"They changed the program, and we were sent to organize an engineer combat battalion in Mississippi, and that's really how I ended up, you might say, going into the phase that I did. But when I got into this engineer combat battalion, we had a…

"I ended up in Howard University in Washington D.C. I completed the program along with six individuals, a pilot. Six of us completed the program, in really two-thirds of the time – a 300 group. But we were called and told instead of commission,…

"And the Army started what they call specialized training program, ASTP, in '43, and it came through and tested individuals. And I said, 'You know, maybe I'll try it.' Because they were offering a little commission if you…

Editor's Note: After graduating from the Atlanta Laboratory High School, W.A. Scott went on to study business administration and mathematics at Morehouse College. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943 and inducted into a segregated squadron at…

"My slave ancestors, despite the horrors they were subjected to, had value and were listed among the assets of a slaveholder. Had the Nazi position prevailed in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War (my slave great-grandfather and namesake, William…

"But now as far as the attitude, I went into the Army at age 20. And I -- I guess I have been familiar with the number of forms of discrimination that blacks were subjected to. I've lived all of my life in the south. I was born in Johnson City,…

"But I went back three or four times. Like I said, I've been here for 23 years before I got to go home the first time. And my neighbors had a party for me. And we had some good eating and everything, because they knew that was my first time…

"And then my husband got laid off from Lockheed so many times, and he was in the Air National Guard, so they had an opening there, so he joined the Air National Guard, and then he retired from there. He traveled a lot when he was at…

"We lived there for a year and then moved up here. My husband got a job with Lockheed. He was a flight line mechanic. [Marietta was beautiful.] It was quiet. No traffic hardly. The Big Chicken was there, and it was a Chick, Chuck, and Shake…

"He was from a tobacco farm, so I thought that would be like a regular English farm which is very green, and very pretty, with horses and the whole bit, and I saw my first mule at his house. I'd never seen a mule in my life. It was just so…