Oak Ridge Today

Oak Ridge celebrating 65th anniversary of school desegregation

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Four of the “Oak Ridge 85” students at a recent music event. From left to right are Larry Gipson (Oak Ridge 85), Eric Dozier (musician), Deloise Mitchell (Oak Ridge 85), Emma McCaskill (Oak Ridge 85), and Mary Guinn (Oak Ridge 85). (Photo by Barbara McCord)

Oak Ridge is celebrating the 65th anniversary of its school desegregation this weekend.

“Sixty-five years ago this September, 85 brave and dedicated young African American students entered all-white classrooms in the Oak Ridge High School and the Robertsville Junior High School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in a historic school system desegregation,” organizers said in a press release.

It wasn’t the first public school desegregation in the nation, but organizers said it was the first public school desegregation in the Southeast.

“As such, it challenged the racist and sometimes dangerous Jim Crow culture,” the press release said. “This desegregation stands as an important milestone in American civil rights history.”

The anniversary events are being held with the Oak Ridge school system. Public participation in some events had to be scaled back because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Built before the war, this home is for sale

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One of the few pre-World War II structures left in Oak Ridge, the Luther Brannon House on Oak Ridge Turnpike is now for sale. The home is pictured above on Saturday, April 4, 2020. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

Note: This story was updated at 2:35 p.m.

A home in east Oak Ridge that was built before World War II is for sale. It’s one of the few structures that was built before the war and remains in the city today.

The Luther Brannon House is at 151 Oak Ridge Turnpike, just west of Melton Lake Drive and next to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it was the first home in Oak Ridge to be privately owned.

The single-story stone bungalow was built by Owen Hackworth in 1941 and soon acquired by the federal government as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II. Hackworth was a longtime resident of the Clinch River Valley.

Don Raby provided Oak Ridge Today with early photographs of the home after a fire damaged the house in 2014. It’s not clear how extensive the damage was or if repairs have been made.

Raby has collected photographs of the original structures that were here before the Manhattan Project, when the “secret city” that is now Oak Ridge helped build the world’s first atomic bombs. The 59,000-acre military reservation, which replaced several rural communities, was known first as Kingston Demolition Range and then as Clinton Engineer Works.

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Museums, national park center closed

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The American Museum of Science and Energy is pictured above on Tuesday, March 17, 2020. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

Museums and the national park welcome center in Oak Ridge are closed because of COVID-19, the respiratory illness that has infected more than 200,000 people in at least 144 countries around the world and killed more than 8,000 people.

The museums closed in Oak Ridge are the American Museum of Science and Energy, Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge, K-25 History Center, Oak Ridge History Museum at Midtown Community Center (Wildcat Den), and Y-12 History Museum at New Hope Center.

Also closed is the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Welcome Center at the Children’s Museum.

The AMSE bus tours are also not operating now.

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Panhellenic Alumnae Association contributes to flat top exhibit at Children’s Museum

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Beth Shea, left, Children’s Museum executive director, receives a check from Panhellenic Alumnae Association President Joan Vicary to help restore and maintain the original Oak Ridge flat top house at the Museum. (Submitted photo)

 

After hearing plans for an exhibit featuring an original Oak Ridge flat top house, the Oak Ridge Panhellenic Alumnae Association decided to support efforts by the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge to restore and maintain the house.

Joan Vicary, Panhellenic Alumnae Association president, recently presented Children’s Museum Executive Director Beth Shea with a check for $1,800 to help complete the exhibit.

“The decision was unanimous that we wanted to support this project,” Vicary said. The association holds fundraisers and selects an Oak Ridge organization to support each year, a press release said. Members of the group visited the flat top on the museum’s grounds, heard plans for the history exhibit, and decided to help with funds raised in 2019, she explained. [Read more…]

NYT: Judge orders deportation of Oak Ridge man who served as Nazi camp guard

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The New York Times reported Thursday that a federal immigration judge in Memphis has ordered the deportation of an Oak Ridge man who served at a Nazi concentration camp in Germany during World War II.

Friedrich Karl Berger, 94, was an armed guard in a sub camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp, where prisoners were held during the winter of 1945 and forced to work outdoors “to the point of exhaustion and death,” the newspaper said.

The Times said Berger is a citizen of Germany, where he will be deported, and has continued to receive a pension based on his employment, “including his wartime service.”

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‘Mud’ photography exhibit opens at K-25 History Center on Thursday

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The new K-25 History Center will be hosting “Mud, a Photographic Exhibition of Life in the Secret City.” The exhibit will open on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020, and it will be available for viewing through the month of March. (Submitted photo)

The new K-25 History Center will be hosting “Mud, a Photographic Exhibition of Life in the Secret City.” The exhibit will open on Thursday, February 27, and it will be available for viewing through the month of March.

There will be a grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the K-25 History Center at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, February 27.

During World War II, Oak Ridge was a quickly built as a secret government town of 70,000 workers who lived in a camp-like environment of barbed wire, security checkpoints, and code words, a press release said. Workers were fingerprinted, interviewed, assigned a job, and given a clearance badge. Housing was limited and cramped and often unheated.

Oak Ridgers who ventured into Knoxville were easy to spot. The quickly constructed secret city was blanketed in a thick layer of mud. As a result, its residents’ muddy shoes were a dead giveaway as to their origin. “The muddy conditions of Oak Ridge during the war was a commonality that all residents, regardless of occupation, had to contend with,” the press release said.

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K-25 History Center to feature exhibits, artifacts, galleries

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K-25 History Center (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management)


The K-25 History Center in west Oak Ridge will feature exhibits with more than 250 original artifacts and interactive galleries developed with help from almost 1,000 oral histories.

There will be a grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the K-25 History Center at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, February 27.

“The K-25 History Center was created to honor the amazing stories of the men and women who helped construct and operate the uranium enrichment complex that altered the global landscape during the Manhattan Project and Cold War,” the U.S. Department of Energy said.

The History Center is housed in 7,500 square feet of space on the second floor of the city-owned fire station at the former K-25 site, now known as Heritage Center. It was developed as part of a 2012 agreement that allowed DOE to demolish the North Tower of the former mile-long, U-shaped K-25 Building.

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K-25 History Center has grand opening this month

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The K-25 History Center will have a grand opening ceremony on Thursday, February 27.

The ceremony, which will include a ribbon-cutting, is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Thursday, February 27, at 652 Enrichment Street in west Oak Ridge.

The K-25 site, now known as Heritage Center, was built during World War II to help enrich uranium for the top-secret Manhattan Project, a federal program to build the world’s first atomic bombs. K-25 helped enrich uranium for “Little Boy,” a nuclear weapon dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, shortly before the end of World War II.

After the war, K-25 enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and commercial nuclear power plants through the Cold War. The site was shut down in the mid-1980s, and it is being cleaned up and converted into a private industrial park. The site’s large uranium enrichment buildings have been demolished and so have many of the support buildings. Most of the cleanup is expected to be completed this year.

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Oak Ridge History Museum presents 1940s music on Saturday

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The Oak Ridge History Museum will host an evening of 1940s music by the Oak Ridge High School Choral Ensemble and the Oak Ridge High School Jazz Band on Saturday, January 18, at 7 p.m.

Admission is free, although donations to the museum are certainly welcome, a press release said.

The Oak Ridge History Museum (www.oakridgemuseum.com) is located at 102 Robertsville Road in Oak Ridge, across the street from the Kroger Marketplace.

This press release was submitted by a subscriber to Oak Ridge Today.

Learn about women in the Manhattan Project on Dec. 21

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Close up of welding in prefabrication shop 1944 (Photo courtesy National Park Service)

What was life like for women and women scientists during World War II and the Manhattan Project?

You can join National Park Service staff on Saturday, December 21, as they discuss the social changes that occurred during World War II and how that affected women in the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was a top-secret federal program to build the world’s first atomic weapons during the war, and it included Oak Ridge.

The December 21 program is free to the public, but if you would like to explore the Children’s Museum, you will need to pay admission at the front desk. The Children’s Museum is located at 461 West Outer Drive in Oak Ridge.

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Oak Ridge’s oldest structure recognized with historical sign

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Freels-Bend-Cabin-Historical-Marker-Oct-20-2019
Photo courtesy D. Ray Smith

Note: This story was updated at 12:30 p.m.

The Freels Bend Cabin, Oak Ridge’s oldest structure, was recognized with a historical sign in October.

The historical sign by the Tennessee Historical Commission said the Freels Bend Cabin, next to Melton Hill Lake east of Clark Center Park in south Oak Ridge, is the only Oak Ridge home that is still standing that was built in the 1800s.

It was one of the earliest cabins built in Anderson County. It’s on the National Historic Register.

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Manhattan Project Park: Ride with a Ranger on Saturday

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You can join a National Park Service park ranger for a bike ride on the North Boundary Greenway on Saturday, May 25, 2019, to see how the former communities of the area have changed during the past 75 years. (Photo courtesy National Park Service)

You can join a National Park Service ranger for a bike ride on the North Boundary Greenway to see how the former communities of the area have changed during the past 75 years.

The free program is presented by the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which includes Oak Ridge.

The bike ride program will start at 10 a.m. Saturday, October 19, at the Turnpike Gatehouse and travel down Big Oak Trail and North Boundary Road.

“Along the ride, we will explore the former communities that were here before the Manhattan Project,” a press release said. “Rangers will stop several times along the bike ride to point out the rich history that is found within the Oak Ridge area.”

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