Interview with John Abercrombie

Interview with John Abercrombie

Hanford Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Pasco (Wash.)
Kennewick (Wash.)
School integration
African American universities and colleges
Affirmative action programs
Migration
Civil rights
Race relations
Racism

John Abercrombie has lived in the Tri-Cities since 1967 and worked on the Hanford Site from 1967-1995.

A National Park Service funded project to document the history of African American contributions to Hanford and the surrounding communities. This project was conducted through the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystems Unit, Task Agreement P17AC01288

Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities

07/23/2018

Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.

video/mp4

The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to the US Department of Energy collection. This oral history collection was done in partnership with the National Park Service under Task Agreement P17AC01288.

Robert Franklin

John Abercrombie

Washington State University - Tri Cities

Robert Franklin: Okay, we are rolling. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with John Abercrombie on July 23, 2018. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be talking with John about his experiences living in the Tri-Cities and working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?

John Abercrombie: Okay. John C. Abercrombie. Last name is A-B-E-R-C-R-O-M-B-I-E.

Franklin: Great. And John is--?
\
Abercrombie: J-O-H-N, common spelling.

Franklin: Great, thank you. So, John, let’s start by talking about your life before Hanford.

Abercrombie: Okay.

Franklin: Where and when were you born?

Abercrombie: I was born October 29, 1944, 6:20 P.M.

Franklin: Okay.

Abercrombie: At the Spartanburg General Colored Hospital.

Franklin: And where is Spartanburg?

Abercrombie: Spartanburg is in South Carolina.

Franklin: Okay. Spartanburg General Colored Hospital.

Abercrombie: Yes, and that’s what’s stated on the birth certificate.

Franklin: Right. Because the South—you were born into segregation.

Abercrombie: Yes, I was, very much so.

Franklin: Correct. And so Spartanburg was a segregated town.

Abercrombie: Absolutely.

Franklin: Can you talk about that? What was—how was the town laid out and where—what were African Americans restricted from doing or being--?

Abercrombie: [LAUGHTER] Restricted from doing almost everything. In the black community, you had all stratas of economic involvement, because you were not allowed to live in white neighborhoods. The school that I attended, the elementary school that I attended when I first started was closed because it was condemned. The new school was approximately 100, 150 yards from my house. Yet there were white students living closer to the school who were bussed to a white school, and I had students that lived further away that had to pass two white schools in order to get to the black school. So it was a very segregated community.

We had two black police officers that were not allowed to arrest any white people. They could call on another officer, and if he decided to, he would; otherwise it did not happen.

In South Carolina, it was not until the mid—or actually the late ‘40s before the black teachers were paid the same as the white teachers. They had larger classrooms, they had less facilities, and obviously the buildings were not the same quality. So that was the type-thing that you had. We had the segregated buses; you were not allowed to sit in front of any white person. They did not have the sign designating that, but if some white person sat three-quarters of the way back, you’d have people basically hanging out the window because you could not sit in front of any person like that. The movie theaters, I never sat on the main floor of a movie theater until I came to Richland, because that’s the way it was in most of the places there.
Looking back, I think most people do not understand and realize what you were put through, and what people suffered in order to do that. Jobs were restricted. And you had people that had done very well in school who were not allowed into jobs that basically paid a decent wage. People could not buy houses, because the banks would allow you more money to buy a car than they would a house. So basically, the typical of many of the Southern communities that were there. So.

In the schools, basically, for every one dollar they would spend on a black kid, they would spend ten on a white student. Part of the Brown v. Board involved a case out of the area around Orangeburg, South Carolina, in which some students were walking nine miles a day each way to school. The parents asked for a bus; the school district refused. The parents bought a bus, asked for fuel. They also were denied that. And they ended up filing suit over that.

Charles Hamilton Houston, who was one of the professors in charge of the law school, was kind of a techie. He went down and he photographed many of the schools that were utilized by the blacks. In many cases you could sit in the classroom and look through the wall to the outside. Some of the schools had outhouses. Some of them didn’t even have outhouses. And he also photographed some of the white classrooms, and there was a very distinct difference. That played a very large role in the case of Brown v. Board.

And I won’t go into Brown v. Board. Oliver Brown and his daughter, his six-year-old daughter, had to walk past a white school, had to go through a railroad switching yard at the hours of school, which in the winter were dark, and then walk a mile to catch a bus to go to a white school—I mean, to a black school. So those were the types of things that many people had to put up with.

Franklin: Brown v. Board effectively desegregated schools in 1950—?

Abercrombie: I believe it was ’54.

Franklin: How did that affect you?

Abercrombie: It did not have much effect directly. As a result of that case, they were starting to build better schools. Actually, part of the South Carolina decision was that—not to integrate the schools, but that the schools should be equal. Not just in air quotes, but should be equal, which would have cost them a fortune. So the school that I went to in second grade, which was much superior to the one that I went to in first grade. Although I’m in the heart of the city, we didn’t have restrooms on the different levels of the school. It was a two-story school. You had to go outside and down into the basement in order to use it. But we even had restrooms in the classrooms in that building. Most of the schools that we used had been torn down because the quality of the school, the building, was not the same. Basically, nothing was equal. The principal of our elementary school had a PhD, and one of the few if not the only one in the district. So we had crosses burned on the schoolhouse lawn, similar to what happened when I went to college.

I went to an integrated college. We did have one white student there. And it’s an interesting story how he got there. He actually attended a Ku Klux rally when they were talking about what they were going to do to this guy if they ever found him. Not to be outdone, we doubled our white enrollment the next year and had two white students.

Franklin: Which college was this?

Abercrombie: Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina.

Franklin: And is that an HBC?

Abercrombie: HBCU. Historically Black College and University. Livingstone and Biddle University, which is now John C. Smith, played the first intercollegiate football game between black colleges. And so, John C. Smith is located in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Salisbury is about 40 miles away in Salisbury. Started as Zion Wesley Institute in 1879 and changed its name to Livingstone in 1887. During the time that I attended was sponsored by the AMEZ Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. And it played a very important role in my life.

Franklin: What did you study at Livingstone?

Abercrombie: Cutting class. No. Actually, I was a chemistry major.

Franklin: Chemistry major. And did you graduate from--?

Abercrombie: Yes, I did.

Franklin: How did a white—this is a little off-topic, but I’m just very curious. How did a white student end up at a HBCU?

Abercrombie: [LAUGHTER] He was traveling by train. He was actually going to Livingston, Alabama. He started talking to some students on the train, and they said they were going to Livingstone. Well, he thought they were going to the town that he was going. So he basically got off the train with them. They had treated him so well, he said he liked the place, and so he actually enrolled. So that’s how he got there. Kind of an interesting story, but that’s how we ended up with him there.

You find that we were not closed as a society. I remember one of the restaurants in—I guess you could call it “restaurant;” more of a hot dog stand—in Spartanburg, it had two entrances: one white and one colored. There’s a line that ran up the floor, up the wall, up the ceiling, and back down. We could not cross that line; they could if they wanted to. But the separate water fountains, they had refrigerated water; we had just a bubbler coming out. So it was the typical thing that sometimes people today don’t realize what was going on back then.

Franklin: How did you hear about Hanford?

Abercrombie: I heard about it from my college classmate, who was also a chemistry major, who interviewed in, I think, New York or somewhere, and actually came out the year before I did. I took an interview, got an offer for a job, came out sight unseen. I’m one of those people that looked in the encyclopedia, saw Evergreen State, and figured I’d be in tall trees and snow up to my armpits all year. I think when I first got here it was in excess of 100 degrees for the first 17 days and stuff. You know.

So I got that one wrong, but it worked out very well for me, because our kids were in a very good school system. My daughter actually went back to the school that her mother and I had attended and has done well for herself. My son went to West Point, graduated from West Point. And he has two sons now currently at West Point. The oldest is majoring in chemical engineering; the second one is in the law program at West Point. He has a third son who is kicking on the football team for Mountain Point in Phoenix, Arizona, and has a couple of more records to wipe out to get his brother off the record book, eclipse him on the record book there.

Franklin: Wow, that’s really wonderful. So you interviewed for—who did you interview with? What company did you--?

Abercrombie: Actually, I interviewed with Isochem. Isochem was US Rubber and Martin Marietta. I interviewed with Bill Watson in Nashville, Tennessee. That was the closest he was coming to the area, and I drove from Spartanburg. The weather was bad, so I had to drive south to Atlanta and then up 75 to Nashville. Interviewed with him, got an offer for a job here. I filled out paperwork for my security clearance. It was approved just before I got here, so when I came here I had a Q clearance and went to work at the PUREX facility in 200-East Area.

Franklin: Oh, great. What were your first impressions when you arrived?

Abercrombie: What the hell have I gotten myself into? Understanding that I thought this was the Evergreen State, I came through what is now Interstate 84 to 82, and came in near the Boise-Cascade plant, which at the time did not have the filters on and stunk to high heaven. I had not been in many places that did not have trees. So I thought, you know, this must be what it’s like to land on the moon. So I got here. When we got to Richland, I stayed with my friend when we looked for houses. That was a different experience for me, because we would see an ad for a house, we’d call, oh, you’re the first person to call! And, we’ll meet you there in 30 minutes! And we get there—you know, somebody just pulled up 15 minutes ago and rented the house. So, sorry about that. I even had one gentleman tell me that I’d go bankrupt if I rented the house, buying furniture. And that’s kind of interesting because he ended up working for me a while later, and I never mentioned it to him.

Franklin: Oh, man.

Abercrombie: But those are the type things that you ran into. Which didn’t seem strange to me, because I’m coming from the South, and I guess didn’t have any expectations of much different.

Franklin: Right. Where did you end up staying? Where did you—did you end up—you obviously ended up getting a house somewhere.

Abercrombie: I ended up—the first house that we moved into was on Gilmore. Gilmore I don’t think is there anymore. It was between Gilmore and Gribble, basically right off of Jadwin, a block over from Jadwin, there were some apartments there, two-story apartments. 1107 Gilmore, Apartment 8 is where we started off, and then moved into an A house later. Then moved to another A house, and then finally bought a prefab before moving to south Richland. But anyway.

Franklin: What was the hardest aspect of life in this area to adjust to?

Abercrombie: I’d come from the South, you know, where basically all black neighborhoods. Not that people are different or that we saw them any different, but I’m now in a completely different environment. Looking for somebody that had shared experiences was sometimes difficult, because there were not very many black people here. They were starting to open for professional people. I think that that year we had, I don’t know, six, seven people come in. Some of the other contractors were starting to bring people in. So it was kind of a unique thing, I guess, looking back on it. Part of it had to do with race, part of it had to do with age. Because most of the people here were older and established. I don’t think that it was a racist thing as such, because we were all finding ourselves, opening our wings, finding opportunities for employment.

When I’d been in the South, one of the reasons that I came out here is because I never even got a response from the companies that I had applied with back there. The interviews were somewhat limited on my part, but strictly on my part, because I worked as a journeyman bricklayer before I went to college. My intent was to go into home construction and other work. I was going to build and sell houses. So I came out here, because having a degree in chemistry, I figured that it would be good to have some experience should I need to go back into chemistry, should something happen to me physically in construction. So that was kind of the idea that I had. I would come out here and I was going to work for three years and I was going to go back.

At the end of three years, I was offered the opportunity to go into supervision. I said, well, if I’m going to run a company, this is a good thing to do. So I stayed. And then I’m thinking about leaving again, I had a chance to go in as the equal opportunity coordinator and write the Affirmative Action plan. Well, if I’m going to go into management of some sort, this is not going to hurt me at all. So I stayed for that. Then, I did not want to do that as a life’s work, because I thought, at that time, foolishly, that that would be a limited opportunity. Because I thought that once we had the opportunities to do things then that would kind of go away. The opportunity came to go into labor relations, came along. So I went into labor relations and did a lot in human resource area. That opened up another opportunity to get into law enforcement. I worked as a Benton County reserve deputy for 28 years. So, we—finding different opportunities and exploring different things as we go along.

Franklin: Oh, shucks, I just lost my question.

Abercrombie: So, you’re not the only one. [LAUGHTER]

Franklin: No. No, not at all. Oh, I remember. What year did you come out?

Abercrombie: I came out in 1967.

Franklin: 1967, okay thank you.

Abercrombie: Actually arrived in Washington June the 20th and went to work June 21st.

Franklin: Hey, that’s exactly the same day that I started my job at Hanford.

[LAUGHTER]

Franklin: Although that was in 2015.

Abercrombie: Okay.

Franklin: So a little bit later. But same—I remember that day very well. So, how would you describe life in the community in Richland when you were—you know, in the ‘60s when you were here. ‘60s and early ‘70s.

Abercrombie: There were many aspects of it that were very good to me. Because, like I said, I was in a professional capacity. Kind of a homebody. So I did not get around a lot. Was not a social butterfly, getting around. The opportunities were there. It was a little bit limiting personally because, coming from a small school, you’re going up and competing against people that have been to University of Washington and the University of God-knows-whatever, but large institutions. You come into an area and you’re looking to compete against these people. But I think the biggest aspect and biggest thing that I had learned was how to do research, how to find out information. The first job that I got was trying to look for an electro-potentiometric determination of uranium in feedstock, and most of the information that I needed was in German. But fortunately Battelle had translators that were able to get the information. So, I felt quite at home, being able to get involved and just completely dive into the work. My wife later went to work and worked with the Department of Corrections. In fact, at one time she was a psychiatric social worker on death row at Walla Walla. But—

Franklin: Wow.

Abercrombie: But these are all things that we had no vision of before we left.

Franklin: These were opportunities that weren’t present for you in the South, or likely not present for you.

Abercrombie: Likely, very likely not present, yes.

Franklin: What did you do in your spare time?

Abercrombie: One of the things that I did was played flag football. We had a local team that played for many years together. And I guess I did a little bit of hunting, a little bit of fishing. Other than that, it was—I didn’t get into motorcycle riding until 1973. At this point, I’ve probably got about 300,000 miles riding around the Northwest on motorcycle.

I tell people that because doing labor relations, I would occasionally jump in with the train crew, because I wanted to find out what the various jobs were about. So I tell people that I’ve driven a train and flown a plane. Because when my son was at West Point and called home one Wednesday and said he was going to jump school, I said, that’s great, but you won’t jump before I will. I think I did my first jump that Saturday. Not bad for a guy that’s afraid of heights, but—went ahead and did that.

Motorcycle riding, another place that I goofed up, because I thought that would be a great weight loss program, because I figured that I’d travel around and wouldn’t be welcomed at any place to eat, so I’d get out there and go days without eating or something. But that turned out not to be the case, so—

Franklin: [LAUGHTER] When you moved here, the largest amount of African Americans lived in east Pasco.

Abercrombie: Yeah.

Franklin: Did you spend any time in east Pasco? Did you have any connections—

Abercrombie: Yes, I did.

Franklin: --to the African American community? How did you forge those connections?

Abercrombie: Well, for one thing, you need to go to a barber. Well, I was not—I didn’t know that anybody could cut my hair that was not familiar with it, so you’re going over there. You meet people. I find that in many places that you go, the migration of blacks has been people that know each other that go somewhere and get something started. For example, I had a friend that was here that moved to Los Angeles. I rode the motorcycle down to Los Angeles, and while I was there, we went around and met people. Well, he’s from Texas. So he can tell you just about everybody from Texas that’s there. And if you read The Warmth of Other Suns, you’ll see how some of this migration took place. My uncles from Union, South Carolina went to Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. And so people from Union had a tendency to go there because they knew somebody there.

I look at it now, and I look at the fact that my roommate came here and I ended up coming as well. Because I had no idea that this place existed, had no idea what it might be like. That was not on my radar when I started looking for jobs, because I looked for jobs in the neighborhood and in the area that I was in and areas that I had been exposed to. So it was very limited. In fact, the choice of chemistry versus chemical engineering came down to the fact that I really was not aware that there were chemical engineers. So in many cases you’re limited by what is around you.

I had seen the opportunities because my best friend was one house away. His father was a doctor. He had a very nice home, but he could not build it anywhere except in our neighborhood. Because nobody would have, one, sold him the land; there were a lot of restrictions on who you could sell land to, even if you had the money. And so, the community that I came from was pretty much self-contained.

My father was a teacher, taught for 42 years in the Spartanburg School District. My mother taught for ten years before she opened a restaurant. So I was around a lot of teachers and that type. But I was around everybody, because when she opened a restaurant, everybody came there. So, that’s kind of the atmosphere that I was raised in. When she started the restaurant, people had said, it’s not going to be successful because you don’t sell beer. She had her mindset, and that wasn’t what she was going to do, so, you know, it was a pretty healthy atmosphere to grow up in. And when I had children, I think that it was a very good atmosphere for the children. The school districts were very good and we didn’t have—there were problems here, but I didn’t have to face them every day.

Franklin: What sorts of problems?

Abercrombie: Typical problems. It may be difficult to kind of explain. But the first time my daughter, that I knew of my daughter being called out of her name was here in Richland. It was one of our neighbors. When I went to work in the laboratory—I’m not trying to be funny, but I had people say, you’re not like the rest of them. Rest of “them”? Who is “them”? So I asked, and they said, well, you know—and they didn’t know how to say black, colored, negro, whatever. So they would almost choke to death trying to tell me that I wasn’t like most black people. And I’d say, well, who do you know? Well, I really don’t know anybody. So it became apparent that they were getting their information from stories, second-hand, third-hand, the stereotypes that you saw in the movies, that you saw on TV, and whatever.

So as you’re going into a situation like this, you’re coming in to be a professional, but you have people that believe that you’re not. So you’re having to overcome stereotypes.
And that’s happening in many, many places.

When I worked in equal employment opportunity, for example, would have people that wanted to terminate somebody because of attendance. And I would look at the unit and see what’s there, and find out that they had people that had worse attendance than the person that they wanted to fire. So, as you’re talking to them, well, that’s so-and-so’s nephew. What’s that got to do with anything? But you have attitudes that develop.

When I was in that particular aspect, we had a guy that was a janitor, wanted to become a chemical operator. And so they went on a stereotype. Well, he’s so big that he can’t get his hands together. Well, the guy was mopping, and he’s strong enough, he could just sling the mop around and do it with one hand. They thought I was out of town and they were going to give him a test. They put him in two pair of coveralls, put him in boots and rubber gloves, and wanted him to go up some 20, 30 feet on a ladder. And if you think that it’s unsafe, why would you do that? They didn’t require that with anybody else.

So you’re finding that a lot of attitudes that people have are preconceived and the South has no handle on discrimination. But a lot of the people came up here. In fact, I was talking to an individual Sunday who came here in ’41. And I asked him specifically because I’ve heard of Kennewick being a sundown city. A sundown city is a city in which black people are supposed to get the heck out of town before the sun goes down. I’ve heard a lot of information of people that say yes, and he confirmed this. I’ve heard at one time there was signs that basically stated this, but I’ve not found anybody that has specifically seen those signs.

I know, as of later research, that Oregon was established as a white state, and at one time, it was against the law and you could be beaten for being in Oregon if you were not one of the people grandfathered in—which is another racist situation—at sunset. So a lot of these things I only found out later that existed. So.

Franklin: Do you remember any particular community events? In the African American community?

Abercrombie: Particular events. I will tell you the first time I heard about Juneteenth. Because there are a lot of people that came up from Texas. In South Carolina, I knew absolutely nothing about Juneteenth. When I first heard about Juneteenth, I was somewhat taken back, somewhat offended, because a couple of things that happened as you’re growing up. You never hear anything about the accomplishments of black people. It’s very limited. And normally that’s reserved for talking about George Washington Carver and a few other people.

But most people have no idea of the accomplishments of George Washington Carver. They associate him with the peanut. The way that he got associated with the peanut is a story in and of itself. But what he did, in terms of a scientist—in fact, when George Washington Carver first went to college, he went to Highland College and was accepted on the basis of his work in high school. But when he got there—and he had saved money and was able to take care of himself financially—when he got there, they said, oh, we didn’t know that you were black. Bye.

So he was distraught over this. He went to work. He was always a worker. And he worked for some people who encouraged him to go back. George Washington Carver then goes back to Simpson College, and at Simpson, most people have no idea what he was majoring in. But George Washington Carver majored in art and piano, and was very talented at both. But one of his instructors, Etta Budd, said, George, we really don’t think that a black man can earn a living in art and piano. And her husband was at Iowa State University, encouraged him to go there and work in botany. He worked with some of the great soil scientists of the era. In fact, one of his classmates became the secretary of agriculture in one of the administrations.
But they don’t talk about the fact that he had very strong friendships with Thomas Edison, with Henry Ford. In fact, when he was at Tuskegee and had trouble getting to his laboratory on the second floor, Ford sent engineers down and said you put in an elevator for him. Very close relationship. When, during the war, World War II, when metal was in short supply, he worked with Ford and they developed a plastic body for a car. Ford demonstrates it by hitting it with a sledge hammer and not damaging that car body. When rubber was in short supply, he made synthetic rubber. When we were having difficulty dying our clothes and dying a lot of other things because we used aniline, which came from Germany—we’re at war with Germany—we couldn’t even dye our uniforms. So he went up, and as a young aspiring artist, he had to develop his own pigments, he had to develop dyes. He knew how to do this and he came up with a full—excuse me—palette of colors to do this. And we think all this man did was made peanut butter? You know, an elephant stepping on a peanut makes peanut butter. This man was a chemist. He was a scientist. He did many, many things.

In addition to the peanut, he worked with soybeans, he worked with sweet potatoes, he worked with lots of other things. And part of his demise was due to the fact that when he was traveling and speaking he could not get a sleeper car because of his color of his skin. And I’m sure that added to the difficulty that he had in getting around. But we don’t make mention of many of the contributions he’s made, and he is by far not the only person that’s made significant contributions to this society.

Franklin: Did you attend church?

Abercrombie: Yes, I did.

Franklin: What church did you attend?

Abercrombie: Still attending. I was there Sunday. Actually, Richland Baptist Church on G-W Way. Which is right down the street. Now, when I came to Richland, it was my intent that I was going to live fairly close to work and I would be involved in the community that I was there. It was quite a while before I fully understood everything that was available in east Pasco. Probably would have attended the church there, but I made a decision on this one earlier. The people were friendly enough, and so my wife and I joined--

Franklin: Okay.

Abercrombie: --that church. I think we joined in 1968. So I guess technically we’ve been members for 50 years.

Franklin: Wow. Do you recall any family activities, events or traditions, including sports and food, that African Americans brought from the places that they came from?

Abercrombie: Again, I’ll go back to east Pasco. There was Jack’s Tavern, and there was the Paradise Inn, which I think Joe Jackson and Webster Jackson had started. I remember buffalo fish, which I had not eaten, you know, prior to coming out here.

Franklin: Buffalo fish?

Abercrombie: Yeah. I think it’s a member of the carp family; in fact, it used to get flown in, and they used to, you know, they used to have that. As you develop friendships, you share food, break bread with people. I used to have a fairly good-sized New Year’s Eve party. I’d go through quite a few chitlins and hog maws and stuff of that nature, which is some of the things we were grown up with. You soon start looking at markets.

You find that people have a tendency to congregate around things that they are familiar with. Race just being one of those things. Because, as a motorcycle rider, I found that there were a number of people that rode who were professional people, and we had similarities there. Same brand of motorcycle would sometimes be in this corner, professions would be over here. But when race is involved, it makes things stand out, and sometimes when you don’t know, and you’re walking into a strange situation, that may be the thing that makes the attraction. So, yeah, we went through those situations.

I found that as a motorcycle rider—I was a member of Hill & Gully Motorcycle Club, it was an American Motorcycle Association, and we traveled around to different places. So, there were dentists, there were lawyers, there were whatever. I had a tendency to spend more time with them than I did some of the railroad workers or some of the other things. Although, because of the width and breadth of the knowledge that I picked up here, I was able to fit in there as well.

Franklin: Were there—we already kind of talked about this, but I just wanted to ask this direct question, these next two questions. Were there opportunities available here that were not available where you came from?

Abercrombie: I’d have to say yes. Because there were very, very limited opportunities there. I’ve seen people that had great skills. And one of my passions at this point is trying to let people know that they have passions and talents beyond that which they have seen. Some of the best students that I attended high school and college with did not have opportunities to utilize those skills. If you look at, I believe the book is The First Class which talks about the Dunbar High School—or the Dunbar School in Washington, DC, a lot of very famous people came through Dunbar. But in some cases, you found that there were PhDs that were teaching elementary school, not because that’s what they aspired to do, but in many cases that’s what they were limited to do.

I think one of the reasons is that we have a disparity in education is because of the fact that people have gone to school, they have exceled at school, but when they went to look for opportunities to show or display their skills, they never had a chance. They never got into the batter’s box. They didn’t have a chance to swing for the fences. Because it was not there. And that has impacted this country for decades, and actually centuries. Because when we look back at some of the earlier accomplishments that people have made, you know, it’s astounding.

I think we get into a standoff position, because I think many white people feel that we hold every one of them responsible for slavery. Most people did not own slaves. And we also find that there are black people that owned slaves. William Ellison in South Carolina had over 60 slaves. He was a gin maker and gin repairman. And it’s an interesting story what happened to him after the—during and after the Civil War. Because he supplied goods as a businessperson to the Confederacy and after the Confederacy when the economy was starting to go again, they actually passed laws that prevented black people from competing against white people in terms of even seeking business. And so we get into the situation that the remnants of which still hang with us today.

And so, people move around, attitudes go, and a lot of the attitudes people have, they don’t even know where they came from. It’s what you were born with, what you were raised with, what you were—what you saw. And as I saw here, people had pre-established concepts of what they were going to get based on, not fact, but what they perceived to be.

If you ever look at the story of Clara Brown—and I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at Clara Brown; this is probably beyond the scope of what we’re talking about here—but Clara Brown was born a slave in Virginia. Her mother and she were sold to a different owner in Kentucky, and that’s where George Brown comes into the fact. She worked for the Brown family for 20 years. During that time, she was allowed to marry. She had four children. When George Brown died, that family was split apart, sold to different parts of the country. Her husband went one way, her son went one way. She had three daughters: an older daughter and twin daughters. Of the twins, one of them were drowned in a flood, and the remaining twin was—had a lot of nightmares about that situation.

Clara Brown got her freedom at the age of 56. Most people are not aware that in most states, when you got your freedom, you had one year to get out of the state or you could be re-enslaved. Clara Brown went to St. Louis. Clara Brown worked. She heard that people were going to the West and being able to enjoy their freedoms. And so Clara Brown earned enough money to pay passage to Denver, Colorado. However, she could not take a stagecoach, because the stagecoaches would not sell a black person a ticket there. So she found a wagon train headed that way. Now, she’s almost 60 years old at this point. She walked, but she booked on to cook. So she had to get up early and do breakfast, stay up late to do dinner. But she walked 700 miles in eight weeks.

After she got there, she set herself up in a laundry business. Ten years later, she has $10,000 in the bank, and this is in the 1880s, 1890s. Clara Brown, to her credit, was known as the Angel of the Rockies. There are at least three churches now that owe their existence to the fact that she contributed financially. There was a Catholic and two Methodist churches. She was Presbyterian, but she helped a lot of people along the way.

What happened is that many people based slavery on the fact that black people could not feel pain. So if you look at James Marion Sims in Medical Apartheid, you’ll see some of the horrible, horrific things that he did there. And also said that black people don’t grieve, so you can sell the people around. I’ll speed this thing up, and we can get back on track. But anyway, she goes and finds that her daughter is still alive, and her daughter is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She didn’t find her until 80 years of age.

Franklin: Wow.

Abercrombie: But that puts a hole in much of what the people that believed in slavery—because they said we don’t feel pain, we don’t have emotion, we don’t have the ability to do it. But so many things have happened in this country that have been based strictly on the perceived concept. So, I’ll get back on track.

Franklin: Okay. That was a great story, though, thank you. In what ways were opportunities here limited because of segregation or racism?

Abercrombie: As I indicated before, when we looked at people—I was here when we wanted to institute an apprenticeship program, bring people of color and women into some of the skilled crafts. Many of the—and I’ve had more than one person tell me that the next job that comes up belongs to my son, my nephew, my whoever. In other words, these people owned the job. Many of the super—in fact, most of the supervisors and foremen came from the ranks, and they brought those attitudes with them. So we did not open opportunities, even in the skilled crafts, and in many cases, even entry level opportunities to bring people in and allow them to perform to their level, because they had a lot to bring with them.

We look at people quite a bit different, because even in the schools, in the early grades, this particular mannerism is cute, but in girls and in minorities, you know, third, fourth grade, it becomes something of a distraction, it’s disruptive, it’s something else. The same attitude in a white male would be accepted as leadership, moving ahead. And so we face many of those problems here. Because we are people, and that exists. In terms of professional positions, the same thing manifests itself. We don’t have an opportunity to put input into the system and to show what we can do, show what other people can do, and open opportunities to people. So we got to a position where we had to have Affirmative Action because people were not given the opportunities; not because they could not perform, but—and the school system itself created a lot of the system. The school systems, not necessarily here, but all over the country.

Franklin: Right. You mentioned that when you first came to Hanford, you went out to work at PUREX?

Abercrombie: Yes.

Franklin: Right, and how long did you work there for?

Abercrombie: I came in as a tech grad and so I worked there for four months; I went to Z Plant, which was 234-5 Plutonium Finishing Laboratory, worked there for four months; and then I went to REDOX, worked in the Standards Lab for four months. At that point I then had a permanent assignment, went back to PUREX and was there for a couple of years before I had the opportunity to go as a shift supervisor, and worked there for a couple of years, and went into the EEO and human resources and other activities.

Franklin: What on-the-job training did you receive?

Abercrombie: Well, the technical graduate program basically was an on-the-job type training. We had people that we could work with in all of those positions. So, it’s kind of like getting used to the work that’s in the various laboratories. You had a chance of sitting down, talking to people about various openings that were available there. So you had kind of an idea of what was available and the ability to match that with what you wanted to do. While I was working at the electro-potentiometric determinations of uranium at PUREX, there were other things that I could have done. When I went to 234-5, it was emission spectroscopy, and we were looking at the impurity elements in plutonium product. Completely new field for me. At REDOX, I worked in the Standards Laboratory and got to see a different view of everything. When I went back to PUREX, I worked in quality control and quality assurance. Wrote the quality control and assurance plan for uranium, plutonium, neptunium for the entire plant, before moving into the human resource area. So, that was how some of that worked.

My classmate that had come out had worked in the counting room, and was able to work with the early computers. He worked in safety for a while. So we had a chance to look at a few different things there. So if that’s answering the question you asked.

Franklin: Yes, yes, thank you. How would you describe your relationships with your coworkers and your supervisors?

Abercrombie: I would have to say that it was better than I expected, because I had preconceived notions as well. And I found that in many cases, I got help from people that I never expected to ever get it from. I think part of it was the fact that you were able to kind of relax around some of these people, that you were able—some of these people. As if there’s a difference and a distinction in them. So we were able, because it was fairly small laboratories, fairly small work groups that you could kind of fit in and kind of work with people. And I think people were willing to help people that were willing to expend the time and energy to try to excel at what they were doing.

Franklin: How were you treated on the job?

Abercrombie: By and large, I would say that it was pretty good. I would not say that it’s perfect, but I don’t know any place that would be. I think the opportunities that came along were good. I think it could’ve been better. But I can’t really compare it to anything, because most of my experience was here.

Except for the fact that I did work with the City of Richland with the Human Rights Commission and for a time was chairman of that particular commission. I worked with the Benton County Sheriff’s office as a reserve, and got into that as a result of my labor relations experience, because I did have the Hanford Guards and wanted to find out what they did. So I went out and qualified with them, and spent a weekend in class and did the day and night qualifications with them. Benton County said, if we send you to the academy, will you go? Well, I wanted to find out what that was all about, and, yes.

And that was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. Because in the South, where I came from, when police came into your neighborhood, somebody was going to bleed. Man, woman, or child, somebody was going to bleed. So I got commissioned as a deputy with Benton County, I did not want to go in with the intent of beating anybody; I didn’t want to go in with the type of thing that I had seen growing up. So that was an extremely frightening experience for me. But I think I worked with a good group of people, and had my eyes opened, and I think I opened some of theirs as well.

Franklin: What kinds of interactions did you have with coworkers and supervisors outside of work?

Abercrombie: I think most of my activities outside of work did not involve coworkers. We had some, we had limited. I didn’t go out and do a lot of things. Like I said, an occasional fishing trip, occasional hunting, and motorcycle. Motorcycle I could do with a group or I could do by myself.

Franklin: Yeah.

Abercrombie: So.

Franklin: What were the most difficult aspects of the job?

Abercrombie: I think it was the idea of competing against people that had gone to named universities and thinking—and really not knowing what to expect. Because like you say—not, like I’ve said before, but when you are given hand-me-down books, which is what we got in our school system—when you see that there is some reason that you can’t go to that school, or you don’t have that opportunity—now, I had a chance, when I worked as a bricklayer to work in all the schools there, because I worked for the school district during part of the year, because my dad was in the industrial arts. The glass brick that they had in schools, when they broke, I was the one that went in and repaired them. So I saw the difference in the equipment of what they had versus what we had.

My high school, maybe had one reel-to-reel tape recorder and a broken-down film projector. And I could go there and see that they had full language labs, and they had individual headsets, and they had equipment that I absolutely knew—did not have access to. Textiles, which were big there, they had classes in loom repair. One of the better jobs there. I worked as a weaver in college, and was a weaver, and was selected to go into the mechanical side of things there before I decided—well, it wasn’t really a decision, because I was coming out here or going to do the bricklaying in the first place. But I think that sets the tone for a lot of things in your life, and you begin to wonder: can I compete? And that does a lot to affect where you end up.

Franklin: What were conditions like in terms of health and safety?

Abercrombie: [LAUGHTER] Having just read Plutonium Files, I think that a lot of the information we were given, I question. I don’t think that they knew exact information as much as they let on to us believing that they knew. I think in some cases we were kind of used as guinea pigs. One of the things that I have found is that I was exposed to beryllium when I worked at Plutonium Finishing Lab. That has caused me a lot of problems. In fact, during the ‘90s, the mid- to late-‘90s, I was diagnosed with bronchoalveolar carcinoma and told that I had six to ten months to live. And it turned out that it was similar to sarcoidosis, but actually it was the beryllium sensitivity and beryllium disease. They did a lavage and took lung tissue and that’s when they had come up with this prognosis that I had six to ten months to live.

But when you look at the whole body count, when you start looking at some of what we were exposed to, I think in some cases the decisions were made on a financial basis as opposed to a security basis. When we look at what we’re doing now and what we have left over as remnants in terms of the Tank Farms, in terms of the waste, in terms of many of the aspects that are giving us headaches at this point, I think they knew, but didn’t want to act on it. And it was strictly a financial situation as opposed to a long term safety situation. And I think some people were guinea pigs. My classmate has probably been dead ten years, and I’m not sure that Hanford didn’t contribute very highly in that particular situation.

Franklin: How did your racial background figure into your work experiences?

Abercrombie: Well, no matter where you go, you take them with you. You take your preconceived ideas and you run into people that have preconceived ideas. I’m not sure that Hanford necessarily would’ve been any different than anywhere else, because I did not work anywhere else. But you run into the situation where people have the preconceived idea that, for whatever reason, you maybe can’t do this, maybe you shouldn’t do that.

Hopefully things are a lot better. When I left Hanford, I did not leave feeling that I had been treated fairly in the end. Very much to the contrary. So. Overall, I think that it was good life experience. But there are certainly a lot of things, I think, that could’ve been significantly different.

Franklin: I understand. In what ways did the security and secrecy at Hanford impact your work or daily life?

Abercrombie: It had some impact, because some of the work required a Q clearance, the top clearance. I had less impact than most people, because my clearance got here just before I did. So I did not have a limited clearance. I had access to secret information when I got here. Some people were impacted, because there were certain jobs that they could not take, or did not have the opportunity to do, because it did involve some secret information. So I think it had less an impact on me than it did on some of the other people, if that’s the question that you’re asking. Certainly, it was a different atmosphere. But having been an only child and not being prone to be around and talking to a lot of people about a lot of different stuff, it probably had less impact on me than it did most people.

Franklin: What did you know or learn about the prior history of African American workers at Hanford?

Abercrombie: [LAUGHTER] As far as Hanford itself is concerned, I’m still trying to explore that. I’ll tell you with some degree of embarrassment, I just recently found out about the 555th, which was the first group of African American paratroopers in the country. They had trained, I believe, at Fort Benning, Georgia. At that time, blacks were not allowed to be paratroopers, because the Army was strictly segregated. But what happened is that they were camped right next to the training for the paratroopers. They said, we can do that! So when they were done for the day, they would go over and go through all of the exercises, all the maneuvers that they had seen being done throughout the day. And they excelled at that to the point that one of the higher officers saw that and said, maybe we need to make a unit out of these guys.

Well, what does that have to do with me out here? Well, during World War II, the Japanese were floating incendiary devices across the oceans in balloons and setting large fires. We didn’t want the Japanese to know that they were even being successful. So who do we send in? The 555th. They were stationed at Pendleton, and they made many jumps into the Pacific Northwest. One of those devices even landed at Hanford. Not being aware of the fact that we had done much beyond George Washington Carver, I didn’t spend a lot of time studying and looking into it, until fairly recently.

It’s kind of interesting how I got involved in black history at all, but, like I may have indicated Sunday, I was asking the gentleman that was here in ’41 or ’42 about Kennewick being a sundown city. And he said, yes. But he had not seen the sign. So whether it actually—whether there were actually signs or whether it was just known that such was the case in Kennewick—and I talked to a person that lived in Pasco. They made sure that they were out of Kennewick. So it affected a lot of people. When I came here and was looking at houses, people had told me, don’t go to Kennewick. So some of those stories, whether they were fables or not, did have an impact. So yeah.

Franklin: How did you feel at the time about working on the development of nuclear weapons?

Abercrombie: Repeat the question, please.

Franklin: How did you feel at the time about working on the development of nuclear weapons?

Abercrombie: I felt better then than I do now. I didn’t know a lot about nuclear weapons. But the fact that supposedly we had shortened the war with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I thought they were peaceful—or that it would serve a useful purpose. They were talking about plough sharing and being able to do other things with the energy, you know, making tunnels or canals or digging things. And I didn’t understand, at that point, some of the long term effects that radiation could have.
I think that in many cases, we moved strictly on the basis of finances as opposed to what could be done safely. I think that we were operating and putting waste into the ground with the idea that it’d be okay for eternity. And I think that had we taken seriously the concept that we need to take this from—no pun intended—from birth to the grave or birth to eternity in the beginning, I think that it would’ve been a lot sounder situation to get into.

When I go and when I look at material like we find in Plutonium Files, they were doing experiments on people that I don’t think were necessarily ethical. I’m not sure that we weren’t in such a position there, because I think most of our difficulties came out when it became known to some people that the beryllium had manifested itself that I had been exposed to earlier.

I think that it was a bit naïve on my part in the beginning. I think I would feel differently now. I think that it is a situation that could be controlled and should’ve been controlled earlier in the game. So I think I felt better at that time, because I did not know some of the consequences of what I was doing, as opposed to now.

Franklin: What do you think is the most important legacy of the Hanford Site?

Abercrombie: [SIGH] Tough question. And I think that for many of the questions that we have looked at. But I think that the long-range prognosis of what we’ve done is that we have been short-sighted, not only at Hanford, but in the way that we have handled the earth, that we’ve handled the environment. And we normally look at what is happening immediately; we don’t look at what can happen five years, 500 years, 5,000 years down the road from what we’re doing. I think we have to be concerned about it, not only with the nuclear energy—because I think nuclear energy can be done safely—but when we look at situations such as plastics. We’re having tons and tons of it wash up on shores of various places, we have large masses in the middle of our oceans, we’re putting it into our food system, that we need to be more cognizant of some of the things that we’re doing. In terms of Hanford, we have to look at the migration of isotopes towards our rivers and things of that nature. So I guess, that’s what I have to look at in terms of our legacy. I don’t think that we’ve handled it in the very best way. But I think we have to take today and do the best that we can for the future, or else we won’t have a future. In a way. If that answers your question.

Franklin: It does. Thank you. Switching to civil rights, what were the major civil rights issues for African Americans at Hanford and in the Tri-Cities during your time here?

Abercrombie: Major problem here, as everywhere—because this is not the only place in which the condition existed—goes back to the fact that I don’t think that people have been woven into the fabric of this country as they should have been. When we start looking at minorities, when we start looking at women, when we start looking at anybody that is not the majority, or is not accepted, or is not blessed by the majority, and leave them out, we leave the best of some people untapped. You know, I look back at the American Revolutionary War, and I look at Sybil Ludington, 16-year-old girl that rode the same night as Paul Revere. We don’t see the fact that that is a part of our history, that is a part of the fabric of us. So sometimes we leave people—significant groups of people—out of the equation, that in order to make this a better country, this a better world, we need to take the best of everybody.

Now, when I came here, like I said, or like we’ve talked about, many people were isolated into the area of east Pasco. Many people were not given the opportunity to work jobs that they were capable of performing. When you hold somebody down, you hold the progress of the entire group down. And I’m not talking about the racial group; I’m talking about everybody.

When we look at Charles Drew, for example, who developed the blood bank, and under the auspices of the American Red Cross. He left because they wanted him to spend his time creating two different blood banks: one for black, one for white. He said, no, that’s not going to happen. When we look at the developments that people can make, I think that we need to be working on the development of everybody, and pull this thing together. The fact that we even have to have black history is because we have not woven those accomplishments into the fabric that is this nation, that is this country, that is this world.

We look at Canada, for example, and not realize the number of people that have escaped slavery going up there. We don’t even acknowledge the brutality of slavery. We don’t acknowledge the contributions that people have made otherwise. Now we’re having—and I finally get this—Viola Desmond, for example, is on the Canadian ten-dollar bank note. She was arrested because she went to the movie and sat in a white seat, and they got her on taxes. Because the different in tax on the seat where she would seat and the one reserved for the whites was one penny. She was fined $26 and jail, I believe. They made some acknowledgement of that.

But I think we need to include all people fairly in the distribution of what’s accomplished. We have a school-to-prison pipeline where we’re making money off the fact of people being imprisoned. It costs way more money to keep a person in prison than it does to education them. When you educate a person, you eliminate much of what we have. We have people that are crying out and resorting to violent behavior, resorting to criminal behavior, because there is no opportunity for them. And I think that’s one of the things that we absolutely need to do.
We don’t have a discussion in this country of one of the most difficult subjects that there is to broach, and that keeps that divide there. We need to look at Germany and what they have done in terms of the treatment of the Holocaust and their contribution to it. I think there are lessons to be learned there. We are not the know-it-all of everything. And there are lessons to be learned. And unless we learn from those lessons, we’re not making progress.

Franklin: What actions were being taken here to address the issues that you brought up?

Abercrombie: Very difficult question for me to answer, because I don’t spend a great deal of time here anymore. I spend time between here and South Carolina. My contribution has been the fact that I have been trying to bring some of the items that have been left untouched together. I have a website, Amazing Black History, where I’m putting together a lot of information on contributions that have been made by blacks, and the purpose for that is not to elevate anybody, but to show people what’s there. It’s not to isolate anybody, because the stories that are on that site are intended to inspire everybody, whether they are male, female, black, white or any other nationality. It’s intended to get people to understand the impact that a person can have, the abilities that a person has, so much so that I’m doing that. That’s part of the dedication. I’m using that as examples; my primary intent is to motivate and inspire people to become the best that they can be.

Franklin: You mentioned earlier that you were on the Richland Human Rights Commission.

Abercrombie: Mm-hmm.

Franklin: Right? As the chair. What types of problems were visible to you as on the Human Rights Commission? How did the commission try to tackle those issues?

Abercrombie: It’s difficult for a city to run a function like that, because of limited resources. It was an all-volunteer group. I think we went through a couple of cases. But as you have a state commission, I think they’re able to function better. A federal commission, I think should be able to function even better. It was limited. But we looked at what was occurring. And I think most of the problems on whatever level come from a lack of knowledge of what people can do, and we take the preconceived notions and say the people cannot do this, they cannot do that, they don’t have the opportunities to do that.

When I was working as a bricklayer, we had a church, and we did the brickwork on it. But the church members volunteered and helped to save money, and one of the people that we had was a woman who was an ex-school teacher. I don’t know if you’ve ever lifted a 12-inch concrete block, but I have seen that woman take those things that probably weigh 70 to 80 pounds, one in each hand, and throw them up on the scaffold. That’s an individual. There are men that cannot do that. But we go around with the perceived perception of what people can do based on our mind and not the person. And I think it’s been very detrimental to minorities; I think it’s been very detrimental to women. I think it’s even been detrimental to men, because some of them probably have been pushed into areas that they would be less comfortable in, only because of somebody else’s preconceived notion.

Franklin: Were you directly involved in any civil rights efforts?

Abercrombie: Not directly. You mean, in terms of protest, or--?

Franklin: Yeah, I mean any kind of protest, lobbying, you know, sign making, efforts in the human rights council?

Abercrombie: Not directly. Now, we were involved in a group that existed late ‘60s, early ‘70s called BEAT, B-E-A-T, Black Expressions of Art in the Tri-Cities. We were attempting to make known what we could do. One of the activities that we had is we had Alex Haley come to town, and this is before Roots was written. He spent the day at my house, we talked with him extensively about what he had done, what he was working on at the time. He was working on Roots. I thought it was going to be about his research, and was tremendously excited about it, although when I got the book and read it, I was very excited about it as well. So we were—Tony Brown, we brought here. Most of the actions that I took were of the, hopefully, enlightening aspect of it, as opposed to those people that were doing the actually on the ground. I admired the. From the way that I’d come up, I didn’t really get involved in that. Looking back, I probably wish that I had.

Franklin: But you were focused on—your activity in BEAT was focused on kind of bringing influential people to kind of show—just to enlighten people about black culture and art and things like that. Kind of—influence people or just to share that knowledge?

Abercrombie: Yeah, I think it was more of an educational thing, because I had this preconceived notion that if you know me, you’ll like me. You won’t hate me. And I’m not talking about me myself, but I’m talking about the fact that—and one of the things that really, really upset me that I really didn’t understand—

[PHONE RINGING]

Abercrombie: Is that the end of our time? One of the things that I really didn’t understand is how a Christian could look at a black person the way that they were doing. When you look at the fact that there have been over 4,000 people of color hung in this country and they were hung by basically Christian people—are there two Gods? Why don’t we get some respect? Why does this situation exist? So, some of those situations really, really disturb me.

Why do we have to have two educational systems? Wouldn’t it be more effective if we had one? At that time, it was not pushing for integration as much as it was for desegregation. I think we get into a situation where those two ideas and concepts got muddled. I think that in terms of bang for the buck, I think the black schools gave it, because there were dedicated teachers that were there. As I saw integration taking place, in my wife’s home town for example, when the school that she attended, the high school that she attended was integrated, the white teachers came up there with dumpsters. They threw away trophies, they threw away records, they threw away all sorts of things because it did not mean anything to them.
So we approached integration, which I think is one of the biggest failed experiments that I can ever think of, because we went in with one group thinking they were vastly superior, another group thinking that they were for whatever reason inferior—although we had so many examples of people that did not fit into that category—that we’ve done ourselves a great injustice by the way that we went about this. We had people that felt that they were being forced into something. We didn’t pre-sell it. We just forced it on. This is the way this is going to be and that’s it. I think that we have made—and I think it’s good that we have gotten rid of many of the barriers. But I think a lot of them still exist, and a lot of them exist because we don’t understand, and because we fail to discuss. We have never really had a solid discussion in this country on race, and I think that many people are afraid of it. I just think that at some point in time, we’re going to have to have that discussion.

Franklin: Agreed. I like your point that—or at least I think the point you were making—that desegregation and integration aren’t the same thing, in that integration doesn’t—I think we thought integration would follow desegregation, but in a lot of communities over time, it just became segregated in a different way. Like with white flight or with—once busing was over—now our schools are more segregated than they were in 1960, because of the ways that neighborhoods or people have formed neighborhoods, and largely choose to live in certain areas over others. And we’re—

Abercrombie: Well, I think it’s more being forced into neighborhoods than others. Because we didn’t look at the fore-ranging impact of what that would happen. Let’s take my neighbor that I spoke of whose father was a doctor. He couldn’t move into a neighborhood that was comparable with his income level. Therefore, he didn’t get to go to the school that got all of the funding. And as a result, he’s impacted. They are also impacted, because they don’t get a chance to take advantage of what he could contribute, or what I could contribute, or what anybody could contribute.

And when you look at the color of law, and you look and see the depth to which this country has gone to maintain segregated communities, and when you look at how school districts are gerrymandered, when you look at how jobs then are created based on a lot of the factors that we try to keep out of our peripheral vision, you see why we’re in such bad shape. When we take our best students and give them everything that they have, everything that they need to excel, I think it’s great. And we need to do that regardless of color, race, religion or any other factor. And when we have students that learn by different methods—some people by example or whatever—we need to look more at how to get the best out of everybody.

Franklin: Coming back to your life, when did your work at Hanford come to an end, and what did you do afterwards?

Abercrombie: [LAUGHTER] It’s kind of interesting, like I said. I think the treatment that I received my last days of work at Hanford were not the way that I would treat a dog. I think that I was treated very unfairly. I think there were a couple of people that did some things specifically that were not in my best interest. About the time that I left Hanford is about the time that I got the diagnosis that I had six to ten months to live. It’s sometimes kind of difficult to think that those two are completely separated. I know when I was told the information about basically leaving Hanford, I made a comment at that time that scared me. And I would probably have done something that I would have regretted, but it was something that I had to leave alone or I think would’ve been consumed. So I’m at a point where I need to try to live out the six to ten months that I’d been given, make the best use of that time, as opposed to anything having to do with Hanford. So it was a difficult crossroad in my life at that time that came there.

Franklin: When was this?

Abercrombie: This was in the middle- to late-‘90s.

Franklin: Okay.

Abercrombie: As a result of having worked with people and seeing so many people that have been passed up and so many people that have gotten a false impression of what they can and can’t do, that right now my passion is letting people know that they themselves have capabilities. And I’m using a lot of the examples that I’m finding out that I’m talking about with you to show just that. And I think that there are lessons there that can help motivate and inspire all people. Because once you see what the lowest of these have done, then you see what you are capable of doing. And I’d like to work with those people towards those ends. So my ultimate goal is to do just that.

Franklin: What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the Cold War?

Abercrombie: Hmm. [LAUGHTER] Well, there are some positive things there. Community can come together. Richland had come together in support of a particular cause, whether that cause is right, wrong or indifferent. I think that that is a life lesson there: that you can pull together. Hopefully you have the right direction, hopefully you have the foresight, and hopefully all of those are good. I think that is part of the legacy that should be this nation’s motto, that no matter where we are and no matter what we do, that we can work together, that we can pull for good. I think we need to be a little more foresighted in much of what we do, because we tend to be shortsighted on what is going to make a dollar today, which may cost us five dollars to clean up tomorrow. And I think that we need to realize that it’s individuals that make this country, and not necessarily the groups that make this country. And so that we all need to work towards that end. Maximize all of the resources, all of the talent, all of the people that we have, and not waste our time on trying to denigrate or minimize any person.

Franklin: Is there anything else you would like to mention related to migration, work experiences, segregation and civil rights and how they’ve impacted your life at Hanford and in the Tri-Cities?

Abercrombie: Overall in my life, it’s been the fact that I’ve been exposed to experiences that I never would had I remained a bricklayer. [LAUGHTER] And hopefully other people will have found the same. I guess the one thing that I’m thinking now, hopefully it will go along with the idea and the concepts of what you’re talking about—is I look at the article that I just did on Clara Brown where she had one year to decide to—or to move out of the state or be re-enslaved. Sometimes, we think that we don’t have to make a decision and not realize that not making the decision is actually making a decision. Sometimes it is accepting of a situation that we really don’t want. We need to be objective in what we look at and how we look at it and the consequences of it. We need to train ourselves in school and we need to train ourselves in life that we need to be willing to make decisions. We need to be willing to speak out for what is right. We need to be able to do that in order to move the country forward, to move the world forward. We cannot be so nearsighted that we don’t see beyond our own noses.

Franklin: Great. Well, John, thank you so much for coming and sharing your perspective and your research for your website, and weaving all that together for us.

Abercrombie: Okay.

PUREX
200-East Area
234-5 Plutonium Finishing Laboratory
REDOX

1967-

1967-1995