Loud As The Rolling Sea is WYSO's series that began with a community oral history project in Yellow Springs more than a decade ago. It highlights the stories of local civil rights activists born in the 1920s and 30s.
In honor of Black History Month, we are airing a new episode of Loud as the Rolling Sea every Friday for the next month.
Today we present a conversation with series producer Dr. Kevin McGruder and the late Joe Lewis.
Joe Lewis
Kevin McGruder: After World War Two, President Harry Truman took significant action to combat racial segregation and discrimination in the United States, including within the military. In 1948, Truman signed an executive order mandating equal opportunities in the armed forces regardless of race. That was an important change that benefited Joe Lewis.
Lewis grew up in the Clinton County, Ohio in the farming community of Sabina that he described as open, indicating that his Black family lived side by side with white families, which wasn't the case in some other small Ohio communities during that era. After graduating from high school in 1948 and working for a year, he began considering his next step. He loved flying.
Joe Lewis: I said, 'Well, I think I'll join the Air Force.' So I was able to be in the career field that I wanted to go into, which was electronics and radar.
And then I went to Japan and I was in an air rescue squadron. They maintained the air crews in Korea to pick up downed airmen during the Korean War. And if one of my planes was down over there and had radar problems, I would fly over to Korea and fix the airplane and radar and come back home, back to Japan. And that happened a couple of times, but the experience was very good.
McGruder: You were in the Air Force for about how long?
Lewis: Four years. I went in August of 1950 and came out in August of 1954. And when I came out, I went to work at Dayton Air Force Depot, which no longer exists.
About less than a year after I was over there, there was a new radar coming online for us to repair, and they were looking for people to go to school on it. Well, I was single, so I was free to go. And the school was in Mississippi at Keesler Airforce Base. So I went down there and spent one whole summer on this new radar system: a Doppler radar, which was new to the Air Force.
McGruder: What was Mississippi like on base? Off base?
Lewis: Well, Mississippi was the heart of the South. And on base, it was just like any place else. Off base, you had Mississippi laws, which you had to be aware of.
When you got on a bus, you were supposed to ride in the back of the bus and whatnot. And I, having lived in Ohio all my life, born and raised in Ohio, that didn't sit well. So I remember one day I said to myself, 'well, before I go back home, I'm going right up front.'
And I did. And I didn't make the bus driver happy.
McGruder: How did you get that impression? Did he say something?
Lewis: He said, 'You're not supposed to ride up here, you're supposed to ride in the back.' And I said, 'Well, as long as I'm in uniform, and I paid $0.25 like everybody else, I will ride any damn place I want to ride.'
Well, that made him very upset. But I said, 'Well, there's not much you can do about it.' So I didn't want to aggravate him anymore. So I just walked out and he went on. But I said to myself I was going to do it. And I did.
I paid $0.25 like everybody else, I will ride any damn place I want to ride.Joe Lewis
McGruder: The training that Lewis gained during his service prepared him for a lifelong civilian career, mainly at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where he eventually focused on computer coding for advanced logistic systems. In 1963, Lewis and his wife Frances, moved to Yellow Springs, where they raised their children Lorraine, Joe and Diane. At Joe Lewis's funeral, his friend Governor Mike DeWine, recounted Joe's 1950s encounter with the Mississippi bus driver.
Support for Loud As The Rolling Sea comes from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation. It is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.
