Milford

So, you arrived at Tuskegee [Tuskegee Army Airfield; Sharpe Field, Tuskegee, Alabama] in what year? Do you remember?$$Oh yeah. It was in December 1941, and I stepped out nine o'clock at night into two-and-a-half inches of mud because we were disillusioned. You see, when I was in West Chester [West Chester State Teachers College; West Chester University of Pennsylvania, West Chester, Pennsylvania] and I saw the add about volunteer and serve, there were tennis courts and swimming pools, and more than that, they had some pretty women in there with 'em and they said Tuskegee Institute [Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, Alabama] was just shortly a little distance from it and, man, that was all good so I wanted to fly but it was good that I was gonna be down there with these women in the tennis courts and (unclear) swimming. And we got out there and we were twenty-five miles back in the woods from Tuskegee, and there wasn't nothing there but red, red, red clay. And I stepped down into this clay up to my ankles nine o'clock at night, no lights, no nothing, and got into a truck and rode to me. To me, it seemed like ten miles on those four-by-fours that the [U.S.] Army has, all rough, and we were all talking about I want to see what Tuskegee Airfield looks like, and so when we got out of the trucks and looked around, there wasn't any air field. They hadn't built it. They were building it. And we had to sleep in tents. They were tents that were built with a wooden floor that came up to about that high, about three feet high, boarded around, then the rest of it was a tent and in the center was a stove that you could put wooden coal in to keep you warm. That's what we had. And if you didn't have that, then you had to sleep out on the ground. I wasn't one of those lucky people who slept on the ground. I was in the first car, so I slept in the tent. There were some of the guys that had to sleep in pup tents on the ground out that night. But we were in that for about, I would say, about three weeks, three or four weeks, just in that. They were building the Tuskegee, I saw 'em build the runway. To landscape they brought grass in. This was all red mud. They didn't have water there. We had to get the water out of the water trucks that the Army would bring in, and we'd get our water. And we washed ourselves like the guys do when they're out in combat. They gave us a helmet and we'd wash--the helmet--wash our face in the helmet and do it, and we did that for about three weeks until they built it up, and we saw Tuskegee built by the first of us, I mean the most of us--were from the North in that group that I went down with, and we had never seen black craftsmen. This base was built in every way by all black craftsmen. It was McKissack & McKissack, out of Memphis, Tennessee. And it was amazing to see this, and they built it and they had it done in about three months. Then we were there.$The hospitals in this state [Delaware] were segregated. Our NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] got a letter from the [U.S.] Department of Health, Education and Welfare [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] saying, "Tell us about the hospitals in your state and let us know how their treatment for patients are." They were getting federal funds. Well, I had an expert (unclear) with me. My wife [Jane Watson Mitchell], she was director of nurses at State Hospital [Delaware State Hospital, Wilmington, Delaware], so I didn't have to ask anybody. If I go in there, I'm not an expert. I don't know. I can see where patients are, but somebody else--so I have to say, "Is it all right if my wife goes." They said, "Take anybody you wish. Just give us the information. Well, we started at the main places, Wilmington Hospital [Wilmington, Delaware]. The patients in all hospitals in the state were seated black patients in the cellar where the coal is, where they have all the equipment that's going on. The patients were in the cellar. If you had the mumps, you were in the cellar. If you had given birth to a child, you were in the cellar. There was no segregation according to what your ailment was. You were there if you were black. You were just in there. If there wasn't any room for you, you were in the hallway. For instance, down at the Milford Hospital [Bayhealth Milford Memorial Hospital, Milford, Delaware], my home, when we went there, the patients down in the cellar, one per room was right next to where the coal bin was. They used the coal for the furnace and when that patient would sit up in bed, if he sat up suddenly he'd hit his head on the pipes going above him. This is what they were like. Or a patient would be out in the hallway right there with plenty of room upstairs, so when we went down there, the place that really, really changed, we went to Beebe hospital [Beebe Medical Center] down in Lewes, Delaware. I had this letter from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. I always liked to have an ace in the hole. I liked you to run yourself up on it and you don't know what I got, and then you tell me no, then I'll pull my ace out, or I don't tell 'em--come here for a second--I said, "I would like to look and see how your patients, Negro patients, are treated here and I'd like to see how, what kind of treatment they're getting." The director of nurses told me, "No, we can't do anything like that." I said, "Well, where is the director of the hospital, because I would like to know exactly--you get federal funds and I want to know how patients are," so my wife takes over from there, "Jane Mitchell, director of nurses at Delaware State Hospital, and we're here to look at this." "Well, I can't do that." "Oh," I said, "Are you sure you can't just let me go see? Oh," I said, "Well, read this, then, and see what you think about that." They'd read that letter where it said we want to know how our federal funds are being spent and you will give us the information as to whether we will keep the score. She said, "Oh, my goodness, I better get Dr. Beebe [ph.]." I said, "It's all right with me." So, Dr. Beebe was also a member of the board of trustees of one of the banks. Said, "He's in a bank meeting." I said, "Get him out, get him out, or else I'm gonna have a long thing for you." They got him out and he comes down and she said, "This is Mr. [HistoryMaker Littleton Mitchell] and Mrs. Mitchell, and they want to visit our hospital." He said, "Well, you know they can't do it." She said, "Dr. Beebe, you better read this first." He read it and he said, "Take 'em through." So we looked and it was the same there. They were down in the cellar, pipes with their heads where they come up and sit up, when they sat up to eat the meal, they did like this to keep from hitting their head on the pipe. They had to go back down like that. So, my statement was, "Within one month, we want the (unclear) integrated." He said, "Oh, I don't know whether we can do that." We went back in one month; they were integrated, every hospital in the state. Federal funds, that's what it does. Federal funds.