Page 32 of The Women of Oak Ridge
“It was against the rules for a colored man and woman to live in the same hut in Oak Ridge,” Roonie said, his voice taking on a hard note, “despite them bein’ married.”
I sat silent, dumbfounded.
It had never occurred to me that a legally married couple, no matter the color of their skin, would not be allowed to live together. I couldn’t begin to imagine how the inadequate housing and outrageous regulations made Roonie, Velvet, and the others feel.
“We ladies lived in what we called ‘the pen’ because it was fenced off from the men’s area,” Velvet continued. “A guard stood watch at the gate and checked our badges when we’d come and go. Sometimes he even checked inside our huts after curfew to make sure we were all there, usually without knocking on the door first. I’d visit Roonie’s hut after work, but come curfew, I had to be in my own hut. The gals I roomed with weren’t married, so it didn’t affect them same as it did me.”
She paused before adding, “But at least I didn’t have any babies yet. Black children weren’t allowed to live on the Reservation when we first arrived. I knew one gal who left three young ones with her mama in Mississippi. She and her man took the bus down there every so often to visit them.”
Roonie described the housing area, with public bathhouses and wooden boardwalks snaking throughout. “Rumor had it there was a slave cemetery not far from our hutments. There we were, livin’ on the same patch of dirt where enslaved folks worked a hundred years before, yet not all that much had changed for us. We still weren’t free. Not completely.”
His words were sobering. They told the shameful story of prejudice and racial inequality in our country. Issues that continued today, in one form or another.
“Were those the conditions you had to deal with throughout the war?” I asked.
Roonie nodded. “When Scarboro Village opened up in 1950, we were able to purchase a real house.”
“We started having Bible study sessions soon as we moved in.” Velvet smiled. “Had over forty people packed into that little ol’ house at times. It wasn’t long before folks started asking Roonie to start a church.”
They went on to tell about their family, mentioning their children took part in the integration of Oak Ridge schools in the mid-1950s, and how two of their daughters are now teaching in those same schools.
Roonie revealed that Black men, like their female counterparts, were relegated to mostly menial jobs like janitors and laborers, regardless of their education or experience. After the war ended, he heard that a renowned Black scientist from Chicago was denied a job at Oak Ridge, simply because of the color of his skin.
“I mostly worked on a railroad crew,” he said. “I’d often puzzle over all that equipment and the tons of coal comin’ onto the Reservation, yet the trains always left empty.What was it used for?I’d wonder. That information was so hush-hush, even the engineers employed by the railroad company weren’t allowed on the Reservation. They had to stop at the boundary and disembark, then engineers for the Manhattan Project took over and brought the train in.”
He paused. “Only recently did I learn that most of the uranium being enriched in Oak Ridge had been mined in the Congo. Kinda makes me feel a connection to those African miners.”
When I asked the same question I’d asked each of my interviewees—How did you feel when you learned about Hiroshima and the role people in Oak Ridge had in it?—they both expressed sorrow over the enormous loss of life. Roonie’s words, however, seemed to sum things up.
“We didn’t know the work we were doing here would lead toa weapon of such terrible destruction. I believe God in his mercy doesn’t hold folks accountable for what they don’t know. As for those who did know, like the generals, the president, and the scientists, they were tryin’ their best to end the war. It’s hard to say what would’ve happened if they hadn’t used the bomb. All we can do is seek God’s forgiveness for things known and unknown, and trust in his grace to cover it all.”
By the time I reluctantly acknowledged the need to let them get back to their work, I had a much greater appreciation for all that the Black residents of Oak Ridge endured during and after the war, most of which I hadn’t found in my research. My mind was alive with ideas of how to include the information in my dissertation in a meaningful way.
After I bid Roonie goodbye, Velvet walked me to my car and gave me a warm hug. She promised to stop by Aunt Mae’s next week and bring some photographs Roonie took of Oak Ridge after the gates were opened to the public in 1949, when the Secret City was no longer restricted. Up until then, a man named Ed Westcott had been the official photographer for the Manhattan Project.
As I drove back to Aunt Mae’s, I couldn’t help but see Oak Ridge a little differently now that I’d heard Velvet and Roonie’s perspective. Despite the important scientific work that took place here—cutting-edge work that would one day help end the war—Black residents had endured the age-old ills of segregation and injustice.
Aunt Mae’s words from last night echoed in my heart.
It wasn’t right.
