Curry, George

              
ORAL HISTORY OF GEORGE CURRY
Interviewed by Chris Albrecht
Filmed by Rick Greene
Significant Productions
November 4, 2005
Transcribed by Jordan Reed 
MR. ALBRECHT: …but you speak whatever is on your mind. The first question is pretty obvious. Why do you feel it’s important to tell the story of the role played by Blacks in the Manhattan Project?
MR. CURRY: Well it’s beyond just, one I was a history major at Knoxville College, let’s start there. Secondly, I have strong family ties to East Tennessee. I have a lot of relatives in Johnson City. In fact, practically all my relatives moved from Alabama to Johnson City, Tennessee. They got to Tennessee and thought they were up North.  Then Knoxville College is my alma mater and I have cousins that live in Oak Ridge. So, that’s just from the personal side. It’s so important because history is so important. This is such a major project for our nation and I think the role of all people who contributed should be documented, so that we can all learn from it. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Should African Americans today look at the role of Blacks working as laborers in the Manhattan Project with pride knowing they were a part of a monumental achievement, or should they consider it just another chapter of unjust treatment of blacks in America, or both?
MR. CURRY: I don’t know if you can categorize it. You say, “Yeah, it helped bring an end to the war. Our people made contributions there,” but we’ve made contributions since the Revolutionary War. So that’s been our history in this country, so it’s important that all our history be recorded. At the same time, you can’t escape looking at how you were treated here versus what you expect to contribute to this country. Just like those soldiers, all the soldiers who went abroad to fight for freedom and came back home and had to ride in the back of the bus. They had to accept second class citizenship. So, I think the amazing thing about the spirit of African Americans is that even though they were treated poorly, they rose above that and said, “Even though I’ve been treated wrong, I’m going to do the right thing.” So I think there is some pride there saying, “Yes, we were a part of that. We weren’t excluded. We were a part of that history.” Another part is saying, “Now, you really didn’t treat me right on that. I’ll earn that, I’ll work for it.”
MR. ALBRECHT: As an African American growing up in the South, 1950’s, you were not only witness to the victims of discrimination. From your experiences, which don’t unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to look at it, don’t include struggling through the Great Depression, can you explain why Blacks of the generation preceding yours were willing to endure more humiliation; of course it was in exchange for greater pay.
MR. CURRY: Well, I think the thing you have to understand about the generation that preceded me was they knew that they would never have a chance to accomplish some of the things that we would have a chance, and they felt this mission that they had to prepare the next generation for the opportunity that would come. I remember my high school principal saying,” You got to get ready for when integration is going to come.” I’m still waiting for it of course. (Laughter) But he said, “It’s going to come,” like it’s around the corner. “Integration is going to come. You got to be ready.” So, they tell you got to be twice as good to get half the credit. Don’t complain about it, there is nothing you can do about it. That’s a reality. That’s the way it is. So you prepare yourself, be twice as good, and you will get chances that we never got before. To understand that generation, you have to understand that we carried out a lot of their dreams and aspirations. That they know they wouldn’t be realized during their lifetime, but they prepared us to fulfill. I think about my own experiences, grew up in a house in the projects. Neither of my parents finished high school. I had people always encouraging me so I could get a job at Sports Illustrated, the largest sports magazine in the world, when I couldn’t get one in my hometown newspaper. I should send them a thank you though for not hiring me, but you move on, you move past it. You end up doing much better things, but you don’t forget it. You don’t forget it. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Some of these questions that I’m going ask, you may not have a good answer to.
MR. CURRY: Doesn’t matter. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Their probably stupid questions.
MR. CURRY: Shoot. The only stupid questions are those you don’t ask. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: I’m just trying to…
MR. CURRY: It’s alright, Chris. It’s alright.
MR. ALBRECHT: With that said, and again I’m asking you to make some assumptions. Many workers stayed in Oak Ridge after the war. They brought their families; they bought houses; they made Oak Ridge their home. We had one gentleman we interviewed yesterday say, very fondly, “This is home.” They did these things rather than returning to where they came from. Do you have any insights or any thoughts on why that might be?
MR. CURRY: Even with the disadvantages here, in some instances, it was better than what people had in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, and so it is while being imperfect it was still better and that always the hope that things would be better. So, I can understand that it is still in their mind even though things weren’t right then, just like what I was telling you a while ago about my high school principal, God rest him, they knew down the road those things would change and yet to be prepared for it. I think part of, and also like anything else, you move to a different place, and you got to realize that society wasn’t as mobile as it was, then as it is now. So, people didn’t move around a whole lot. You move somewhere, your familiar with it, you’re making better wages, and you say, “Why not stay here?”
MR. ALBRECHT: It’s the 1940’s. It’s no longer 2005. It’s the 1940’s. America is at war in Europe and in the Pacific. The Civil Rights Movement, inspired by Rosa Parks, is more than a decade away, even getting started. President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802 banning discrimination in the defense industry contractors is being ignored in Oak Ridge in favor of local mores yet hundreds of Blacks throughout the South have left their homes to come work on the Manhattan Project. Why do you suppose that happened?
MR. CURRY: Despite the way they were treated, African Americas have always been loyal to their country. Think about it. You think about growing up in the South, segregated, living on a certain side of town, having only certain kinds of jobs, and you’re still able to put that side. I think that’s the remarkable part about all of this. To be able to put that aside saying, “I’m still going to do what is right and count on them treating me right, down the road.” So it’s a dream, it’s a hope. The alternative would be to be nothing, contribute nothing, and then hope for freedom down the road. But when you participate, as I said, African Americans have fought in every war this country has had, from the Revolutionary War on. When you participate and you die for this country, then you have more of a right to demand equality, even though you’re not getting it, but you have a right to demand it. That’s, I think, is what probably explains it better than anything.
MR. ALBRECHT: My questions weren’t so bad after all.
MR. CURRY: (Laughter) Of course not, of course not.
MR. ALBRECHT: You gave good answers. Those were the only prepared questions I have. I would be interested in just off the cuff, share with us on tape your thoughts about this project, anything that you’ve thought about to this point.
MR. CURRY: Ever since my classmate at Knoxville College, Will Minter, called me and asked me would I do this, I’ve been excited about it. Knowing that I didn’t have the time to do anything new, (Laughter) not anything new, I said we’d just make time to do this because it’s important to do it. As you know, I’ve agreed to do this project, we have not talked about compensation, and we have not talked about my normal rate because you know we’ll work that part out down the road. I’m not worried about that, the important thing is I trust you, you trust me, that we going to do this together, it’s a mission. We got to accomplish this mission. The other things will kind of take care of themselves because it’s so important. This is our last chance we’re going to have. So we record it or it doesn’t get recorded. This was brought home to me when my step-father died recently. I had tape recorded my step-father, all of my uncles and aunts, and my mother, and for historical purposes. I told my sister, I said, “Well, you know I’m going to transcribe this. We always got these words.” She said, “That’s not what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about when you play a tape I can still hear his voice.” So down the road, when people play this video tape, they will still be able to hear for themselves the words of the people of the interview and that will be powerful.
MR. ALBRECHT: Thank you very much.
MR. CURRY: Thank you.
MR. ALBRECHT: These last statements you made really strike home because our core business is producing personal video biographies. People will commission us, often times its, “My parents are getting older, I want to save their stories,” and so forth. We go in and set up like this in the home. Spend two hours and getting them to tell their stories, edit in old photographs and so forth, create a DVD that looks like a television program. It becomes a legacy item they can give to their grandchildren and so forth. When you said they can hear their voice, they can see the twinkle in their eye, that’s so important. That’s hopefully much of what we will be able to capture with this little project. 
MR. CURRY: This old history major like me, I just want the transcript. My sister is like, “No, I just want to hear the voice.” (Laughter) I said, “Okay, that’s how you like it. That’s alright.”
MR. ALBRECHT: Rick, did you have any questions?
MR. GREENE: No, my questions were on the list. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Oh, okay. One thing that, and you talked about this, and it is one thing that we have observed in the interviews that we’ve done is everybody we talked to has got very, very positive attitudes. Everyone was very positive about what happened, and what they did in spite of whatever. They saw that there was a chance to be better. They were making more money than they had before. Kattie Strickland, the lady asked how old she was. She was quite the entrepreneur. She and her husband both worked on the project, couldn’t live together, but when they did get together they had an entrepreneurial empire going. They were selling beer and cigarettes (inaudible).  They were selling cigarettes at a dollar a piece. She was saying, “I’ve never seen so much money in my life.” She was talking about sending home $300 a week!
MR. CURRY: Wow!
MR. ALBRECHT: Back to where her parents were taking care of her children. That’s unheard of money in those days! 
MR. CURRY: That’s also really thinking, isn’t it? That’s crazy.
MR. ALBRECHT: It’s amazing. Everyone we talked to was just so upbeat and so positive in spite of what discrimination they may have faced and the living conditions, which by our 21st century standards are just absolutely dismal. I tried to get people to talk about their living conditions. I said, “It’s just these little huts with a coal stove in it. Wasn’t that cold in the winter and hot in the summer?” “Oh, it was fine. We just slept in there. We were working. We’d be out doing things.” It was just like, “You people are amazing.” You are just so much more positive than I could have been in that situation. 
MR. CURRY: Maybe what happens you’ll see some person, who is down on his luck or her luck, or something, and they’ll see this and they’ll still get hope from it. That’s the whole idea. If they can under those circumstances have hope, and dreams, and aspirations, compared to what we have today, we have no reason to be complaining. It would just be like: “hey, we can do it too.” That is what will be the ultimate message.
MR. ALBRECHT: It becomes a, I don’t remember the right terms. I’m sometimes at a loss for words. They made a few little breakthroughs and those breakthroughs lead to more, where people today have so many more opportunities than they would have a generation ago.
MR. CURRY: Definitely.
MR. ALBRECHT: My train just jumped the track. (inaudible)
MR. CURRY: That’s alright. (Laughter) 
MR. ALBRECHT: It’s this aging process and I despise it. Talking about the positive…
MR. CURRY: Being positive and upbeat.
MR. GREENE: It is recorded for posterity.
MR. CURRY: (Laughter) I love that part! We don’t edit that part. 
MR. ALBRECHT: I don’t think I have a microphone on. 
MR. CURRY: (Laughter) Oh, I think you’re still in trouble, there is one on the camera.
MR. ALBRECHT: Well, it’ll come to me about the time you walk out. (Laughter) This just so far has been… Oh, I know what I was going to talk about. We were talking about the constant hope that is out there and it’s so interesting that, and I don’t know if you had a chance to do more than skim it, but the essay that I sent you…
MR. CURRY: No, I read it. 
MR. ALBRECHT: That Valeria had written was called “A New Hope”. I was real impressed with that piece. It was a very well balanced piece because it did talk about the pros and cons of the whole situation. She did such a nice job, again the title said it all, “A New Hope”, and that’s what it was, a new hope to a bunch of people. It’s been such an enlightenment for me, and Rick as well.
MR. CURRY: It’s a human story. It’s a story about the human spirit.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s exactly right.
MR. CURRY: And anybody can relate to that. That transcends all the color, race, and other stuff because basically it’s an American story. 
MR. ALBRECHT: It is and what we are also finding, it’s not just one story.
MR. CURRY: The story within the story. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Everyone’s got their own take on the whole thing and it’s just been a fascinating journey so far and I hope we find more people that were actually there. Of course those people, I think Tom Brokaw said in an interview shortly after the “Greatest Generation” had been released. He said something about the World War II vets were dying now at the rate of 1000 per day. And these people qualify. There in the same age category. That was 1000 per day then. Well, how many are left? I don’t know. I wish we had done this 10 years ago. 
MR. CURRY: We just take it forward. We can’t today. We can’t do nothing about that. Toothpaste out the tube, you can’t put it back in. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s the truth.
MR. CURRY: It’s gone. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: Thank you, thank you. I need to be brought back to earth sometimes. We good? 
MR. GREENE: Anything else?
MR. ALBRECHT: We got some good stuff there. We appreciate you taking the time to sit down and letting us get you on camera.
MR. CURRY: That’s fine.
MR. ALBRECHT: And have an opportunity to thank you. We were conducting so many interviews yesterday. Thank you so much for the questions. I used most of what…
MR. CURRY: Did they serve my purpose?
MR. ALBRECHT: The questions?
MR. CURRY: Did they really bring them out?
MR. ALBRECHT: Yeah.
MR. CURRY: I almost can anticipate the answers so I kind of would, you know. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: I kind of put some of the questions together myself sometimes. I could see where you were coming from and where you were trying to go with it. 
MR. CURRY: You make it conversational instead of a barrage of questions. That’s when you get some more information.
MR. ALBRECHT: Absolutely. You had some thoughts that you were trying to bring out that I hadn’t necessarily considered. So I appreciated your questions.
MR. CURRY: No problem.
MR. ALBRECHT: And used quite a bit of that.
MR. CURRY: Okay.
MR. ALBRECHT: I can’t say I used it verbatim.
MR. CURRY: Yeah, no. Of course. Absolutely.
MR. ALBRECHT: I put in some of my own. But we got people to talking. I didn’t want to continually prod them with questions. I just want them to open up. And they did.
MR. CURRY: I want to see this. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: If you’re interested is what I’d be happy to do is burn you some DVD copies of the raw interviews.
MR. CURRY: Absolutely, I’d love too.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’ll get them to you soon to look them at your leisure.
MR. CURRY: I would. Definitely.
MR. ALBRECHT: I can’t tell how many people I’ve promised that to. (Laughter)
MR. CURRY: (Laughter) I’ve got your cell phone. I know where to find you.

[End of Interview]