Interview of Lou Diggs

Abstract

Historian, archivist, and writer Louis S. Diggs shares how his upbringing in Baltimore City, along with his services in the military and public education system, informed his work in chronicling the legacies of African American communities and war veterans in Baltimore County. Starting from his childhood and high school career, Louis talks about leaving home and immediately joining the military at age 18 where despite being integrated nationally in 1947, was still very much segregated by his accounts. After his time in the military, Louis talks about his work being a substitute teacher in Catonsville and how after conducting a lesson on family history and ancestry one day, he learned that the majority of his students (who were black) did not know much about their own history. With little to no resources detailing African American history in Catonsville and Baltimore County, Louis decided to begin his archival work and write his first book It All Started on Winter's Lane, so that young black children in the area could grow up and learn about their history, as Louis states, that is critical to one's growth and identity. He then goes on to talk about the archival work he's been doing after It All Started on Winter's Lane, which includes conducting oral history interviews with Baltimore County residents, writing and publishing several more books on Catonsville and Baltimore County history, and the collaboration with Baltimore County Planner Lenwood Johnson to create the Diggs-Johnson Musuem, a museum that explores Baltimore County's African American history and heritage.This interview was conducted during the 2021 Interdisciplinary CoLab as part of the project, From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter: Oral Histories of the Lived Experience in Baltimore. Transcript is edited.From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter: Oral Histories of the Lived Experience in Baltimore Date: 7 June 2021 Interviewer: Kayla Brooks Transcription: Kayla Brooks Interviewee: Louis S. Diggs Length: 02:42:21 ________________ KB = Kayla Brooks (Interviewer) LD = Louis Diggs (Interviewee) E = Elizabeth (Louis Diggs’ wife) ________________ 00:00:00 KB: Hello, this is Kayla Brooks from University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Summer Colab Project “From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter: Oral Histories of the Lived Experience in Baltimore”. Today is June 7th, 2021 and I will be interviewing Louis Diggs. Louis Diggs is a writer and historian who chronicles the legacy of Baltimore County’s African American community and serves as an honorary board member of the Historical Society of Baltimore County. Following a 20 year military career as a veteran of an all-black unit, he worked 19 years as an educator in the D.C. public school system and as a substitute teacher at Catonsville High School. Diggs teamed up with fellow historian Lenwood Johnson to track down the last standing trustee of Cherry Hill A.U.M.P. Church and made a promise to preserve its function and history. This building started out as land residential shacks for slaves who had bought their way out of slavery in Baltimore County area and became a meeting house for local black laborers and buying grounds. He was then granted $400,000 from Delegate Adrienne Jones for the complete renovation and conversion of the church into the “Louis S. Diggs and Lenwood Johnson Mini-Museum of African American History in Baltimore County '' which formally began in 2014. Diggs emphasizes the importance of tracing Black family ancestry in his work, an example of this being interviews he conducted with Baltimore County residents whose ancestors served in the Civil War. As times change, he works towards transitioning from preserving history through paper records and artifacts to making historical information accessible in online spaces. So, it's very nice to meet you and I'm so excited to do the interview today with you. Is there anything you want to say about yourself first before I start asking any questions? LD: Okay, yes, I think so. Look, I started off in life through a wonderful, wonderful mother. She had five babies; I was next to the youngest. She had a legal husband who I find difficult to say is my father because he abandoned this beautiful woman with all these babies. And in Baltimore when I was born in 1932, believe me African American women—especially women—there were no means to assist them and they were strictly, strictly on their own. Now, my mother, she was a teacher and she did okay. She mentioned the first couple of babies, but when it got to be five and—man, I never knew—she still had two more. My sister and I, we’re the two youngest, and we're the only two remaining of the five. But to abandon a woman that...that’s one of the worst things that African Americans can have—at least back in the ‘30s and '40s when you lived a completely different life than you live today. Let me give an example: I did not like going to school. I did not like it; I was a dreamer. I would hook school and go out to Druid Hill Park and just daydream. And as a result, I failed, and I failed, and didn’t care. Until 1950, when I failed so much, I was eighteen years old. I think I was only in the 10th grade at that time. Anyhow, I decided that things were so bad only because I did not go to school. And the bad thing about it is that: a) you just don't graduate and you are just stuck in life. You’ll never get anywhere. But: b) there was a woman, she was a police officer, but her role was to catch boys and girls like myself that do not go to school, and it stopped when you're seventeen—I think you’re mandated to go up to that age. And she had taken me and several others a couple of times down to Northwest Police Station and said, “Now, look, if you do not go to school, the boys will go to Cheltenham.” Cheltenham was a place for African American boys that are bad. When I say “bad” I mean, really...criminals. And you come out there a criminal. My only thing is that I did not go to school and I did not have any mentor. And fortunately, it just happened that I got by that. And when I turned 18, I decided that I had no choice but to leave because I knew that there could be no job for me. A high school dropout, Black in Baltimore—no, ma'am. You can really forget it. And I know it had an effect on my mental life because I was afraid of White people! I did not know White people, just a Jew on the corner. And the police, I couldn't tell you what they really look like because you're an African American boy: you encounter police, you put your head down and you don’t look at them ‘cause you can be in trouble if you look at them. And they just had these small enclaves—I was in a community called Sandtown, it's up near where the old Douglass High School is. So, anyhow, I just decided to go join the National Guard. And I understand it was an all-Black unit, and you could go during the summer and train, and if you wanted to stay in, you could stay in. If not, they would pay you to go to school. And this was pretty good for older boys. Yeah, I think you had to be sixteen or seventeen-years-old to go. And it was a way to make a little change. So, my friend said, “You lived up the street from me on Stricker Street.” We joined the Maryland National Guard, that was June 20th, 1950, and I was eighteen years old. Well, five days later, the Korean War broke out June 25th, 1950. And we were in summer camp training. And when the war broke out in August—August 19th, to be exact—the Maryland National Guard was ordered to have a transportation unit—I guess it was transportation—activated. And they activated our unit on August 19th. Now, I could have gotten out ‘cause I was still legally in school and I had not dropped out. So, sitting there, we both said that we're going to go. And next time I saw my mother—and that poor soul oh, my goodness—’cause it was this train that came in that way down North Avenue. We marched from the Fifth Regiment Armory, which is a block up behind it where African Americans soldiers in a place called Richmond Market Armory, and we actually soldered in that…we were not permitted to go into the Fifth, that was for the White soldiers. Anyhow, when I saw my mom, ‘cause she was crying, and I really looked deep into her eyes and she was saying to me, “Louis, you're making the right move.” ‘Cause I really needed to get out of Baltimore and try to make a life for myself. So anyhow, I went on to Korea. As a matter of fact, it was an entire battalion of mostly Black—because it was during the summertime, and they were coming in from all over the place just to train and they got trapped in it. And it was a good life training. They didn't treat us bad at all, they just taught you how to march. So most of everybody liked it, and most of us joined, we stayed. And I was not afraid because I was with this Black unit, so I knew to go in the army and I knew what the army was like. So they said that it was supposedly integrated. In 1947, it was actually declared integrated military. And ‘cause the National Guard was the only state and they were segregated and they kept it that way. Anyway, off we went. And I had one thing going for me: I loved to type. Oh, my goodness, I was a speed demon! Look, when I would write a book and I’d be maybe 200 pages into this book, and I don't like it, and I throw it out, and I start all over again. I never had anyone type for me. So, matter of fact, there were about 300 of us lined up on North Avenue. And the command was: “Those that know how to type, raise your hand.” So I raised my hand, of course, and I looked over and not another soul had their hand raised [laughs]. So I became what was called a company clerk—and a truck driver, we all had to drive trucks. There was a serious need for truck drivers overseas. So everything else you can do is secondary to learning how to drive a truck. So, when we got to Korea December, 1950, we were the first United States National Guard to set foot in Korea. And the ship was full of thousands of trucking units from all over the country. And I don't know how, but our unit was the absolute first one off the ship, and they broke our unit. We went with the headquarters and my company was 726. They hooked us up with the [???] headquarters and sent us to Korea. One of the other units went to Germany, and our last unit went to Virginia. So, we were all in Korea together at this time, but they separated us. And they sent our unit to the 1st Cavalry Division. And even though we did not stay with them, we, uh, we still felt...being segregated. Just to give you an idea: when the 1st CAB...after North Korea came in—and they came in November of ‘51. And when you were moving the units, you're responsible for—now, I don’t know how the White units were treated, but the Black units—first of all, we could not stay on the grounds with the 1st CAB. We had to find our own grounds. Secondly, we could not use their mess hall. And we were given—at least if they anticipated we're going to be out for two weeks—we get two weeks of C-ration or K-ration, but it was food from World War II that the cook had a big fifty-five barrel of hot water and we all threw our food in to get heated. Everything was in cans and we had to survive off that until, you know, we got back and were released from whatever unit we were in. And that was not fun. We did exactly what the army told us to do. They could have changed us to an infantry unit—anything. You really don't know where you're going to go when you go into the army. You have to take a series of tests and supposedly that would give them an idea of where to assign you to. Now we were with the actual unit. Either the infantry unit, or the [???] unit, or trucking unit, or whatever. You normally stay in that unit but, uh, you know, you had to stay. But this skill that I had, which is really good. I was a company clerk, and I took care of everything that an administrator had to happen. But I was first really a truck driver and I drove a truck. But now in ‘51, it was around...June or July, I was pulled out of my unit and put into the battalion that my unit was under. And I was surprised because they didn't have anything but White officers and Black [???]men. But that was kind of strange because I was looking to see, then, how I was going to make out with the Whites, and of course there was plenty of Whites there and I guess that must not meant too many Blacks that could type. But Lord knows, girl, I would type so fast! Being young, I could absorb a lot in my memory. And you would think that I had never looked at the keyboard. I could absorb whatever it was that I was doing and I could mentally put it in the right form, you know, whatever form was required. That took me for almost twenty-one years through the army. I have always been an administrative person. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the grades that I really deserved—a lot of us didn’t. Those that went in during the Korean War, we were only paid, what, fifty dollars a month? When you retire, like when I retired, you get about 300 dollars a month to live on, it's just terrible. And, look, the grades only had six grades...seven grades that went up to Master Sergeant. About a year before I retired, they added two more years. So, people that had been struggling during those first years, some of them had to take their stripes off because they couldn’t make the E-7 or the E-8, and it was really terrible. And when you retire, you have to retire at the lower grade. The work that I had been doing all of my military life has been...twice, I was, uh, on embassy duty, and believe me you got to be at the top of your game! I spent eight years at Morgan State College helping to teach youngsters to become officers. And you have to be at the top of your skill in order to do that. Do you all know where Morgan is? Oh, that’s right, you all are from Baltimore! [laughs] Look, so many times I get schools that are in California or Oklahoma. But yeah, I spent eight years there. I took my family with me to Germany for four years. I was always assigned to the Pentagon or somewhere doing...not clerical work, I was the supervisor. And just to give you an example, I was assigned for a year at Fort Meade working at the Pentagon and I learned how organizations are being reduced or being upgraded. I had to just control what were called Schedule X's and they had a lot of high paid civilians. It was just me and a colonel—that was it—just to keep a military presence. And they would let me do the small organizations and I learned, really, and that was a good skill for me to have. And then they sent me back to Korea again and I went to Korea three times, always came back home, though, and never left Baltimore in almost twenty-one years of being in the army. And most people, most guys—I don't know about women. Now, when I was in the army, there were Blacks, but they were highly different. They were not integrated with the males. They had their own units. And it was just such a great life when I did retire. My last year and then I went back to Korea. This was my third time. I stayed there two years first, three years—two years, separately, and one year in Japan. Not being in a regular unit, when I came back in ‘61, I was assigned to the U.S. Army Procurement Agency, and all I did was run a bidder’s list. And this bidder’s list—well, it was soldiers in different categories. First, I would determine whether or not a person had a possibility of starting up a company to get a job with the American government. Say, like, maybe putting the groundwork at Kimpo Airbase and it might lead him to$15,000, but he gotta prove that he could do that or prove that he could put a company together. And they could take my bid and go to the Bank of Seoul, and they could acquire money on that based on the fact that they could get this job being paid by the American government. So, there was a high-paid civilian doing the job when I got there, but he was compromised and let him go, and they asked me could I do it. Well, sure, you got the right person there to deal with honesty. And it was good, learned a lot, enjoyed it, then when I came back to—the last time was in ‘69. I was assigned to the embassy duty, and I could have taken my family, and I was hoping and praying that my wife did not want to go. We had four children, and they were ready to finish high school. And Shirley said, “Louis, I know you want us to go, but I cannot take these children from all the friends they made, they’re ready to finish high school.” Oh, Lord, I just felt so happy! [laughs] So all I had to do was my last year there and come home every time, ‘cause I really—[audio lags at 00:20:57—00:21:01] —learn this skill individually by, like, I got a special medal for this. We had to increase the 25th Black Division, which was a Korean division that was fighting in Vietnam, and I got a special medal—I did it myself. I just had a little knowledge of something; there was a colonel that was overseeing me. And I was hoping maybe I could get that sixth stripe before I go and I get some darn medal! But that turned me off from the army. 00:21:37 But that led me to something else. I retired in 1970, and I took a job the next day teaching ROTC in D.C. high schools. I taught over at Ballou High; that was an awful bad area in Southeast Baltimore [T/N: This is misspoke for Southeast Washington D.C.] But I did that because of that skill [gestures typing]. For a year, I was in charge of those ROTC units under the school and I had worked my way up to—I was almost personnel officer, which they call human resource nowadays. And I did go back to school. I was...I didn’t take any—like, go to a [???] school, I wanted to sit down and try to learn something. And gosh, it was so easy at school I was ashamed. Because when I went to University of Baltimore where I’d liked because you had to be—at that time, you had to be a junior to go there. You had to do your first two years in the community college. So I liked the fact that I was working with men and women and everybody helped everybody learn. And I stayed there a year-and-a-half, two years, and I graduated cum laude, and then I stayed and I worked and earned my master’s in public administration because my goal was to become the personnel director. And I was the second—I was the first to him—I was the supervisory staffing specialist. I did staffing of the high schools, sent my team out when colleges were looking for the jobs during the spring break. And I learned really well, and I went to graduate courses at Georgetown University. But I got hooked up in politics, and it just happened that I just didn’t like the political side. And I had enough time because, being in personnel, I always kept up with everything in the military seriously. That was my job and I knew that: a) when I took my job, I began to take, I think, it would be maybe twenty dollars pay and I would be able to buy the twenty-one years that I spent in the military. So I drew $300 of my retirement plus—I wasn't GS-11 then, and I retired as GS-13. So when I retired in 1989, then I was able to retire instead of going out at thirteen with twenty years, I went out at thirteen with forty-one years. And it’s made an extremely nice life for me. So, then when I retired, almost the next day, my children made me do something because they didn't want me to sit home and just look at television. Because at that time, if you had a big yard you could get one of these big ten-foot dishes and you could see HBO and everything, but they wouldn’t allow this. They said, “Dad, you gotta go down to Catonsville High School, and if nothing else, just be a role model.” And I was extremely good with boys. Look, four sons and I had seven grandsons before I finally got that granddaughter! I love that girl so much when I took her to school—she’s a doctor now—I made sure that she went through. But she’s my first, first daughter. But anyhow, I stayed there not too long. ‘Cause the principal talked me into taking a class for a lady that was out for...when you have a baby. And I took the class—I liked substituting ‘cause when you finish your class, you go home. As a regular teacher, you gotta stay there until school closes. So anyhow, while I was there was when I really got this idea of what I should do with my life. And that is to see that for my own children, I was starting—we were from Baltimore County. I was born in Baltimore City, but my father was born in Baltimore County up in Piney Grove, and that’s where I was researching all the while. So, I started teaching a class with these kids and noticed that from the Winters Lane community out in Catonsville—are any of you familiar with where Catonsville is? Oh, you know where it is? It’s a little enclave of Blacks that had been there since the slavery era and the county executive, they have problems with all of these enclaves. There were specks of them all over this 550 square miles of Baltimore County. So, when I—I hadn't thought that far I was still thinking about what to do with my first book. Since I took a couple of years working on my own, the kids asked me could I help them find their history there. Nobody knew about their history. So, uh...I started to research, and I was blessed because my wife worked in the library and they were all 100% helping me. So I guess maybe after three or four, maybe five years, I put this first book together. It’s called It All Started on Winters Lane. And after I had gathered all of this information, the library people insisted that I go to the Maryland Humanities Council and share with them what I had done. So, I did, and they listened to me, and they were really amazed with what I had done.