“When I got there, they had built a lot of, I guess I would call them huts. They had a lot of huts in a line, and they started with the first platoon…each platoon, the first platoon, second platoon, third platoon, were housed in these huts. They…

“I graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1937. That particular high school was founded in 1924 with Professor Charles L. Harper as the principal. And he remained principal for – oh, I think it was about 20 years or more. But it was the…

Wallace's grandparents were well-established in the African American community of Atlanta. “Birdie Florence Wallace. Her maiden name was Birdie Crolley Wallace. C-r-o-l-l-e-y. Her father, my grandfather was a Methodist preacher. In fact, he was…

“I went to…a national meeting of the American Rosie the Riveter Association in Nashville. When I came back I called the Rome News-Tribune and spoke to this young man. And I told him a little about…who Rosie the Riveters were. It’s amazing how many…

“When I graduated from high school, my father’s oldest sister talked to my father and said, ‘You know, you haven’t been a part of your child’s life very much, and she obviously wants to do something with her life. Would you be willing to finance her…

“But that was one of my greatest frustrations with being a welder. You had to get the temperature on the machine set exactly right. If it were too hot it’d burn a hole in the metal. If it’s too cold it’d stick [laughs], so you couldn’t make a…

“We’d never worn pants. Women did not wear pants. Maybe they did in California and New York City, but not in Lineville, Alabama.”

“We went to Heflin, Alabama to catch the train to go to Savannah. And when we stepped on the train onto that coach, there wasn’t a seat anywhere, and it was filled with young men in khaki uniforms. It was a troop train. Everything was a troop train.…

“I do remember, and this is the only time I remember ration books that we had. Food was rationed. Gas wouldn’t have mattered to us if it was rationed or rubber, because we didn’t have a car. So I wouldn’t have paid too much attention to that. And we…

“Well, my grandfather owned-. He had a small farm…I can just remember going there with him once or twice as a small child. I was probably two, two and a half when we went back to live with him…The thing that I remember most was he had a small, very…