Lowery, Keith

              
ORAL HISTORY OF KEITH LOWERY
Interviewed by Chris Albrecht
Filmed by Rick Greene
Filmed by Significant Productions
November 3, 2005
Transcribed by Jordan Reed
 
MR. GREENE: We’re good to go.
MR. ALBRECHT: The first thing I would like to do, though, is just to document it so we know what is on the tape here. Tell me your full name and where you live please.
MR. LOWERY: James Keith Lowery. I live at 111 Fulton Lane, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
MR. ALBRECHT: Thank you very much, Sir. Now start over on that story you started to tell me. 
MR. LOWERY: When I first came to work out here and they were into construction, they brought in Black carpenters and they brought in their tools and everything and they had brand new white coveralls on. They built sort of a tent where they would be out of the weather and the general foreman they had would sing a song and everybody would hit the nail at the same time. Now, I don’t know all the stories, but it just fascinated me to hear. Then they brought in Black brick layers and they worked more than 800 bricks a day. Then they brought in Indian steel riggers from New York and they did an awful lot of work. Like I said it was fascinating to see all this.
MR. ALBRECHT: When did you come to Oak Ridge? What year did you come here?
MR. LOWERY: I came here December 27, ’43.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you do? What was your work?
MR. LOWERY: I worked in payroll for J.A. Jones Construction Company at first. I left them and went to work for Ford, Bacon and Davis in May 6, 1944. We were intermingled with Carbide employees and Ford, Bacon, and Davis employees. 
MR. ALBRECHT: What, help me out on these questions here because I want to try to keep them focused back to our main story line. But I am curious, so what made you decide to come work on the Project? How did you hear about it? What brought you here?
MR. LOWERY: It was little bit of stuff in the paper about it. I was a 4-F and the Army didn’t want me, and there were three others that I was in school with and we all came to Oak Ridge at the same time. We really didn’t know what we were doing. There were train loads of stuff was coming in and it didn’t look like anything was going out. It was a great feeling that we were trying to do something for the war effort.
MR. ALBRECHT: What… Sorry.
MR. GREENE: I was just going to say you were telling some stories earlier about, I know the carpenters is one of them. Are there other experiences and things that you could tell us about, observations about Black or other minority workers here during the Manhattan Project?
MR. LOWERY: There were separate drinking fountains. I did talk to one Black girl from Morristown, Tennessee, and she had graduated from a two year college, Morristown Normand Industrial College, at that time. Actually, she knew more than some of the girls that were working in the lab about chemistry. I would talk to her because we were both from the same town.  Mostly the Blacks were janitorial services and brick layers or laborers, did mostly manual labor.
MR. ALBRECHT: What about the young lady that you mentioned that came from Morristown that you said she had a pretty good background and knew as much chemistry as some of these others, what type of work was she doing?
MR. LOWERY: She was a janitor and came up through in the lab and came in, and clean the floor, empty the waste cans, and stuff like that. Since she was from my hometown, I use to talk to her quite a bit, when she come through. 
MR. ALBRECHT: So she never put that knowledge to work?
MR. LOWERY: No.
MR. GREENE: Do you think there was, we kind of broke that question up; it goes right along with what Ms. Ayers was saying about it didn’t matter if you had degrees or not. Can you think of another way to ask that that gets… you know what I’m getting at? Here is a Black girl that had a two year degree but she was still a janitor. Is that correct?
MR. LOWERY: Yes.
RICK: Okay.
MR. ALBRECHT: What I would like you to do, and I’m kind of forcing the issue here, I would like you to tell us, to say there was a young lady from my hometown, a Black gal who had this two year degree and she had knowledge of chemistry and knew as much as a lot of the people working in the lab, but she could not work in the labs. If you could kind of tell us all in one swoop like that, that would be great. 
MR. LOWERY: Okay.
MR. ALBRECHT: Go ahead.
MR. LOWERY: There was a Black girl that was a janitor in the lab at K-25 and she was a graduate of Morristown Normand Industrial College, which was a Black school in Morristown, Tennessee. She had a two year associate degree. She and I would talk and she knew a lot more chemistry than some of the girls that were doing analysis in the lab. A lot of it was cut and dry like cooking, but she and I would talk when she came around. I enjoyed talking to her and her knowledge of what we were doing. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Was she frustrated?
MR. LOWERY: She didn’t seem to be frustrated at the beginning. But she did seem like that toward the, I guess some time after about a year. She couldn’t move into another job or stuff like that. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Did she stay here in Oak Ridge? Did she continue working?
MR. LOWERY: I don’t think so. When the war was over and they started closing labs, terminating people, I lost contact with her then. Unfortunately, I do not remember her name. 
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s good. That’s going to be useful to help tell the story. What examples of, you mentioned the drinking fountains that were for colored as the signs typically said. What other examples of discrimination did you see when you were working here? How did you feel about that?
MR. LOWERY: I could see a lot of the discrimination by Tennessee law. Women couldn’t work more than 10 hours a day and various things like that. It was a little bit frustrating to me. I grew up in Morristown, Tennessee, and I use to run around with a Black boy that wound up as a doctor in California, in Los Angeles. I went to see him in 1965. He and I were always good friends and I didn’t feel like, discrimination or anything like that, I didn’t like it. They did have Black employees working in janitorial that could not read or write. The Army didn’t want them. Some of them could only make an “X” for their name, which I happen to know about some of them. It was very interesting and like I said it was a little bit frustrating to know about the people they wouldn’t hire on a better job. 
MR. ALBRECHT: What other examples of segregation did you see taking place here at Oak Ridge? As far as I know they had different recreation center, they couldn’t eat at certain places. What other examples did you see at that time?
MR. LOWERY: Well, they did not go to the back of the bus like they did some places. They did bring some in and teach them mechanics so they could work on automobiles, and they brought some in to do some instrument work, but it was not highly technical. Other than that, it was a very much enlightening experience, what was going on. 
MR. GREENE: You mentioned the Indians. These were Native American Indians?
MR. LOWERY: These were Native American Indians. 
MR. ALBRECHT: You said they came from New York. Did they work on skyscrapers and stuff in New York? 
MR. LOWERY: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: Tell us a little about that.
MR. LOWERY: Well, I don’t know how many they brought in, but they brought their own foreman, and their own general foreman…
MR. ALBRECHT: Excuse me, sorry, let’s start over and tell us that you’re talking about Native American Indians that came in.
MR. LOWERY: They brought in Native American Indians from New York and they were steel riggers and they brought them in and they did the steel rigging for K-25 and 27. They also worked over at X-10. They would, had their, like I said their own general foreman, and he would fuss at them with a microphone. Would you like another little history story? He smoked cigars, big ole cigars, but the white guys use to say they fought the steel and wouldn’t wait until the cranes got them in place and all that sort of stuff. But there was camaraderie with them.
MR. ALBRECHT: How were the Indians treated? Were they treated better than the Black workers?
MR. LOWERY: Yes, they were. They did have a separate place for them to stay while they were here. I don’t remember exactly how long they were on the job out here. Sometimes they would just like the Black carpenters they would up and they’d be gone. They were intermingled with Ford, Bacon, and Davis and Carbide Nuclear employees. 
MR. ALBRECHT: What, you saw a lot that went on. Do you have a favorite story about the Manhattan Project, or that time?
MR. LOWERY: My boss was reading a book, can I tell this about nuclear physics?
MR. ALBRECHT: Fine with me.
MR. LOWERY: He had a book on nuclear physics by Poland and Davidson, and he kept this book on his desk. Well, I had a five color code badge and I was all over the place. I started trying to put two and two together. Now, contrary to what they say about five people knowing what was going on out here, there were a lot of people that knew, especially those in the lab. If people will remember, one of the engineers that I ran around with was a graduate of Tusculum College. He was from Hoboken, New Jersey. He and I would get to talk about what was going on in the car, but only when nobody else was around. After they dropped the first bomb, they did not say anything about radiation for several days. He and I were talking about it in the shower and somebody came in and we shut up. We weren’t too sure they weren’t going to say anything about it. That’s a small story, but that’s the fact.
MR. ALBRECHT: Fascinating stuff. So, the fact that an atomic bomb was being worked on really wasn’t that big of a secret, at least here within the fence. 
MR. LOWERY: There were quite a few people that knew. I got recruited for security on the side. They scared me to death whenever they called me up and agent so-and-so wanted to come talk to me. I thought, “What did I say and where did I say it?” You could watch and people talked too much, and you could turn them in. You were suppose to wear your badge on the upper left hand side of your body, up close to your heart. They didn’t strictly adhere to that rule, but they might get onto you coming in the gate if you had your badge in your hand or some other part of your body, instead of there. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Did, we probably asked this and I don’t remember. I’ve asked so many questions today. Did you live here, or did you commute in from Morristown?
MR. LOWERY: I commuted in from Knoxville. We had a government station wagon we drove to and from Knoxville. It was full of people and they had not built anything for us to live in. They had built what they call barracks, Army barracks down close to K-25 at the visitor’s overlook. They built three barracks which were right close to the cafeteria. There was another cafeteria further up that they brought in a Japanese Zero that they had shot down at some place and put it up on one side of the cafeteria and a German Half-Track on the other side. Built a little fence around it. This was suppose to tell you to help the war effort, to really do it. I did get a piece off the airplane, which I’m going to keep. 
MR. ALBRECHT: How did you do that?
MR. LOWERY: I got a little pair of pliers and climbed over the fence when it got a little dark and cuts a piece off the plane. A very small piece. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Wonder whatever happened to the plane. 
MR. LOWERY: I don’t know, but they put them around different cafeterias. One time during the war, they brought in some tents up at Blankenship Field, and they brought in GIs and it was big blood drive. There were thousands of people up there lined up giving blood. They needed the plasma was what they primarily talking about. They had people lying on Army cots looked like their leg was off and maybe the bone was sticking out. Like I said, it was pretty interesting. I lived in Deerborn Hall down about where the YW is right now. They started out at North Alabama in the east part of Oak Ridge and they built five dormitories all those started with an A. Then the next one was down at Jackson Square, they started with a B. Down near close to Methodist Medical Center, was a C. I lived in Deerborn Hall, which there were five D’s there, and then there were five E’s right below it. They kept it grouped to five. I’ll tell you another little story. The Army was running this place. They decided that they were going to put Stoker fire things in the dormitory, or barracks as they referred to them. When they tore them down, cut it out, they didn’t get it all back going. So, they gave us extra blankets. We were trying to keep warm in the dormitory without any heat. I mean it was cold. There was a lot of fussing going on, just like any kind of job I guess. It was really something else. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Let me ask you a question. I want to back up to that blood drive that you talked about. And again we’re looking at the role of Blacks that worked in here. Did Blacks, were they allowed to donate blood?
MR. LOWERY: I really don’t know, but I don’t remember seeing any of them there. I remember being there, but I don’t remember seeing any Blacks. Let me tell you this. I do know that the hutments that were over here in this area and also at K-25, they had five Blacks to each one of the hutments mostly, and all they had was a coal fire stove in the center of it. They had a separate cafeteria that they ate at. There wasn’t any, I don’t remember any of them that worked in the cafeteria itself. Especially where the whites ate. I about forgot about that one. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Those hutments look like pretty, pretty tough places to live. 
MR. LOWERY: Yeah, they was no bathroom right in them, you had to go down the boardwalk to go to the restroom. They sort of had them in clusters. I’ve got aerial photographs of the places where they have some of them in clusters like that. They didn’t have any Black guards that I know of here. They were pretty much limited on what jobs they did give them. 
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s helpful stuff. We talked about what type of jobs Blacks had. Oh, my goodness, let’s see. 
[Break in tape]
MR. GREENE: Okay.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay. 
MR. LOWERY: In 1963, they brought in an excursion train from Chattanooga. They cut the fence down close to the cafeteria at K-25 so that they could come in, made special arrangements for the people to come in. The civic clubs in town were given the job by the Chamber of Commerce to get booklets and stuff about Oak Ridge. I belonged to the Lion’s Club, the Oak Ridge Lion’s Club, and I knew Ed Stokley, who was a PR person for AEC at the time. He was from Newport and I happened to know him. My job was to get the material that would (inaudible) so to get more people on this excursion train. So I came up town to AEC and I took one of everything that I could get a hold of, little booklets, photographs and everything. I just picked a few of the booklets that the AEC would furnish and put it in a package. We put them in a package for the people that rode the excursion train. I didn’t get all my material back, but I got most of it back. This is how I wound up with a lot of this stuff. 
MR. ALBRECHT: Good story. I think we have got what we need from here for right now…

[End of Interview]