulation started dropping, the white press started luring off the best black talent to -- to work in, ah, black newspapers, work in -- ah, or work in white newspapers and work in white broadcasting. But the important point to remember is that the black press got the black movement to a certain point, at which point the civil rights leaders were able to start at that point and progress it a lot further. And if you had not had a black press in -- in this period from 1910 to 1950 and if you had not had World War II, the Civil Rights Movement would have started at a lot lower level than it started in -- in the 1950s. INT: Talk about the difference between the black and white coverage of the war. PW: The difference between the coverage of the war in the black and white press was very striking. If you looked at the white press, they're talking about "Here's this battle and here's this battle," and so forth and so on. They have virtually nothing about blacks in there at all, ah, unless their a sports star. And, ah, if you look at the black press, the black press is talking about what happens to black people. And so they're not talking about the fighting, ah, because blacks until at least the summer of 1942 are virtually not involved in that fighting at all in -- in a context that, ah, shows them to be heroes at least. And so, therefore, the black press is playing up "Here are the inequalities to blacks. Here are gains that we're making." They're talking about blacks streaming into the, ah, plants, ah, making airplanes and tanks and getting all these jobs they've never before and getting all this money that they've never had before. And so they're -- they're --the black press is very much of an advocacy press. "Here's what's happening to blacks. We're going to play up what happens to blacks. If it doesn't happen to blacks, you aren't gonna find it here." And it's a very striking thing -- thing to look at. But -- but it's a press that's -- that's trying to, one, take care of inequalities to blacks, and, two, making blacks proud of the accomplishments of blacks. INT: What was the reaction to black papers on bases? PW: Well, if you look at Army bases in World War II, the reaction was not very good until the end of 1943. On a number of bases you had papers that were taken away from news boys, black newspapers taken away from news boy and they -- and they had paper burnings. I mean you think about the fact that you had books that were burned in Germany, ah, before World War II and people thought how bad that was. Well, you had newspaper burnings in World War II in this country. You had some news boys, black news boys who were selling papers on base and on -- on a couple of occasions, ah, they were beaten up. On other occasions they were ordered off the base and told to "Never come back or --or you're likely to get beaten up." So that kind of thing happened. Ah, you -- you also had the Army pay careful attention to which newspapers were in the Army, ah, post libraries. And on a number of different bases, different black newspapers were banned. They were not allowed to be in those post's libraries. And so, ah, finally there was --there was so -- so many complaints from the black press, complaints from black soldiers, that by 1944 the Army stopped these kinds of things. But it certainly continued 'til the end of 1943. You had newspaper boys who were beaten up on the, ah, black posts on a couple of occasions. You certainly had a number of black news boys who were thrown off of the bases. Ah, their newspapers were taken away from 'em, destroyed, and they were told, "If you come back, you will likely get beaten up." You had the Army take, ah, a number of these black newspapers and not allow them to come into the post libraries anymore. So had black soldiers who were on these posts and they could not read black newspapers. The Army said, "We don't think this is good. You can't read it." Finally, through the criticism of the black press and criticism of the black soldiers, this ended in 1944. But it's kind of amazing to me that it continued that long. INT: Are you familiar with The California Eagle? PW: Yes. The California Eagle was one of the most radical of the black newspapers in World War II. It was investigated heavily by the, ah, FBI. Again, the FBI could not go to court against the -- The California Eagle because the Justice Department wouldn't allow it. But The California Eagle was investigated very, very heavily for the things it was writing, particularly a couple of times when they wrote about some riots in World War II and -- and the government did not like what it saw there. INT: What do you know about The Chicago Defender and its novel way of distribution? PW: Ahm, in the period from 1910 to 1920, you had 500,000 blacks who left the South and, ah, came North. And that was the -- if you look at one decade, that was the most number of blacks who left the South in any decade from this period from like 1880 into the 1920s. Ah, The Chicago Defender was one of the major reasons that a large number of blacks left in the period from 1910 to 1920. You had Robert Abbott, the publisher, sitting there. He definitely wanted to get more circulation, and he saw a way to get more circulation by luring more blacks to Chicago, and Chicago was a great place to lure 'em to because it was a railroad terminus in the country and you had these train tracks that streamed up(?) Chicago. So, consequently, he started, ah, selling his papers, making an effort the sell his papers very heavily in the South and, ah, in doing so, he did all sorts of things. He would publish railroad timetables saying, "If you get on this train at this point at Pine Bluff, Arkansas at this time, you're going to be in Chicago at this time," or if you boarded in Birmingham, Alabama, you were going to be in Chicago at this particular time. He started running, ah, letters from blacks who had been in the South who had come to Chicago and say, "Gee, this is a great place. I have a great job. I make more money" ... As a result of the black, ah, newspapers circulating in the South, and particularly The Chicago Defender, a bunch of the black -- or a bunch of the towns in the South get very upset about the fact that blacks are leaving. They're losing all their cheap labor. And so a bunch of 'em, consequently, ignored the Constitution and pass local laws which say you can't sell a black newspaper in their town. Ahm, as a result of that, Robert Abbott had a real problem. How could he circulate his paper in the South? So he goes out to the railroad yard to one of the most distinguished professions in the black community at that time, the sleeping car porters, and, ah, he goes to these people and -- and he hands them bundles of his newspapers, which they hide in the train. And as these trains roll through the South, instead of being put off at the stations like they used to be, which are in the town limits, or the city limits, these porters will step out between cars or the back of the train, toss 'em out in the countryside. A black would retrieve these papers and then they would -- they would pass these newspapers out outside the town limits. And suddenly all these Southern cities found they couldn't stop the black newspapers, no matter what they did. The black papers were still circulating in the South and they continued to circulate right into the World War I period. INT: Were the black papers during World War II leading the community or following it? PW: In some says the black newspapers were --were leading the public in World War II. You certainly had people like George Schuyler who, you could say, was on the cutting edge because of the kinds of things he was writing. In other words, he -- he ended up writing editorials or columns, rather, in 1942, ah, discussing whether blacks would be better off if -- if the Allies won the war or the Japanese won the war. I mean that's kind of like trying to lead people almost when you write that kind of thing. On the other hand, you had the black publishers who were very, very worried about if they wrote things too critical, and so they toned down to some extent and the -- and the public was ahead of 'em. It just kind of went back and forth. Sometimes they were leading, sometimes they weren't. INT: Talk about black women reporters and opportunities during World War II. PW: Well, during World War II, ah, black women showed up a lot more on -- on black papers than they had ever shown up before. Ah, the -- the publisher of The Pittsburgh Courier was a woman. The publisher of The California Eagle was a woman. The publisher of a paper in, a Little Rock, Arkansas was a woman. So you -- so you had a number of 'em at that -- at that particular level. You also had women who were showing up as reporters. You had a columnist on The Pittsburgh Courier who was a woman. And so you started having women show up a lot more and it kind of gave a different viewpoint to it. They -- they were writing different things than the men were or taking a different slant be-- because they were women. And I think it -- it gave a new voice to the black press that was very helpful. INT: What was the Southern black press' reaction to World War II and the Double V Campaign? PW: Well, during World War II, the Southern black press, ah, was much, ah, less critical of the government than the Northern black press. And, ah, a number of, ah, the things they wrote were -- were less critical because they felt like they could not go out and say the same kind of things because of the type of territory they -- they lived in. And you -- you had publishers who would write each other and would say that "We just can't afford to say these kind of things 'cause we'll be shut down." I mean they really felt that the Southern states would shut 'em down, where the ones in the North felt like there wasn't nearly the constraints on them, that -- that they had. They didn't have to worry about the people who lived in the area. (END INTERVIEW)