Norman, Willie, April 9, 1976, tape 1, side 2

Jon Eric Johnson: Okay well, what was the first organization that you remember being affiliated with while growing up?

Willie C. Norman: The first organization would have to be the Baptist Church my mother and dad attended.

Johnson: Any other organizations outside of the church?

Norman: Uh. Uh. Well, I fail to tell you that I had attended a one room school for for a couple of years while I was in Georgia before my mother and daddy brought me to Pittsburgh area. And one teacher taught everybody the big, the little ones and everybody. And that was-- I think that was one of the things I can remember because I can remember the first thing I learned in school. The teacher teacher took a book from one of the students the first day I was there. The first or second day I was there anyway, and she pointed to the capital letter I. She said, You know what that is? I said, no, I don't know what that is. And she pointed to my eye. She said, You know what that is? I said, Yes, that's my eye. She said, Well, that's an eye, too, and I'll never forget it. [laughs] That's actually happened. Johnson: You were, uh--

Johnson: We were talking earlier and you mentioned, uh, an organization you affiliated with, uh, uh, something to do with the socialist or communist or--

Norman: Uh, this was during my high school days when I was a student at North Braddock High School. Scott High School. Uh, the employment situation in the early 30s. You see, I went into high school in 31, and, uh, the Depression was-- had a good grip on the whole nation. And an organization was formed in the areas around Pittsburgh. It had a national, uh, it was in national scope called the Unemployed Council. It was said to be communist inspired. Uh, how factual that is I can't say, really. But I do know that that organization had a great impact on the establishment, what we call the establishment, to start giving up some funds and some food and some clothing and to stop people from being evicted, stop people from having their lights and gas turned off. Uh, because that, that was going on wholesale during those times. And I definitely remember that organization. And I got involved with that organization along with a lot of other people in the area. Blacks and Whites, of course, because the crunch was on everybody. Uh, poverty knows no, no color basis, you know, no color line. And from that organization, I got involved in the YCL Young Communist League. A lot of people probably won't remember it, but I definitely do because I was involved in it. And to me, that organization kind of opened my eyes to a lot of things that I wasn't being taught in the, in the media. I used to read a lot and. This organization gave, gave very distinct, distinction between the classes. Between, between the haves and the have nots. And I began to read a lot of their literature and understand some things.

Norman: And I used to-- in those days, we had radios. We didn't have TV. Listen to a man named Father Coughlin out of Indiana every Sunday evening. He was, he was a mouthpiece for the-- what we thought at the time was a mouthpiece for the poor. Father Coughlin was a hell of a man. He is somewhat on the same order as Father Owens Rice locally. I have a great admiration for Father Rice locally. Monsignor Rice now. But he was nationally nationally known. [phone rings] [audio cuts]. And, and I'll continue that. This why the unemployed council and reading and listening to Father Coughlin and reading Heywood Broun's column that used to appear in the daily Westbrook Pegler and these, these, these readings and things kind of opened my eyes to a lot of things that I figured were of value to me and to people, you know, social. The socialist writer Heywood Hale had-- not Heywood Hale Broun. Heywood Broun. He used to write a column called "It Seems To Me." he was a very good writer in my estimation. Other organizations, like, uh, fraternities and churches. I later joined the Presbyterian Church where I became an elder. I was a Sunday school teacher. Incidentally, uh, Virginia Union University is a Baptist home Mission Society school. I studied Bible history there. Uh, however, I never joined the Baptist church. The only church I ever joined in my life. I never will join another one because I don't approve of organized Christianity. Uh, I got out of the church. As I said, I was a Sunday school teacher and an elder in the Presbyterian Church.

Johnson: That's pretty-- just, uh, it's pretty interesting. You mentioned organized Christianity and how you're opposed to it. Why?

Norman: Why? Its, uh-- Johnson: share it with us. Norman: I'll share my views with you. Johnson: Please do. Norman: Yeah. Uh, organized Christianity is a, uh. To me, it's, it's, it's a kind of a false doctrine. It's a, it's a misnomer. I read up on the Nicene Council 300 years after Christ was was dead and buried, and Christ was only a prophet. Christ wasn't-- uh, uh, if you believe in the Trinity, then you, you go with it, you know. But I don't believe in the Trinity. The Trinity is fictional. There's where, there's where you're splitting hairs if you've got to believe in the Trinity. The Trinity is, uh, is so unrealistic to me. To me, understand. Uh, because, um, it just can't be. It's, uh. Christ was born by word, shall we say, you know, And this is physically impossible. This is physically impossible. Now-- and the Trinity came out of the Nicene Council about 300 years after Christ was dead and buried when they tried to organize the Christian church. And the ironic part about Christ to me is that Christ was a Jew. Peter was a Jew. Paul was a Jew. And none of the Jews accept Christianity. They wanted no parts of Christianity. Even today, you know. Some people may say, well, hey, Jesus Christ. He said, Yeah. He was a big man in my church, too. You know, this is in the vernacular. But when you deal into it and I used to spend a lot of nights, I went to the Catholic Church in Wilkinsburg and Saint James Church. They have a beautiful library over there. And I got permission to roam through that library and read and read and read and look. I could never find anything that satisfied my desires that Christ himself, as we're taught that he was, was God, except the Trinity.

Norman: And the Trinity was a document. A document now agreed upon at the Nicene Council by church people and the Saint James version of the Bible that we study today was not interpreted by the people that wrote it. The Greeks wrote it, and the British over on there-- sitting over on the British Isles interpret it to their own advantage, I'll say. I'll use that term. Okay? Johnson: Very well. Norman: And the Saint James version was documented by a man who was a whoremonger. For his approval now, because he was the king. Understand, he was a whoremonger. He had bastard babies. He had, he had he had a lair of women. Plus a queen, you know. And we're studying that. And we're asking our people today, at this day and age, to accept that as, as authentic. You know, it just can't be. It just cannot be. You violate every law of nature. How did how did we arrive here? By the seed of a man and the seed of a woman. Nature says there has to be the seed of a man and a seed of a woman. To create conception. Do you hear what I'm saying? Now but Christ, the one and only, that we're supposed to believe was the 3 in 1, was not conceived this way. And of all the magnificent scholars and students down through the ages, if you go back 5000 years, can no one. There's no one that has a history and a record of any man that has ever been to heaven and come back and told you about it. It's a myth. If you believe in Santa Claus, you've got to believe in that. If you don't believe in Santa Claus, then you've got to take a second look at that. Johnson: Very well put. That's rather profound.

Norman: Very profound. I have to be profound on it because it's, it's-- I tell you what it is. It's one of the greatest brainwashing jobs that's ever been been put on on the face of the Earth by, by human beings or by a group of human beings. This is true.

Johnson: Okay.

Norman: If you want to let it alone. That's good, though.

Johnson: Just jump back to organizations briefly. Any any of these organizations that you were affiliated with in the past or are affiliated with today, have they ever rendered you aid when you needed it?

Norman: Uh, I would have to say no. Now, like I stated previously, I'm a Three Letter Mason. Okay. My wife sitting in there in the room, she and I are buying a home. We paid on that house 12 years. I got in a union brawl. I was kind of disfranchised and run off of jobs. Companies were called and told not to hire me. We lost that home after 12 years. Our furniture was put in the streets. I called brothers. Who are sworn to protect each other. I couldn't get a dime's worth of help from but two brothers. I got 50 bucks from one and $35 from the other. My furniture is sitting in the streets right on Blackadore here in Homewood.

Norman: Okay.

Norman: So that's, that's the, that's the amount of money, monetary value that it had. Okay. But I don't condemn I don't condemn the brothers. Everybody strapped with his own problem. Okay. I'll buy that. But I think in times of a crisis, there should be some way where if you're a brother, you can come to another brother's rescue, especially if we're all poor people. You know, [Johnson: Right] we have to we have to kind of pitch in a few bucks or some manpower or renovate a room or do something to to to take care of another brother. This is my belief. Now, the Christian church don't even help you. The Christian church won't even help you. They'll send you to the relief office down the blue building downtown. That's where they'll send you. So fraternally, uh, I would say it's mostly a social thing with a religious connotation. Labor organizations are on the other side of the street. They're. They're fighting for economics and for political advantage. This is the way I see them, that they got to look another direction very soon. Labor organizations I'm talking about now, they got to look at brotherhood and, uh, the human aspect of it. This is my belief.

Johnson: Okay. Obviously, from what you've said thus far, you're very active in labor unions or in in labor movement or in your particular union. Norman: Yeah. Johnson: Now, if elected president of your local. Uh, what, uh, new philosophy or doctrine will you hope to implement to substantiate what you just said to make some positivechanges ?

Norman: Well, I have very, very strong feelings in a lot of areas. Now, our present president has been in our-- been in the presidency for the past nine years. Uh, there have been no programs instituted in the organization to reach in that direction, which I just mentioned, like brotherhood, humanism, you know. It's all politics and let's get a job. If we don't have any jobs, let's look for some jobs, you know, and let's keep the ball rolling in that area. Now, we we call each other brother in our labor organization. We address each other as a brother. We grab hands and shake hands and call each other brothers. In the church it's the same thing, you know. But brotherhood and humanism doesn't exist in the hierarchy of labor organizations. Like I said, they're economically involved and politically involved. This is for big stakes in-- organized labor is big business. You know, just like US Steel or Westinghouse. Now, it's my belief and my thinking that organized labor has to look in the direction of humanism. Here's what I'm trying to say. Now, we've had brothers that have heart attacks, fires and completely wiped out, evictions, children dropping out of school for lack of 2 or $300, and no one is concerned. Now, I was on a job where a brother got burned out one morning. We took up $600 for that brother that week. This was a substantial help to he and his family. Right up here in East Liberty. Now, I'm saying this and I'm telling my, my constituency in the organization that we must if we're to be brothers, we must begin to say we got to create a what we call a-- I call a distress fund. This is in my union literature. We've got to be able to immediately, in the case of a distressed person or a family who is a member of this local, immediately come to their aid, check the genuincy of the distress call, find out whether it's a genuine call or not, and immediately be able to hand that family 2 $300 so they can get out of the streets or so they can take care of that that man's family until his relief checks or what have you, start coming his way.

Norman: There's a woman with four kids and her husband's laid up with a heart attack. By the time she starts to get money from the, from the, from the pension and welfare fund, she's out. She's out in the streets. But where is that sum, the immediate sum necessary to tide her over until his checks start coming? We have a fund for that set up through what we call pension and welfare that takes care of hospitalization too. It also takes care of man after he's retired. A certain amount. The amount-- the more you have in, the more you get on your pension. Okay. And we have nothing to bridge that gap and we've got to find a way to put something in escrow by by volunteer offerings to bridge that gap. And at every union meeting, should I become president, there's going to be some money taken up called the distressed fund. And I don't want it to go over a thousand. If we get a thousand in the Treasury, we cut it off and I hope we don't-- we'll never have to use it, but we will have to use it. Okay. Now, if we should have to have to use 3 or $400 of that money for a distressed case, then we start recollecting. And while that when it reaches a thousand, we discontinue. This is the format that I have in mind.

Johnson: You've obviously brought this up in the union meetings or to some of your constituents.

Norman: I brought it up in the meetings. I've expounded on it at various meetings. I've written written letters to the membership relating to this very thing.

Johnson: What has been what has been the general reaction?

Norman: The general reaction has been warmly received. But how are you going to how are you going to, you know, handle it? And my plan is that one elected officer should be the chairman of the distress fund. Okay. With two volunteer brothers from the rank and file, work with him to check out any distress call and to immediately grab this money when they find it to be genuine and run it to this man or to this woman or to this, this family. And it's, it's not reimbursable. It's a gift from the membership.

Johnson: Okay. Okay. The Great Depression of 1930, 1930s, they had an effect on almost everyone at that time who was around. And of course, being young man myself, I wasn't there. So I would only have to, uh, talk to people who are older than myself to, to really appreciate it. You mentioned briefly that how hard it was back then, but could you could you be more specific and say and just, you know, in general, what was the Great Depression to someone like me who wasn't there?

Norman: Oh, the Great Depression was just what-- just what the word said. It was a Great Depression. Mills, factories, business institutions collapsed. The stock market crashed. I was caddying when it happened, and I'll never forget it because we used to get a-- what we called then was a generous tip would be 25 to 35 cents. 50 cents was a big tip from the man that you caddied for. Tips cut down. Membership fell off at the golf course. People lost businesses. A lot of people committed suicides because they were bankrupt. I saw people in soup lines. Incidentally, I was, I was a participant in the first picket line ever put around the county office building during the 30s with people-- with a group of people from Braddock, North Braddock, Rankin, Swissvale, and that general area begging for food. I was a participant in that in that picket. Right on Grand Street in Pittsburgh. They had police on horses and those days they had a lot of police ride horses and they had those-- what we call headache sticks. And they were very generous with them. And and we came down in trucks. We didn't get the streetcars. They had streetcars in those days. You know. Johnson: They still have them [laughs]. Norman: Yeah, Yeah. But I mean, running through Braddock, Rankin, North Braddock going out to Wilmerding, they had streetcars.

Norman: We went in coal trucks. Trucks and old raggedy cars. And it was a county wide thing, organized by the organization that I previously mentioned called the Unemployed Councils. And it had a great impact. And they also had Father Coxey's Hungry March. We had Shanty Town in Pittsburgh where people had lost their homes and they made homes in a section of Pittsburgh down here called Shanty Town. Out of anything they could get their hands on. Planks, cardboard, uh, waste materials, scraps of all kinds. I saw people resole their shoes with old automobile tires. This was common. I've seen this with my own eyes. I'm not exaggerating. I've seen people in soup lines with buckets, what we call a galvanized bucket that you use to scrub the floor with today. They would go down and get it in the soup line and take soup back home for their families. And you had to go to the police station in those days for-- that was the headquarters. Every borough, every township, every village and hamlet in the outlying areas. You had to go to the police station to get this food. Free food. And I also have seen a lot of people will will verify this. The old timers, where if you were an employee of the US Steel, you could get food that the US Steel bought through Union supply who was a big outlet for the steel and the manufacturing concerns in the area.

Norman: They supplied the food to US Steel. Us Steel would give it to the people that worked for them and the US Steel truck would deliver it to your home. Sacks of flour, sacks of sugar, sacks of potatoes, canned meat, canned beef and stuff that they had bought from surplus from the federal government who had had it in storage for years for for for army purposes. For to feed the soldiers. Great big cans of beef. Cans, I guess they must have weighed 5 pounds and it was all ground up, chipped up beef. You made hash, you made what we might call today ground, you know, when you grind up meat and make it like in a ball. Johnson: hamburger. Norman: Hamburger. Yeah. They made a lot of hash and those great big cans as large as that container on your stove there. And formerly US army surplus stuff. And the mills bought it and the states bought it and distributed it through the the county agency. We didn't have the welfare structures that we have today. There was no cash money. We were on relief.

Norman: After a short time there, we got on relief to like everybody else. You got a certificate according to the number in your family. So, for instance, you had ten in your family. You got a certificate to take it to the local grocers with your signature and your wife's signature. And the grocer would accept that certificate and give you the said amount on that certificate, like $15 with the groceries. Okay. No cash money, no check, only a certificate. That's what we got. And that's how we got food. Through certificates issued by the state, through the welfare agency here in the city of Pittsburgh. There was a Black woman in charge of that agency at that time. I've forgotten her name. She's dead and gone now, of course. And she had assistance, of course. You know, the social worker that we know today or the DPA worker that we know today was nonexistent. And these people worked through a liaison officer directly with the local police station. And that's where you lined up and got your food, shoes, blankets, and everything. And even soup lines. They had stoves and things in there to cook soup. They cooked there half of the night. Out on Braddock Avenue in Braddock. I've seen this with my own eyes.

Johnson: It sounds like a a hassle.

Norman: It was a hassle. It was tragic. But it finally worked itself out. It had to. When President Roosevelt was elected, there had to be a drastic, very drastic turnaround in the whole system and everything else because the country was in trouble. They had a march on Washington, and MacArthur and his gang up there guarded Washington and they had quite a bit of trouble there. They had trouble in there, because the country was on the verge of collapse. We had troubles.

Johnson: Since you've moved here to Pittsburgh, have you maintained your contact with your family down in Georgia? And to what degree? Norman: Some of them.

Norman: Correspondence. I haven't been back, but all of my all the rest of my family have. I never found time, seemingly. I always put it off today until tomorrow, or next year, until next year. I haven't been back.

Johnson: You've never had-- you've never had any, uh, family reunions or anything?

Norman: No, we've never had a family reunion. But I have met a number of my relatives over in New Jersey and Philadelphia and here in the Pittsburgh area. Quite a few of them have come where we say coming up North from, uh, from Georgia since then.

Johnson: After the Depression and with the, uh, coming on of World War Two. How were the changes, You know, how were Blacks specifically, uh, affected by the war? What were the attitudes back then?

Norman: Uh, the attitudes didn't change that much. We still live in a racist society, you know. But racism during the early days of the war and even immediately after the war was still here. Racist attitudes, racist habits still maintain their, their posture. Maybe not as, as, as vocal, shall we say, because, uh, lynchings in the South, uh, subsided. Burnings, like burning people's homes, Black activist's homes and things like that. Of course, you. I know you're familiar or you've read about, uh, bombing of churches and things during Martin Luther King's time. But the federal government began to take a second look at activities of that nature. Uh, this was not brought about to my way of thinking by pressures from within so much as pressures from without. And when I say without, I mean outside the continental United States. Because, you know, we preach-- and when I say we, I mean the United States now. We preach a whole lot of freedom and liberty and justice. But then when you have bombings of the nature that I refer to, so many lynchings and so much disfranchising of theBblack man. Uh, people abroad ask questions, and this has had a great impact on the thinking of our federal upper leaders at the top level in our federal federal government.

<><> START HERE <><> Norman: And then the changes started to come about. The real changes, the real changes in the United States. Not 100% the fruit of the activities of the Blacks and the so-called White liberals in the United States. There's a great, great element outside the continental United States that has an effect on these changes, too, for for economic reasons. It's a very broad thing to get into. But I've watched this thing, like I said, I-- my eyes were opened to some of these things when I first got into the YCL and later in Washington, DC with the, uh-- I was still a member of the YCL and the Communist Party and Communist literature and socialist literature by a lot of the writers and listening to people like Father Coughlin and people like that. And incidentally, there's a hell of a book by Pierre Van Paassen, uh, that relates to a lot of this, uh, outside pressures and the activities of people involved at the upper echelon in our government that will tell you things If you can just read between the lines.

Johnson: Of lynchings and bombings that you've mentioned, uh, were lynching, lynchings and bombings, uh, predominant back, uh, in the days of World War Two, or do they still lynch people? Norman: Yeah. Yeah. Johnson: Do you remember--

Norman: Prior to that, too

Johnson: Do you remember any, any lynchings that you've heard about, like here in the Pittsburgh area?

Norman: No, no, no, no. Not here in the Pittsburgh area. I've seen crosses burned in the Pittsburgh area when I was a kid at the same cemetery where I say I earned my first whole dollar. And in that same cemetery, there was only 6 or 8 blocks from my home. When I was a kid, I saw crosses being burned there.

Johnson: Was the Black community intimidated then?

Norman: Uh, not that much, I don't think. I think it was, uh. It was a dying gesture on the part of the Ku Klux Klan who was supposed to have a strong headquarters in the Wilkinsburg area. Because the Blacks in my area, then we're pretty well loaded. They were loaded for bear, you know. And this was a this was a threat at the at the Catholic community to where we live. They were, they were almost all Catholics, you know, the Blacks and the ethnic groups in my community.

Johnson: Okay aspects of life in Pittsburgh which came into conflict-- which came into direct conflict with your upbringing.

Norman: Conflicts. Aspects of conflicts.

Johnson: Which came into direct conflict with your upbringing.

Norman: Uh, I'm not too clear on what you're saying. Really.

Johnson: If your parents told you one thing, you went out in the street and you saw another thing. How would you react to that?

Norman: Uh, I would have to go with my parents thinking as a rule. Because I had great admiration for my mother and my daddy. And I I would believe what mother and daddy told me about, about most things. Unless, it was something that, uh, was low keyed and very personal.