Interview with Arthur Dingle, July 11, 1983

 HARDY: There we go.

DINGLE: Are you living in an apartment?

HARDY: No, we got a little row-house, It’s up in Belmont Plateau. Like Belmont Village, it’s called. We’re right up—you know where the police barracks is, on Belmont Avenue?

DINGLE: Oh, yeah.

HARDY: Right up above there, in behind the Inglis Home.

DINGLE: Boy, that’s—oh, that’s nice, up that way.

HARDY: Yeah, it’s a nice little neighborhood.

DINGLE: Yeah.

HARDY: People don’t know that it exists, so (laughs)—so it’s nice and quiet.

DINGLE: Yeah, it’s good, and some of them didn’t know it.

HARDY: Yes, well, that’s a thing. You know, everybody leaves their porch furniture out, and we forget to lock our doors.

DINGLE: Yeah.

HARDY: Don’t seem to make any difference. Yeah.

DINGLE: Yeah, yeah. Now, my sister [Lowe?], lives in Wynnefield. In fact, that is just about the worst place in Philadelphia. Worse than up in North Philadelphia. I mean—but it’s called a ghetto.

HARDY: Oh, it’s gotten bad?

DINGLE: Oh, yeah. Well, I tell you, a lot of people moved in—

HARDY: You say—where were you born?

DINGLE: Manning, South Carolina.

HARDY: South Carolina?

DINGLE: Yes.

HARDY: Was that small-town country?

DINGLE: Yeah, that was a country town. There’s—a railroad ran through there. At that time, the Atlantic Coastline railroad ran through the town, but it was just a small country town. Yeah. Cotton, corn, tobacco, and such things as that for-- But the town was just a few thousand people.

HARDY: Right. Can you tell me about your family back then?

DINGLE: Yeah, well, I had a mother and father. My father died when I was, oh, about 10 or 12. We had nine children. And at that time, I can remember when my family lived together. Nine children, a mother and a father in the home, and that was when I was 9 or 10 years old. Well, my father died first, and my mother 00:02:00lived until 1925. Of course, about 1919, when I came back from the First World War, I went down there right after I came back, and brought my mother up here. And she lived with me a while, and then she went on to New York to live with my sister, who had been there for some time. And I had traveled a lot before that, but let’s see from then on, when I got married in 1920. And we lived together. My wife passed in 1980. We was together 60 years. And we had one daughter. And she turned out very fine. She was Temple graduated and she went to—she was a clerk of court, up most of the time, until she retired, about 1980. And that’s 00:03:00the way it went on. Since that, I’ve been living here alone.

HARDY: So when—

DINGLE: What did you start saying?

HARDY: When your mother—when your father died, then, your mother had to bring up the kids?

DINGLE: Yeah, all together, yes. And we worked around there, and I was—I did—I came out of school pretty early, and I worked for the stores around town, there, and then I worked in the little hotel. So, when I was about 19, I got the idea that I liked hotel work. So I left home and went to Wilmington, North Carolina, and worked at Orton Hotel. And then the next year, I went on to Norfolk. But in Norfolk, I worked in practically every hotel there, including the Monticello. And in 1913, when Woodrow Wilson’s first inauguration, another 00:04:00friend of mine and I left Norfolk and went to Washington. And I got a job in the New Raleigh Hotel there, and I was a waiter there, during Wilson’s first inauguration. So I stayed there a while, and that spring, I went on from there to Atlantic City. And I worked in hotels around Atlantic City. And when the fall came, and business fell off, I went to Hot Springs, Virginia, and I worked in a hotel there. And stayed there the fall season, and then shortly after Christmas, I left there, and went to Florida, and worked in the Royal Poinciana. And when the season finished there, I went back to Jacksonville, and worked in every hotel there. So when the spring came, I—about June, I got a ship from Jacksonville, and came to Philadelphia. And then went off from there to Atlantic 00:05:00City. It didn’t cost me—I went from Jacksonville, Florida to Atlantic City for a dollar and 75 cents. Well, I worked my way from Jacksonville to Philadelphia. And I got this electric train, run from Philadelphia to Atlantic City for $1.75. And I worked down there. And I worked around, back and forth, all over the country, you might say. I worked in the Saratoga and New York. Well, in Atlantic City, I worked in several hotels there. And then I went to Scranton. I worked in the Casey Hotel there, and I went to school in Scranton there, in the National Business School. I didn’t get much education down South, so I tried to, you know, prove myself by working and going to school at night. So I stayed there quite a while. And then, when they got pretty close 00:06:00behind me to go to the Army, I came to Philadelphia, and went to working for the railroad. And I worked here 23 days, and they called me to the Army. (laughs) Well, the luck was that they said that—everybody at Pennsylvania Railroad said that everybody that worked for the railroad and had to go the Army, they had their job when they came back. Well, in 1919, when I came back from France, you couldn’t—it’s worse than it is now. You couldn’t buy a job, because all those fellows, you know, being discharged. So I was discharged at Fort Meade—Camp Meade, they called it then. I came right back to Philadelphia, because I know that I had my job when I came back. So I went between the working on the railroad and on the dining cars, and in Broad Street Station, I stayed 00:07:00there 12 years, until—well, at least from 1919 until 1928. It wasn’t 12 years either, it was a little bit—of nine years. And then I went to work for this exterminating company. Theodore Meyer.

HARDY: When you were a young man, why did you move around so much? You said—it sounds like you worked all over the East Coast.

DINGLE: Oh, I haven’t given you half of the places I’ve worked. I was just—I just named those places. I’ve worked in Allentown, the hotel—you know the Hansen brothers? Yeah, that family owned the Hotel Allen in Allentown. I worked there a long time. I worked in a York Motor Club in York, Pennsylvania. I worked in Florence Hotel in Florence, South Carolina. I worked in every hotel in Norfolk. And—

HARDY: Why did you move around so much?

DINGLE: Just—I tell you, I don’t know. You know, hotel business is slow unless it’s season and fat, good another season. And I just like to travel around, and I got a kick out of it. And while at one time, while I was working in Norfolk, they wanted some men in the Zizendorf Hotel in Winston-Salem. So I left with—10 of us left Winston-Salem—we left Norfolk and went to Winston-Salem to work in this hotel there. And I worked all around. And Allentown—I worked in Bethlehem. I worked in Allentown. I was working there. That’s when I first signed for the draft, in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

HARDY: Oh.

DINGLE: Yeah.

HARDY: Now, was there any—I guess there was no stigma attached then, to your changing jobs that often. Were—did the hotels—

DINGLE: Oh, no. Not at all, because they were mostly was—they mostly was 00:09:00seasonal places. And it was just all right to work from this hotel this summer, and go to that hotel that fall, and go somewhere else that winter. And one year-- and Poinciana used to import about 400 employees in the Poinciana Hotel in Palm Beach. And one year, when the crowd left New York on the train, I had made arrangements, and I made them at, you know, the station here, and I went down with the crowd to open the Poinciana that winter. It was just—I’m just telling you it was skipping around, but that was some of my life. And then, one time, things got slow around here, and I got to working on a ship. I was on a tramp ship, going south, you know, hitting such places, this Argentina, Johannesburg, South Africa, and around Cape Horn. That was before the Panama 00:10:00Canal was built. We had to go all the way around Cape Horn, and come up into the Pacific. And hit Singapore, and Hong Kong. A dozen other little places. The ship would—when we leave Philadelphia, some time it was six months, eight months, getting back home. Because they had—it was just, what you do call, tramp ship. Pick up a load here, and take it to that spot. Pick up a load there and take it to somewhere else. And that’s the way a tramp ship work, and you just work with just—work on the ship, and you didn’t—it wasn’t like they had the seamen’s union, or nothing like that. You just asked for a job, and they give it to you. They didn’t ask none of the questions but your name or your age and so forth, and you went to work. If they—you did something he didn’t like, they would fire you in Singapore and put you off the boat. 00:11:00(laughs) It was just another job. So I worked on that for quite a while. Then, when the war broke out in Europe in 1914, we was hauling supplies to our allies over there, France and London. And we’d have a shipload of stuff going over, and a submarine get after us one time. One guy followed us for five days. Right—and they said he was right behind, but he couldn’t catch up. Now, if a submarine going to fire on a ship, he got to come up and fire broadside, because if you fire from behind, it will go that way, or that way. So that guy was behind us, and he didn’t want to get too close, because we had depth bombs. We had, like, armor on the ship. But he couldn’t catch up, and he traveled until 00:12:00we got to the Bay of Biscay outside of France. And he turned back. But he was right after us. But we had some close calls. And then I worked for the merchant miners, steamship line that run from here to Savannah and Jacksonville and Galveston, Texas. And—

HARDY: So you based yourself out of Philadelphia, then?

DINGLE: Yeah. In those days, I was.

HARDY: Why did you choose Philadelphia?

DINGLE: No particular—really, no particular reason. But I tell you, we came up from—when my friend and I came up from Norfolk that time, I worked in Norfolk on two different—in two different occasions, about two or three years apart. And we came to Philadelphia, and looked around for a job, and I couldn’t find any, and somebody says, hired man on the ship. So that’s when we went down, 00:13:00boy, Johnny Howard and I, why, we went down, and went to work there. But I had no particular reason, because I had passed through Philadelphia several times before I ever stopped here. And I just happened to be here, and then, again, the reason I based myself here was after I had been to France and back, and I knew how hard things was, finding jobs, so—because I—we had been on this side about a month. Because at first, we left—we came from France and went to Camp Upton in New York. I believe Camp Upton’s closed down now. And we stayed there two or three weeks, and we had passes to go into New York City when we wanted. And then, after we stayed there about three weeks, they load us all on a train, and took us back down to Camp Meade, where we originally enlisted. And I had 00:14:00been around, and I stayed down there two weeks before I was mustered out. So it give us—gave me a pretty good idea of what things—what was going on in town. And we used to get passes every night. We’d go into Baltimore. So we had a pretty good idea of how things was in the streets. And I said, well, now, not that I liked Philadelphia worth a cent, but I said, it’s better coming to Philadelphia I had a job than, you know, go someplace else. And they’d give you a pass. I mean, they’d pay your way anywhere you want to go. If I want to go to Cleveland, or Pittsburgh, or Chicago, they would pay my way there. —I had said, I’d better go to Philadelphia, where I’d have a job. And I knew—I left Philadelphia, because when I came from Scranton here, and worked for the railroad, I didn’t know anybody in Philadelphia. But the landlady where I got my room, I had a little trunk, and I asked her to keep it while I 00:15:00was gone. And sure enough, she kept it, (laughs) until I came back. So I had two reasons for coming here, to pick up my things. And also know I had a job here.

HARDY: Yeah. Hm. Now, when you started your—I guess, working in the hotels, you were a waiter?

DINGLE: Yeah.

HARDY: A young man, and it sounds like you gradually worked your way north.

DINGLE: Yeah, yeah. When I first left, I went to Wilmington, and from there to Norfolk. And from there, to Washington. And from there to Atlantic City.

HARDY: How did things differ in Atlantic City, or Bethlehem or Allentown, from where you come from in the South, or the hotels you worked in?

DINGLE: Oh, it’s actually about the same. In those days, a colored man knew his place. And he knew to stay in it. Now, I traveled all through the South, and I knew my place. I was in the back of a—ride a trolley car at the back of the 00:16:00trolley. If it ride on a train, I went to the colored coach. And if I—in a restaurant or a public place, I go in and look for where it said “colored men” in the restrooms. So I had no trouble. I grew up, born and raised in that conditions, and there was nothing strange about it. And it was accepted. So I didn’t mind that. At work, I did have a—had once or twice, I’ve had problems. I came to Philadelphia, and I—Lenten’s Restaurant was on Market Street, near 15th. And I went to Lenten’s Restaurant and I sit down. It must have been around some time, during the noon hour. Sit down at the counter. And the waiter wait on this man, the waiter wait on that man. And that lady come 00:17:00there, up and down this counter, just passed back and forth of me. So I said, “Hey, could I get a sandwich?” He said, “I’m sorry, we out of sandwiches. Sorry.” So I knew what he meant, so I got up and went on out. And I went to Horn and Hardart, where you—automatically, where everybody could go in and eat at any time, always have been that way. But I knew what was it like, but I just saw Lenten’s Restaurant, and I just didn’t—I didn’t know that they actually didn’t want you in there. And just like at 52nd and Market, after I moved out here. And they didn’t want any colored in there. And so, finally, things got so tight around there, and the blacks got to getting more plentiful around there, why, then they start to accepting anybody. Anybody they could get. Yeah. So finally, there.

HARDY: So you say back before the First World War, then, there really wasn’t 00:18:00that much difference between Scranton and, you know—

DINGLE: And the down South?

HARDY: —Washington, and—

DINGLE: Well—well, yeah—

HARDY: —North Carolina or [inaudible].

DINGLE: —up this way, oh, you could ride on the—it was different up here from what it was down South. Now, up here, you could ride on a trolley car anywhere. And most of the restaurants and all, where they were separate, but there were some places that—different from now, that they just wouldn’t accept you at all. And of course, Scranton, Allentown, up that way, there was no difference. You could go into bars, there was white restaurants, there was white—because at that time, there wasn’t that many people there. I know a friend working in this hotel in Allentown, and he wrote me a letter from Atlantic City and told me about this job, so I went over there. And there was four black families living in the town. It was a pretty good town—good sized 00:19:00city, too. And there was just about four black families living there. Well, l went to work for the—I went to live with one of those that was there, and went to working this Hotel Allen. And it was a very good job. And of course, that year, they drafted—I mean, they—we had to sign up for the draft. And then, eventually, when I had to go to the Army, I had to leave Philadelphia and go back to Allentown, to go with the crew to the Army. I went there at morning, and we all gathered at this headquarters. And pretty soon, this big limousine came by, open limousine, and picked us up and took us to City Hall. And that was in Allentown. And the mayor came out, and he got in another limousine in front of us, with the city band. Now, there were seven black men, went from Allentown to 00:20:00the Army. Just seven. And they drove around town, playing this band on—about seven or eight fellows sitting in the car, playing the band. And we went all the way out to Muhlenberg College. And then the college president, you know, had all the people come out on the lawn, and to give them a lecture along with tourists and all, and then the mayor—and then the president of the college, both of them spoke. And then the band started up, and they circle on around town, and they went down to the railroad station, and they let us off there. And the train picked us up, and took us to the B&O station, and that’s where we met all these thousands from New York and all down—the train was the longest at City Hall (laughing). And we—I had a just about as grand a send-off as anybody can 00:21:00think of.

HARDY: Yeah. It sounds it.

DINGLE: Yeah. And that was true. And right now, I know one person that’s living now that was in the Army with me; he lives around the corner.

HARDY: Really?

DINGLE: His name is DeShields, and he’s in my outfit. Of course, there’s a few down to the headquarters, out down to the 48th and Fairmount, is where they have this American Legion post. But there’s not many of them around anymore.

HARDY: Huh. But there are others, then in the city, who served with you, during the First World War?

DINGLE: I say, this fella around here is the only one I know.

HARDY: He’s the only one?

DINGLE: He’s the only one I know now.

HARDY: Huh. I’d like to talk about—you know, find out about your war experiences, but maybe first we could talk a little more about Philadelphia, let’s say, when you came back. When you got back out, you found that you 00:22:00couldn’t get the job back with the railroad.

DINGLE: Well, I did get it.

HARDY: You did get a job with the railroad?

DINGLE: Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I stayed with them. I worked on the dining car a while, and then I—my last stint was in Broad Street Station. I worked there altogether there about seven years, right in the station.

HARDY: Where did you move to, when you came back from the Army?

DINGLE: In Seybert Street, this—near 22nd and Master. 2208 Seybert Street, I lived. And then I got a job—got a better place around on 21st and Master. And I stayed there until I got married.

HARDY: Was this a boarding house, or did you rent your own apartment, or—

DINGLE: No, it was a boarding house. It really wasn’t a boarding house; a 00:23:00rooming house. I was the only roomer there, except the family. And I stayed there about a year, until I was married, and then we got an apartment; my wife and I got an apartment. And we lived around in apartments until 1927. In 1926, we moved—we were—I was looking for a place out here, so I found a house to rent. So we moved over there, 5429 Race Street. And we stayed there a while. And the fellow lived right next door here, and was working at Broad Street Station with me. So he heard that his house was to be sold, that this man was losing it—a fellow named Bob Webb, and that I could buy it. So he sent me to the proper people to see. And I bought this house in 1927. And been here ever since.

HARDY: Wow. Why did you all decide to move out to West Philadelphia?

DINGLE: Oh, well, nicer houses and sun porches. That’s what we all—everybody 00:24:00wants is a sun porch. I mean, open porch. But up there, the houses are just—you walk right up to there and up the steps into the house. Well, everybody like a porch, in the summertime. And we were satisfied with the porch here for about a year, and the lady next door, my friend’s wife, and my wife, couldn’t get along, they had a falling out, they women (laughs). So they would set over there, and make slurs at her, and she would set over here, and make slurs at them. So I say, I’m going to finish all that. I’m going to close this place in. Well, in 1929, I called a man, and he came and put up this sun porch. It cost me $325. (laughs) And he put up this porch. Now, it’s been like that ever since. Of course, I—it’s beautiful in the summer and spring and fall, but in the winter, it’s too cold, because the single glass and a single 00:25:00panel all around there, and the air can come in. But for about eight months of the year, it’s ideal.

HARDY: Yeah. I was going to say, I think last time we talked, you said that this part of town was known as the place of—was it sun porches, potted palms, and something else.

DINGLE: (laughs) Yes. Yeah, sun-porches, potted plants, and second mortgages. That’s what—didn’t I tell you that?

HARDY: Yeah, that was it.

DINGLE: Yeah. Up here. There’s an old fellow I knew that was a city employee named Bob Baxter. He and I was very good friends. And that’s what he’d say. He lived downtown around 17th and Fitzwater. And he said he’d never move out to Philadelphia because the people out here had sun porches, rubber plants, and second mortgages. (laughs) But he was pretty right. But I got here, I got through with mine--made out all right. I’m one of the few that was not evicted from this street, during the Depression. Almost everybody—well, in fact, 00:26:00there’s nobody here now that was here when I moved here, naturally, because I’ve been here that long. But the people was moving out here like flies, and moving in and out, and the signs up for sale, for rent. And—in those days. And I was one of the lucky ones. I survived the whole thing. I never was never without a job. And I stayed through all of it. I was lucky enough to have a shiny automobile.

HARDY: Aha.

DINGLE: Send my daughter to camp. Yeah, all those things, during the—those years.

HARDY: Now, why were people moving out to this part of town? I guess there really was, during the teens and ’20s, a real exodus of—

DINGLE: Yeah, well—

HARDY: —Out of town?

DINGLE: —it’s the same as it was 20 years ago, moving into Wynnefield. White people—half of the street was full of white people, and on 56th Street, there 00:27:00was no colored people at all. On 50th Street, there was no colored people. And most of the street—there was half of the people in this street was white when I moved here. The man on the corner—there’s a little house there. I own that now. But he had a—a printing shop in the basement, and he lived in the house. Well, long in the ’30s—late ’30s, I guess, he bought somewheres and he moved away, and kept the print shop going. And so, eventually, I guess he died. The print shop went out of business, and the house was sold to somebody else. Well, in 1960, it went up for sale again, so I bought it. It’s a duplex; there’s two families live down there. And I’ve had it ever since 1960.

HARDY: Hm. So—

DINGLE: The migration from South Philadelphia and North Philadelphia, they moved 00:28:00out here as the white people moved further on out. That’s what happened, because on 52nd Street, there was no black man that had a business on 52nd Street or Market Street, around that area. And now it’s—most of it is black or, you know, is Orientals. There’s a lot of them that have businesses out there now. Things is—there’s a migration that takes place, and nobody knows why, inside of 20, 25 years. All the white people that was here moved further on out, and just about during the Second World War is when they started breaking into Wynnefield. And now you don’t see a white man at all. There was one family lived in my sister-in-law’s street, in that block, and about four 00:29:00years—or three or four years ago, they moved out. So now the whole block is solid black from one end to the other.

HARDY: Right. What was the reputation of this area, back when you were moving out?

DINGLE: Oh, it was pretty good, in those—this neighborhood was excellent. The reputation of this neighborhood was excellent. I tell you when it got bad. Back here, in the time the Mayor Clark and Dilworth was in, when they was building projects around. They build this project here up to 55th and Vine, and they built another one at 56th and Arch, that where old Abbot’s Mill there was, that burned down. And it stayed vacant a few years, so they built a project there. And that was just about the Second World War, and there was new fellas that move in there with their families, why—and another thing, Dilworth and 00:30:00Clark was the same way. They was disturbed and was interested and worried about the women with children and no husband. Well, the poor women with just five children, they put them in the project. Another women and three children, they put her in the project. And all of those kids grew up about the same time. There were hundreds of boys that grew up here, and—as now, 20, 25, like that, years old, and 30—well, some of them is gone and married and gone all away. But here about 10 years ago, 10 or 15 years ago, this was one of the worst neighborhoods you could think of, because there were so many young boys, there were gangs. And they had all the different names. The Moon Gang, and the 55th and Summer Street Gang, and the Black Brothers Gang. And, oh, they had names you had never heard 00:31:00of. And they would fight. I don’t know—I don’t mean play, they would fight. I seen them meet out here on our street, and they would—three or four of them would be bloodied up before they leave. They would hear about it, and they’d say, this gang come over this side, invade this territory, and then they’d—the gang reciprocated. No, I’m telling you, it was—it was tough. But you’d be surprised, those gangs have faded out, just like—just like came up like mushrooms, and then they just died out. And you don’t hear about the gangs around here like you used to.

HARDY: Right.

DINGLE: Yeah, because I think they—that group have grown on up and moved on away, and things returned to normalcy.

HARDY: Yeah. Now, when you came back to the city after the end of the First World War, I guess it was during the war you said there was a real massive migration of blacks up from the South.

DINGLE: —Oh, yeah. Yeah. They came up with—what were you trying to say?

HARDY: What was it like then? You know, with all these new blacks up from the South in the city?

DINGLE: Well, it was all right, because everybody was working. They was coming up to get jobs. And there was a Navy Yard, and there was Sun Ship Yard, and there was Midvale’s, and this big steel plant up here, in the North, toward Manayunk—I forgot the name of it—Allenwood. And all these big places was hiring people as fast as they came up. And everybody was working, and everybody got money, why, things seemed to be all right. But of course, after the war was over, that’s when the times really got hard. Of course, I was lucky enough to have never been out of a job. Yeah, but some of them had hard times. In those days, there was no welfare, and there was no Social Security. And people was 00:33:00actually suffering. And—back in the ‘40-, ’30s or ’40s, when Roosevelt started Social Security. And then, they decided to have this welfare rules, why, it came to a more stabilized community But back in those days, it was just bad. They just—what you made it just yours, and if you didn’t make anything, you didn’t have anything. That was all. Now, I remember when I first came in and started working, I said—I say, if I—God knows when they’d ever pay a pension in the Army, there’s no Social Security, and I had very little. Well, I’d work, and I’d try to save five dollars a week, or three dollars, or something, and have a few dollars put back, and I started—back in those days, trying to save for this day. But when Roosevelt came in, and he started the 00:34:00Social Security system. Well, you know you wouldn’t starve if you got Social Security every month. Then later on, my—the government issued pension for World War I veterans. So that wasn’t bad, so when I retired in 1958, I had pension from my office, Social Security, and veterans pension, all to look forward to. Of course, in the meantime, about three years ago, my firm went to the wall, and I lost that pension. But they waited too late. I had my feet on solid ground. (laughing) I had my feet on solid ground when that happened. So I had nothing to worry about anyhow.

HARDY: All right. But now—now, I’m really interested in finding out as much as I can about the people who came up from the South, during the war years, and in the early 1920s. Now, how they got along, the conditions they lived in, how 00:35:00they felt about the city, as compares to the South.

DINGLE: Well, some of them here, and was anxious to get to the city, and they didn’t know anything at all. There was so many people that just came up here, and they didn’t know how to do anything. And it was terrible. The man lived next door. He came here when the war first broke out. He lived in Virginia, and they threatened to send him to the Army. So, he managed to get a job at the Navy Yard. So he brought his family up here, his wife and three children. And they moved next door. And talk about some dumb people. That man could not use a telephone. And that was just about 1940. And that’s the way it was, there were so many people that come up, that was so illiterate. And they tell me there’s plenty of them down there right now. But I don’t know—the people that just 00:36:00worked on the farm all their life, and they didn’t go to any school, and then they get tired of down there, and decide to come up here, and they’re up here, and they don’t know nothing. They’re—some of them, they were suffering. There was people 8—10, 12 people living in one house. And maybe there—maybe one was working. And thing was, the thing was, it was tough in those days.

HARDY: Were there any, you know, mutual aid societies, or efforts to—

DINGLE: Well—

HARDY: —you know, help people out—

DINGLE: —I don’t remem—

HARDY: — community?

DINGLE: —I don’t know when—when the Social Sec-, when the welfare took over. I can’t remember, it’s—

HARDY: That’s not til mid-’30s or something.

DINGLE: Yeah, something like that.

HARDY: Something like that.

DINGLE: But before that, you was just on your own. There was nothing. And people would—you know, of course they see beggars now, but there, more or less, you know, just—it’s a—taking on people for what they can get out of them, 00:37:00because everybody can get some kind of aid from the city, or state, or government, or somebody. Things was, I know when we—I was living in North Philadelphia. I was working but there was plenty of people around there that had no job, no income, no nothing. And they just—it was very hard for them.

HARDY: What did they do? Did they go back South? Did they—

DINGLE: Ah, no—

HARDY: —city, or—

DINGLE: —I can’t remember anybody going back South. (laughs)

HARDY: No? (laughs)

DINGLE: No, I can’t remember any of them going back South. But they made out somehow or another. Go around and hustle and people—in those days, like North Philadelphia and South Philadelphia, people had these white marble steps, and there was people going around and ring your bell and ask you, “Can I clean 00:38:00these steps, scrub these steps?” And they’d say yeah. Give them 25 cent, and they’d scrub your steps, and it’s all kind of ways of making a few pennies.

HARDY: Well, I guess it was pretty hard then, for—

DINGLE: Yeah, yeah.

HARDY: Do you know anything—I guess Midvale was one of the big employers of—

DINGLE: Midvale. —

HARDY: Yeah.

DINGLE: Yeah, that was one of the factories that—I mean, steel plant I was trying to think of. Yeah.

HARDY: Did you know anybody who worked in Midvale, you know, with a reputa-, you know, how that place was regarded?

DINGLE: No, I do not. I don’t know anybody who worked there. But I know those places, and the people come up here, and they could always find a job in those steel plants, from the—because there was plenty of, you know, bull work, labor. And they didn’t have to know anything, just have a gang leader to tell them to do this, and tell them to do that. Unload a freight car, or load all that heavy work. There was plenty of jobs around there that didn’t need any 00:39:00expertise, just somebody to work.

HARDY: I guess that’s what a lot of the black men did, then. They just—they were—

DINGLE: Yeah.

HARDY: —laborers, they’d just haul and push and—

DINGLE: Yeah, that’s right. And I had a job in the Army, as a—was excellent. I think I’m probably the only man that you’ll ever see that wrote his own discharge. His own discharge papers. When we went to Camp Meade, and was mustering out there, and they put me to work in the office, and I wrote out discharges for the men. And everything was long-hand then. And I wrote my own discharge. And there’s not many people in the world I don’t think did that. (laughs)

HARDY: Did you give yourself any citations, or extra... (laughs)

DINGLE: No, no, my Captain had to sign it. (laughs)

HARDY: (laughs)

DINGLE: Captain Marsh had to sign it. But I wrote my own discharge.

HARDY: Wow. (laughter)

DINGLE: No, he—he was on the—we all did the same thing, and—in my company of—we came back, I guess about 190 or something like that. It was 276, I think, altogether. But we left a lot of them over there. And... We all, I mean, I think we always were in the same boat, so Captain Marsh knew what everybody did. If—If I’d have thought of it, maybe I would put something on there. He—he didn’t take time to look at them, he was—he would sign his name, and that’s it.

HARDY: (laughs) Now, did you volunteer for—for .

DINGLE: No, I know—I was drafted.

HARDY: You were drafted?

DINGLE: Yes, sir. (laughs)

HARDY: How did you feel when you got your notice?

DINGLE: I felt like a fool. I’m telling you. I tell you, I—there was lots of 00:41:00times I wanted to join, and said I was going to join the Army. I know one, day this fella and I was working on the ship at that time, and we came up, and right on Filbert Street, run right past City Hall in those days. Now, on Filbert Street, right across from Broad Street Station, was the—what do you call it? Enlistment—you know, in—

HARDY: Recruitment?

DINGLE: Recruiting office. So I said I was going to join the Army. So we came off the ship, and they went up there, and must of got there at lunch time. This guy that was on said that the Sergeant would be back after lunch, and for us to come back. And we stayed around and talked with him a little while. And then we went on, and I never did go back. But I was just in—that close to signing, to joining the Army, because everybody was joining the Army. And I was working—I 00:42:00remember, I was in—when I was in the hotel in Scranton, that—I was a bell-hop, and an elevator man. I did some of everything in that hotel. So that day, I run the elevator. And this man got on the elevator and say, “You’re a big, husky-looking guy, why aren’t you in the Army?” I said—and I said, “Well,” I said, “They haven’t called everybody.” “Did you register?” I said, “Sure.” “You got your registration paper?” I say, “Sure.” And—but he didn’t—he didn’t pursue—didn’t follow it up. But I did have my registration card, and I got it right there in my scrapbook now.

HARDY: Wow.

DINGLE: And that was in June 1916. But the people in that time, when things was getting real hot over there, everybody expected everybody to be in uniform, and 00:43:00if you wasn’t, they want to know why. But yeah. It’s just lucky that we got in a combat outfit to go over there, because you knew that Woodrow Wilson said that he wanted a lily white army.

HARDY: Yeah.

DINGLE: Yeah. Well, they sent all the soldiers—black soldiers went over, too. There was depot brigades, and—and engineers. They went over. Tons of them. But they—what they did was dig trenches, and load and unload ships. That was their job. Well, they were—got in on one of these battles over there, Chateau Thierry, and they tell me in a 12-hour period—a 24-hour period, there was 109,000 American soldiers killed. And after that, and the news got back here. Some senator got up on the floor and said that we would have to start sending 00:44:00the black soldiers over there, because if we sent all our young men over there, and they get killed out, then our women will be at the mercy of the black man. (laughter) So—so then they start—they set up the 92nd Division. And I was one of—in the 92nd Division. We went over. And we was lucky enough that by the time we got over, the tide was turning. And we didn’t go until April 1918, and the war was actually over in November ’18. But we—I fought on three fronts over there. But they—when I went to the Army, we kept in the reception center for two weeks. And I was—and at that time, they was recruiting soldiers, 00:45:00getting—filling up the different divisions, different regiments. So they picked me and sent me to the 68th Infantry. And—to make up—they needed so many men in each outfit there. Well, I was put in Company K, and I think they had nine of our men at the—filled that company up. and so a few men to this company and to that company, in order to fill the division. And I was given my rifle, and—to clean it, because it was all packed up with this gelatin, or some kind of oil, to keep it from rusting, you know? And it was put in a big box, it was long like that, about a dozen rifles put in there, and hot oil poured over. And it would run in every part. And then, when they—when you—they going to issue a rifle to you, they’d reach down in that muck and pull it out of that, all of that Vaseline, or what it looks like, and give you a rifle. And that’s where you start from cleaning. Well, I was given my rifle, 00:46:00and before I had fired it, I was in France. After I got into the 68th Division, I had been in that outfit about a week. And that morning—that night, before everybody went to bed, they call everybody out, and they had two barrels that high. And said, “Come out and bring your—your canteen cup with you.” So I thought they were going to give us something nice to drink, you know? So we all went out there, and these officers are standing there, and they would scoop up a cup full of this stuff and say, “Drink it.” It was a—you know, a canteen cup?

HARDY: Yeah.

DINGLE: Oh, about three quarters of a quart. You had to drink it all. You know what that was? Epsom salts. And—(laughs)—

[Pause in recording.]

DINGLE: —I had to do this on Thursday, because you couldn’t do them anyhow, 00:47:00you would run back and forth to the toilet. But 5:00 Friday morning, they turned us out. We got up. It’s a full pack, and you arrived full of everything. And march—they marched us down to this train. Hadn’t told nobody a word. We all piled on the train. We left from there. When—we figured we was going overseas after this all happened. We said that they’d given us that sauce they give us that night, it was to clean us out. And the next morning, we got to Hoboken. We got off at Hoboken, and got on this ferry and went over on the New York side, and started marching right aboard the ship. And then-- there was no letter-writing, no telephone, no nothing. Nobody knew nothing. And we got aboard this ship. So then, they give us postcards we could write to your family. And they was all put in the post office there, in New York. And we—when we arrived 00:48:00safely in France, they would telegram back, tell them to put those in the mail, let them go out. All right, but we knew—you could tell them anything you want about what’s going on, but you’d—there was nothing you could tell them, because you didn’t know anything. But know we aboard a ship, and they didn’t tell us where we was going. So, when we get to France, and they telegram back, and then they’d put this mail in the—letters in the mail to go to your families. So they had it all figured out.

HARDY: So, you’d never shot a gun, then, before you got to France?

DINGLE: No, no. I had shot rabbits at home, but Army guns, no. I did my practice shooting at Germans. (laughs)

HARDY: They sent you right to the front?

DINGLE: Well, we—no, we went to Napoleon Barracks, outside of Brest, France, for about 10 days. And then we boarded a train and we traveled for, guess half a 00:49:00day. And then we got off, and we was in this place. And—well, we moved up two or three times. Another time, we started walking, and we walked 55 miles before we stopped. We started up this morning, and then we marched all day and all night; all the next day till 9:00 the next night. And when we got there, then we didn’t have nothing to eat, the men had to cook dinner. And he cooked these army beans. And that’s what we ate for dinner. But, and then—but the next—stayed there about a week, and then we took another little march. And so that night, when we marched that night, we marched up to the front. And 00:50:00up—behind the front. And then at daylight in the morning, they was starting this bombardment. And they bombard all along, and then we advance. That—that was the first—that was in the Argonne Forest. And then we’d serve one tour in the Lourges Mines, because they sent the E section, I don’t know where that is. And then, after that, they sent us to the mid-section, which, we got on the train, and rode for a day, almost a day and a half. And then we got off there, and then we march about 10 miles, and we was there behind Metz. And that was the three sections that I worked in. I mean, when I was in the Army.

HARDY: Right. So did you all see combat, then? Front line?

DINGLE: Oh, yeah, in the Argonne Forest, yeah. Yeah, we—we—well, they had it 00:51:00pretty well—pretty well organized. They would drop bombs all along. And then the soldiers would march up, and they—and actually, we found a lot of solders that hadn’t run to the rail, or was still around there, and was ready to fight. We went in on a little town, there, and we—the boys said they eliminate quite a lot of stragglers was around. And there was one time we went into—and in a trench, in this little town, and met the soldier head-on. And I was—happened not to be in front, but as soon as he turned around the bend in this trench, he threw a grenade and hit about three or four of the boys. And of course, the—everybody was shooting at him. (laughs) He was taken care of right away. But we had some pretty rough going. I know one time, we was going over 00:52:00the—was out there, and we was lining up, and was supposed to go over at 5:00. So at 5:00, blew a whistle, and everybody jumped out of the trench and over this parapet, and over, through this little, like a—it was like a hedge, or so. Low underbrush. There was no tall trees, because it had all been blown down. They’d been fighting there for four years. And we went about 100 yards, and the Germans must have been right over there, and they had trained on us. There was machine gun fire, and dropping these little one-pounders. And it was so thick, you—you could see them hit the ground along—in front of us. But they it was—a one-pounder is something that shoots like that and it falls, it—a range of about a block. And they never did get off that far. So I went to ask 00:53:00the lieutenant, what should we do? Because we was just going right into fire, unnecessarily. And I couldn’t find him. And I looked up and down the trench for about two squares, I guess. This trench was long, that our men was in, from my company. And I never did find Lieutenant Reid. So it was pouring rain, and the shells were coming closer and closer. So I went along till the fellow, as I say, returned the—what did we call it? Kitchen Key. Key Kitchen. That was a trench about a couple of hundred yards back that we had just left. So they all passed the word along, and we all turned back there. And we stayed, because I had no orders for—I had no idea where we was going. I didn’t have any instructions about what was in front of us at all. So we just stayed there, 00:54:00overnight. And I never seen Lieutenant Reid until the next morning. He and another one of the Sergeants had ran away, and gone down and hid under a bridge overnight. So during the night, a Captain came up there, and asked for the Lieutenant Reid. I say, “I don’t have some—don’t know where he is. I don’t know. I guess he’s down in the trench somewhere.” And he went on back. But I didn’t report it. So we—we stayed up there three days, and then, when we was ordered to go back to rest. We got in this rest camp at night, and the next morning, this big army car come there with all these seals and badges 00:55:00on it. It was one of the—from the General’s office. And they came there, to court-martial this man that this Lieutenant was meeting. Now, I didn’t tell him that he wasn’t there. And—but this other—oh, somebody must have reported it. So they had him up there, and so, this Lieutenant Reid came back out to the dining room to me, and said, “Sergeant Dingle, would you please—don’t go on this trip—on this hike this morning. So you stay here, I want to see you.” So I didn’t know what it was all about. So he said, “I want you to testify for me.” So I said, all right. So, pretty soon, they called a court in this big room in this old—old barracks that we had—had gone back to. And they called my name. And I went up there, and he said, “Have a seat.” And he says, “Were you at Key Kitchen a certain night? Certain 00:56:00night?” I said yes. They said, “Well, who-all was there?” I say, “All the men, far as I know.” “How about Lieutenant Reid, was he there?” I say, “Yeah, as far as I know.” “Was he there all night? Did you see him during the night?” I said, “Well, we was—I was at one end of the line, and he’s at the other, maybe I didn’t see him.” “Well, are you sure he didn’t run away?” And they called three or four different fellows. But they questioned me three times during the day, and tried to get me to tell them that Lieutenant Reid had went [to the rear?]. And if that had happened—now, I spent all night—I didn’t go to sleep. I stayed up and tried to keep the fellows awake that was on guard, up and down the line. And if I had told the truth, Lieutenant Reid would have been court-martialed. And I could have probably got some sort of 00:57:00decoration. But I didn’t tell on him. And they finally let him go. But they wanted to put him in jail, because he actually did go to the rear.

HARDY: Yeah. How did you feel the first time you were being fired on? You must have—

DINGLE: (laughing) Pretty bad. (laughs) But I don’t know. I—I—to tell you the truth, I just felt, oh, I’m going to be the lucky one. They’re not going to hit me. But there was—was one Lieutenant there. If you have ever seen a scared rabbit, that guy was so scared to death of—oh, Sergeant Dingle, please. Please, do something. These people are shooting at us. And I don’t think anything ever happened to him. But he was—he was just scared out of his wits. And they get young fellas because you know, because naturally, a young fella he’s optimistic about life. And if I had taken the thought – the second 00:58:00thought - Now, at one time, we was having a—we was trying to sneak up on this machine gun nest, and there were—way up in front of us, was bullets coming. Brrrrp! Brrrrrrp! And we was—this underbrush, we stayed low down. So we knew just about where it was. So this fella, Ray Tadlock, he was a boy from South Philadelphia. So he was my scout. So I told him to go up there and see if he could get closer to it. So he went up there with two grenades, and he threw a couple of them, and it had no effect, and it got machine gun fire right back. So he said, “I’ll get them.” So he stood up, and I said, “Get down, Ray! I said get down.” So he said, “Oh, I’ll take care of them.” And he stood 00:59:00up, and went to throw those grenades over, and at just that time, the machine guns went brrrrrp! And he went right down. And so, we had to back away. Couldn’t bother to get—trying to take any wounded or anything back, because this machine gun was cutting the bushes and grass, and stuff around. And we backed up. And they finally eliminated that machine gun nest, what they call it. It was a cement, around like that. And there was holes there for the fellas to see out, and put the gun barrels out. But the back of it was open, but the front was a—it was just like a barricade. But evidently, a bullet, some kind of projectile went and knocked it out, and killed the two fellows was in there. But 01:00:00it was—they had more than a barrel of shells down there, they had shot. But this boy that they killed, we found him the next day. He had three or four bullet holes in him. But you just had to be careful, and don’t think you—I never felt that I couldn’t be hit. But I was just hoping I wouldn’t. But he stood up and ran toward this nest. And—to get close enough to it to throw these machine gun—these grenades at them. But yeah.

HARDY: A little bit reckless.

DINGLE: Yeah. Poor fella, he didn’t come home.

HARDY: Well. How did most people feel? You know, most people in your company feel about being on the front, there.

DINGLE: Yeah, well, some of them felt that it was a thankless effort, because they knew what they was fighting, and for what they would get for it, when they 01:01:00got back home. They know that it wasn’t going to be thought anymore of than they did before they went over there.

HARDY: Yeah, I was wondering what sort of—

DINGLE: Yeah.

HARDY: —bitterness there would be, you know, fighting the white man’s war —

DINGLE: Yeah, and all the fellas I was with was fellas from the South. And they all knew the conditions down there, and knew—and they—and knew that they was fighting a white man’s war, as you say. And they—a lot of them felt very bad about it. Of course, I was kind of optimistic. I didn’t have that much hatred, because I’d been all around, and I had been around these parts, and all the way farther up, all the way up to Canada, and I know that if it—the neighborhood you’re in is what—is how they felt about you. If you was up North, why, you was treated as an ordinary man. But if you was down in Alabama 01:02:00somewhere, you was treated as a Negro.

HARDY: Right. So Southern men were more bitter than...?

DINGLE: Oh, yeah, some of them was very bitter. And then some of them was—took it as—as it should have been taken all along is that they was living in a country that was a good place to live. And if the Kaiser of the—if the Kaiser had won, they would take over, and they knew how things was then. But things in Germany was about as bad under the Kaiser as they was under Hitler. So if he had brought his—his life over here, we—we’d have been in the same place that the Germans are over there.

HARDY: Right. How did—did any people in your company or your regiment want to 01:03:00stay? Have any desire to stay and just say, you know, why go back?

DINGLE: Yes, but it was a distinct no-no. They didn’t—they wouldn’t allow that. You had to come back.

HARDY: Huh.

DINGLE: Tell me, during the Second World War, some fellas stayed, didn’t they?

HARDY: I don’t know. I would think.

DINGLE: I think some of them stayed over there, didn’t they? Well, I know one fellow lived around on 54th Street. He brought back a German wife with him.

HARDY: A German wife?

DINGLE: Yeah.

HARDY: Huh.

DINGLE: Yes, sir. And—because I know him very good. Very well. They were in the 200 block of North 54th Street.

HARDY: Huh. Now, were your officers black?

DINGLE: My officer?

HARDY: Yeah.

DINGLE: Yeah. All except the Colonel and the Major. Now all the Captains and Lieutenants was black, in the 92nd Division.

HARDY: What sort of men were they like? Did they have anything common in their 01:04:00background, or—

DINGLE: Oh, yeah, some of them were—it was very—most of them was very nice. Now, this Lieutenant—this captain that we had, Captain [Peak?] he was [ ] in the Mexican war. And our Sergeant, Sergeant Maddox, he was down there fighting—what was his name? Villa?

HARDY: Pancho Villa?

DINGLE: It was-? yeah, Pancho Villa. And also, Pershing. He was down there, too.

HARDY: Oh, yeah.

DINGLE: Yeah. And all the—the most of the fellows, now, most of the lieutenants in my outfit was schoolteachers or lawyers. Now there was a lawyer, he—I went to see him in Baltimore. He was Lieutenant Cougar, down in the Army, and he was a schoolteacher—and he was a lawyer in Baltimore. And I went down 01:05:00to see him, because I had some other friends in Baltimore. And that was about 1960, because at first, I had met him at—in Atlantic City, on the beach. And then we started communicating, and I have some other friends in Baltimore. And I went—I saw him down there one time. But I don’t know what’s happened to him now. Maybe he’s dead or anything.

HARDY: Right. Hm. Do you feel that fighting the war changed your attitudes, at all, when you came back, towards anything?

DINGLE: Ah, no. No, I don’t think so. It didn’t change my attitude, I don’t believe. Yeah, it was—it was not except up on the front, it was not too bad for me. I had it pretty good, because I had privileges, because I was 01:06:00advanced. I went over there, and when we got off the boat, we marched right out to the Napoleon Barracks outside of Brest. And we stayed there for about a week. So they started lining them up, and looking them over, and about the second day, they called me, they said, “Soldier, come here.” He said, “Uh,” he said, “What’s your name?” That was Lieutenant Reid. So I told him my name. So I went back in line. So the next morning, called me up, he said, “Private Arthur Dingle.” I step up, I say, “Yes.” He say, “Why, you will be acting Corporal. And you will write the names of the fellows for the different duties, any man—any duty we have to do, why, you write the names.” So, about a 01:07:00couple of weeks later, after we got up in the Vosges Mountains, they sent me my warrant. That’s what they call the papers for the promotion, a warrant. A Corporals’ warrant. And so I kept that. And after we went up—up in Vosges Mountains, when we was transferred, and went back to the Argonne forest, while I was up there, they sent me my Sergeant’s warrant, and made a—made a Sergeant. And I stayed in the Army all the time until after the Armistice. We was near Metz then. So we went back to this old barracks behind the lines. And after the war was over, in fact is was the Armistice. And the next day, they called me, and another Sergeant, Sergeant Brown, and Lieutenant Cougar, and they 01:08:00sent us to officer’s training camp. They had the Marine camp there. And I stayed there the winter. And I learned everything about the Army that they hoped for officers to learn. And then, they—I was just about ready for my promotion. And Woodrow Wilson broke up the Army, and broke up the candidates’ school, and said, “Everybody get ready to go home,” and the men would be sent their commissions later. And my commission never showed up.

HARDY: You never got it. What happened?

DINGLE: Never showed up. So, but I don’t know whether anything—what a 01:09:00Lieutenant gets that a Sergeant don’t get, after you get out the Army, but I—I never—never heard from it anymore.

HARDY: Right.

DINGLE: Yeah.

HARDY: Were you all struck by Influenza epidemic?

DINGLE: Ah, yeah.

HARDY: In the fall of 1918?

DINGLE: Yes, sir. We had several men die, overnight. Yes it hit the—hit the Army, and it was—it was pretty darn bad. Some of my good friends went to sleep that night, and woke the next morning dead. Which—you want a drink or something? Water?

HARDY: Sure, sure.

[End of interview.]