Waldo Cohn proposed that President Eisenhower’s 1953 executive order to desegregate Army base schools include those under the Atomic Energy Commission, as well.
Waldo Cohn was one of the Manhattan Project pioneers at the Clinton Engineering Works X-10 Site, now ORNL, who were instrumental in the wartime Lab’s groundbreaking work in chemical separations. Cohn and his colleagues processed the fission products from the X-10 reactor — later called the Graphite Reactor — for research that included the first radioactive isotope shipments and studies of the fission products’ potential health effects and the use of radioisotopes as tracers.
The ion exchange chromatography techniques he used to separate plutonium for the original weapons mission were also used a few years later to determine the structure and function of the nucleic acids DNA and RNA.
Cohn was a pioneer in other ways. The Berkeley, California, native organized fellow musicians who were working in the “secret city” into an ensemble that plays to this day as the Oak Ridge Symphony.
He was also interested in civic matters and in particular a situation he referred to as a “bleeding wound” — the treatment of Black people in the segregated South, including in Oak Ridge.
In February 1988 Stan Auerbach, a pioneer in his own right who founded ORNL’s environmental studies programs, interviewed Cohn for an oral history project. Cohn’s discussion with Auerbach picks up as Cohn relates being elected chairman of the Oak Ridge Advisory Town Council in the early 1950s:
MR. COHN: Well, in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower, who was then president as you know, issued an edict, or an executive order it’s called, to all, through the Army, that all Army bases that had schools would henceforth desegregate those schools. This was unheard of in those days because this was well before anything like that happened nationally, but there had been pushes by the Black community and those interested for a long time for desegregating the schools and other forms of desegregation. I should point out that in Oak Ridge, up until that time, no Black could go to any but a certain, one barbershop, run by Blacks for Blacks. They couldn’t go to the movie theaters unless the movie theater had a special section in the back that they could go to. They couldn’t go to the laundromat, and there were a lot of things. The skating rinks, they were barred to Blacks. It was a bleeding wound as far as those of us who were concerned about the rights of Black citizens. It was a concern.
To get back to Eisenhower and his edict, I said, “Perhaps we could petition Eisenhower to include the Atomic Energy Commission facilities,” which we were still one, “under that executive order to the Army.” So, I constructed a very simple petition to the president to consider doing this. “Whereas, whereas, whereas, therefore, do this.” I circulated it to all the members of the town council, advisory town council. I think it was Christmas week, as a matter of fact, at the end of ’53, and at the next meeting in January, we got together, and I said, “What do you think about this?” Five members said, “We think it’s a great idea.” Vote “aye” and two members said, “No.” So we considered it passed and I sent it off to the president.
Well, there was a reporter from the Oak Ridger present and he was usually the only person who attended these Advisory Town Council meetings. The next day, this hit the front page of the Oak Ridger. The day after that the egg really hit the fan. All sorts of organizations, Citizens for Better Government, Citizens for Action Council, and so forth were started, and the only thing they could think of doing was to recall me because I had started this whole thing and I was the chairman of the council. So they circulated a petition and they got lots and lots of signatures because anybody who could show any proof of residency, just a simple letter with his name and address, could sign the petition and could vote. Well, they got enough to force — according to our rules of organization — a recall election. Well, in the meantime, I decided that council couldn’t do any business with 100 people sitting there glaring at me at every meeting, which is what happened at the first meeting after the January one. So, I said to the council, “I’ll step aside and let the vice chairman take over and resign my chairmanship.”
"I decided that council couldn't do anything with 100 people sitting there glaring at me."
And I was advised by Frank Wilson and Gene Joyce, our most prominent lawyers, to stay out of dark alleys because you don’t know the caliber of these people. So, my wife still says that’s where she got her grey hair. I was sort of amused a little bit by it. I used to go around to the public meetings of the Citizens Advisory Council, sneak in at the back so the speaker could see me there and throw him off his feet, so to speak. But any rate, finally it did come to a vote. We borrowed two voting machines from the county. They had not been used before in Oak Ridge. Anybody could vote who could present an envelope with a name and address on it, and the address was an Oak Ridge one. So, the opposition went up in the hills, distributed these envelopes, and brought people down by the carload who had never in their lives voted before, never seen a voting machine.
MR. AUERBACH: What year was that?
MR. COHN: This was 1954, in about… wait a minute, yes, ’54. Early in the year, about February.
MR. AUERBACH: Okay.
MR. COHN: Any rate, even with this kind of voting, they mustered 60 percent against 40. It took two-thirds to recall. It wasn’t quite recalled.
I must continue this story with a little postscript. In 1954, later that year, the Supreme Court passed the famous desegregation opinion, which made the whole thing, as lawyers like to say, moot. Since the AEC was still running everything here, that settled the question of desegregating our schools. Later that year, my son, at that time, was getting a hair cut in one of our still segregated barber shops, right here near Pine Valley, and while he was getting his hair trimmed, people were sitting waiting, talking to the barber, “Well, what do you think of that Supreme Court decision?” “Oh, that’s terrible. They’ll never get that to stick. That Waldo Cohn, he’s responsible for all this.” [Laughter] This is what our 10-year-old son came home and told me. We said, “What did you say, Don, when you heard that?” He said, “Look, he was cutting close to my ears. I just made myself very small.” [Laughter]
MR. AUERBACH: Well, I think that’s a chapter in your life you ought to be very, very proud of.
MR. COHN: Well, it made me quite a hero in the eyes of some people, and a villain in the eyes of others. Because there are people who still hold a grudge against me for inspiring the Supreme Court to pass that resolution.
MR. AUERBACH: Is that right?
MR. COHN: There are people who are that ignorant of how the laws in our whole governmental system work. They think that I can do things like that.
Read the entire Cohn-Auerbach interview . — Bill Cabage