William Winter was born in 1923 in Grenada County, Mississippi. He came up during the depression on a cotton and cattle farm. His father owned the farm and had a number of share croppers working for him. While growing up, Winter had friends who were both white and black. At that time they did not go to school together. Even though white southerners all accepted segregation as a normal and satisfactory way of life, Winter began to realize early on that it was an unfair system. After playing all summer with his black friends he went to school on a school bus whereas his black friends were not able to start school until two months later after the cotton crops had been picked. Then they had to walk to their one room school. Winter wondered why his black friends were not able to attend the same quality school he was attending. This was an issue that was raised early with Winter and became increasingly relevant in his life. Life on the farm in the 1920s and 1930s was more out of the 19th Century than the 20th Century. They did not have electricity or running water. Now it would be considered a very hard life but it gave Winter an appreciation of the land and of people of all levels of society. It was a unique experience. Winter's family lived with his grandfather who had been a Confederate veteran of the Civil War and grew up hearing his stories. Winter is amazed at the changes that have taken place over the course of his life. Winter's grandfather had entered service with the Confederate Army in 1864 as a 17 year old. Winter grew up in the tradition of the Confederacy and his greatest regret as a boy was not having had the opportunity to fight in the Confederate Army in the Civil War. That shows how far he has come in his own thinking about the relationships of the people of this country. As Hitler came to power in Germany in the 1930, Winter became aware of the problems in Europe. He would listen to the radio and would hear Hitler speaking to the people of Germany and it was a frightening kind of speech he was hearing. By the late 1930s, he was aware that sooner or later the United States would be involved in the war.

By December 1941, William Winter was a sophomore at Ole Miss. He went to visit a friend in Cleveland, Mississippi, with who he attended the Ole Miss versus Delta State basketball game. The following day after lunch they heard an announcement on the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. As they drove back to Oxford there were many thoughts running through his mind. When he got back to the campus on the evening of 7 December 1941 things were in a state of great excitement. The next day, the student body gathered to listen to President Roosevelt's famous speech. They all left the assembly that morning sobered by what they had heard and knowing that their tenure at Ole Miss would be limited. They knew that they would all be in uniform soon. By that time, Winter was already signed up for military service because he was in the ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] program at Ole Miss. He was signed up as a member of the Enlisted Reserve Corps of the United States Army. As such, he was not subject to the draft but was subject to being called to active duty. That time came in June 1943. From 7 December on they were all living in a state of uncertainty with regards to how long they would be able to stay in school. Winter was set to finish in May 1944 but knew he would not be able to stay that long. Winter's junior class was called up in June 1943. He went to Camp Shelby to report for duty. When he arrived there, he learned that if he could complete his degree during that summer semester he could return to school. Winter returned to Ole Miss and took 27 hours during the summer semester and graduated in August 1943. The day after he received his diploma he was on a train to Camp Blanding, Florida for basic training.

For William Winter, basic training was different [Annotator's Note: different than his previous experiences at Ole Miss]. Basic infantry training was designed to make soldiers out of civilians as quickly as possible. The discipline was harsh and strict. Camp Blanding was an infantry replacement training center. Winter's platoon was overseen by a sergeant whose parents were from Czechoslovakia. The sergeant's parents had been mistreated by that Nazis and the sergeant had a hatred for them that he tried to instill in the men in his platoon. Winter went through 17 weeks of very intense training. Much of the training was designed to toughen them physically. Since he had been in the ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] program, after basic training Winter was supposed to be sent to Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Due to the needs of the Army at the time, however, he was sent back to Ole Miss in January 1944. In April 1944 he was called to Officer Candidate School and began the infantry officer's training at Fort Benning in June 1944. Officer training was a continuation of the intense training he had received in basic training at Camp Blanding, only now they were watched to assure that they possessed the leadership qualities required of an officer. Of the 210 officer candidates who started in Winter's class, only about 85 completed the course. The training included intense mental and physical training, as well as mechanical training with the weapons an infantry officer should know about. Winter believes that he had an advantage over the draftees who were sent to Officer Candidate School because of his education. He took great pride in the fact that he graduated number one in his class at Fort Benning. Having the general pin his second lieutenant bars on him as the number one graduate was a source of great satisfaction for Winter. It was also a source of confidence building for him.

William Winter assumed that after finishing OCS [Annotator's Note: officer candidate school] he would be sent to an infantry division that would soon be sent to a battle area. The Normandy landings on 6 June 1944 had taken place during his first week of OCS. His OCS course lasted from June to October 1944. This time was also the period of the most intense fighting of the war, which resulted in a tremendous number of infantry casualties. The need for new infantry second lieutenants was great but, for some reason, instead of going to a combat unit, Winter was assigned to an infantry training regiment at Fort McClellan, Alabama. The regiment he was assigned to was one of two regiments in the Army made up of African-Americans. The military was totally segregated. The regiment Winter was assigned to was made up of all black enlisted men and all white officers. In October 1944, Winter found himself at Fort McClellan training black troops for infantry service. White officers were integrated into the regiment as an experiment by the Army along with a great number of black officers. Winter found himself living and working, and in very close relationships, with black people. He had grown up with black youngsters but he had never worked in an integrated and socially equal situation. It was an educational and productive experience for Winter which helped him to reassess the segregation he had grown up in and helped him realize the unfairness of it. It also helped him realize the limitations of society when not embracing the concept of equal rights and equal opportunities for people regardless of race. Winter developed very close relationships with people who were black. On post things were integrated but when they took the civilian bus into Anniston, Alabama, Winter's fellow officers who were black had to go to the back of the bus. They were not allowed to eat together, go to the movies together or go to church together. Winter could see how unfair the system of segregation was and became convinced that, after the war, there would be changes in the south. There were blacks from both the north and the south in Winter's unit. He found it interesting that he was able to associate more naturally with the black soldiers from the south than he was those from the north. Winter's platoon sergeant was from Harlem and had been a prize fighter from New York. He was the enforcer of discipline in the platoon. When Winter first joined the unit there was some animosity shown toward him. He was a white officer from Mississippi and many of the trainees assumed that he would not be fair with him. Winter was able to dismiss those concerns quickly. Winter was the subject of some hazing by his fellow white officers from outside the south but generally got along with all of them. They ran into racial issues, especially off post. Winter learned so much about race relations that served him well later.

William Winter was at Fort McClellan for four months, after which they were assigned to Army units. In October 1944, he joined an African-American regiment at Fort McClellan and remained with it until after the end of the war. Winter really wanted to experience combat and feared that he would miss out on it if he was not assigned to an infantry division on the front lines. He later realized that it was very lucky that he had not been assigned to a combat outfit. The worst times for him were when he got word that a friend of his was killed in action. That was something he heard way too often. Winter still has a letter he sent to a friend he made at Camp Blanding that was returned to him as undeliverable because his friend had been killed in action. When Winter was stationed in the Philippines he visited his friend's grave. Winter got orders to go to the port of embarkation in San Francisco the same week the atomic bomb was dropped. He assumed that he was being sent to join a division to take part in the invasion of Japan. Winter believes that the use of the atomic bombs saved a lot of lives, both American and Japanese. Winter was assigned to the 341st Infantry Regiment, 86th Infantry Division and joined that unit just outside of Manila in October 1945. He was assigned to a rifle company that was bivouacked south of Manila. He was later transferred to Headquarters, 86th Infantry Division in the G3 section [Annotator's Note: Operations]. He served with the G3 section from January 1946 until he was ordered back to the United States in July 1946. Winter was in the Philippines from October 1945 until July 1946. During that time, he saw the reduction of the US Military in a very drastic way. The 86th Infantry Division was the one American unit assigned to oversee military activity in the Philippines. One of the things they were responsible for was to round up Japanese stragglers, many of whom had refused to recognize that the war was over. They were also responsible for disarming the Filipino guerillas that fought alongside the American troops and arranged for those guerillas to be paid as well. Another responsibility was to oversee the restoration of order. Manila was the most devastated city in the world outside of a few cities in Germany. There was not much working in Manila when Winter's division arrived in the fall of 1945. Winter was able to travel around the island and could see what had taken place during the fighting. He visited the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor. It was a heart wrenching experience for him to see what had happened there early in the war.

William Winter would go out with the patrols to round up Japanese soldiers. They had an airplane and would go pick those soldiers up. Many of the Japanese soldiers were in very poor condition. Winter and his men also had to save those Japanese from the Filipinos. Many of the Filipinos hated the Japanese for the way they had been treated. When Winter was in his first assignment with the infantry battalion of the 86th Infantry Division stationed south of Manila he was taken by some of the local Filipinos to a cliff at the bottom of which were the skeletons of hundreds of Filipinos who had been bayoneted and pushed off the cliff by the Japanese. They had been brutally murdered and that resulted in a residual hatred of the Japanese by the Filipinos. The Japanese stragglers who came out of the mountains were frequently beaten by the Filipinos. Winter witnessed this firsthand on occasions. If the tragedy of the war could be dismissed, the war was a great educational experience for Winter and broadened his horizons. He spent almost a year in the Philippines and came to appreciate the Filipinos. He developed many friendships there. He also heard the stories of heroism of those Filipinos who fought alongside the American troops there. Winter was in the Philippines on Independence Day in 1946 when the Philippines were granted independence from the United States. The ceremony took place on 4 July 1946. Winter was part of the receiving party for MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur] when he returned to the Philippines from Japan and witnessed the reverence that the Filipinos had for MacArthur. Winter had a good friend who was a captain in the Judge Advocate General's Corps who he travelled a good deal with throughout the Philippines. Winter's friend told him that he had heard that General Aguinaldo [Annotator's Note: Emilio Aguinaldo] lived in the area. Winter and his friend, Captain Reed, decided to pay a visit to General Aguinaldo. They went to the house and visited with him and talked to him about the fighting during the early Twentieth Century on Luzon. The general expressed no bitterness but was pleased that the Philippines would soon have its independence. Just before they left, General Aguinaldo retrieved a bottle of wine he had had since 1903 that he would not open until the Philippines experienced its independence. Winter saw Aguinaldo on 4 July 1946 at the Philippine Independence Day ceremony and imagined him about to open that bottle of wine. Since that time Winter has had a very specific interest in the Philippines.

William Winter had no inclination to stay in the Army after the war. He was fortunate to have come through the war physically and mentally unscathed although there was a lot of sadness because he had lost a lot of friends. He was not unhappy with his experience in the Army but was ready to get out and get back into civilian life. He was also interested in getting into politics. He wanted to go home, go to law school and get into politics and that is what he did. He got out of the Army in August 1946 and entered law school the following month. The next year, 1947, was an election year. Winter was interested in running for the legislature. He found himself in the law school at Ole Miss with other young men who had similar experiences and similar aspirations. Before the semester was over, 12 of the Ole Miss law students ran for the legislature and 11 of them were elected. It was quite an experience for them. They had great plans to transform the world but then they ran into the practicality of politics of Mississippi. Still, they brought a fairly progressive attitude to the legislature and passed some progressive legislation. They got the Mississippi Worker's Compensation Act passed. At the time Winter was elected to the Mississippi State Legislature there was an old conservative status quo based on the maintenance of segregation. Winter and the other progressives ran head on into almost fanatical opposition with regards to race relations in the South. There was a fear, especially among the older political leaders, that any change that was perceived as progressive in terms of race relations would result in the end of segregation. That was something the older people in the South could not imagine. Even the well informed people could not image black people having the same rights as white people. They believed that it would change the balance in the political arena. They also thought it would result in social relations that would be disadvantageous to white people. It was a real fear by people. They thought that they would make things fairer for black people but quickly realized that it would not be that easy. They were able to take advantage of the concern that something had to be done to improve the opportunity for black people to go to school. At the time most black children did not have a chance to get a good education. Over 50 percent of the people of Mississippi, both black and white, were functionally illiterate when Winter went to the legislature. They were able to pass some progressive legislation even before the Brown decision in 1954 [Annotator's Note: Brown v. Board of Education] that resulted in a movement toward the equalization of opportunity for education but in a segregated framework. In the late 1960s they were finally able to comply with the mandate of the Supreme Court in 1954. Being perceived as not being safe on segregation would prevent them from being elected to anything. Finally it was overcome. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 changed the playing field and by the 1970s they were in a period of fairly progressive transition which is still taking place today. Winter is ashamed of some of the things he said in the 1950s and 1960s but realizes that if he had not spoken like that he would have been ostracized both as a politician and as a citizen. Winter became known as a moderate which was the worst thing that could be said about a Mississippi white politician. When Winter ran for governor in 1967 one of his opponents said that a moderate was an integrationist. Winter lost that first race for governor mainly because of his position of being more moderate on race. He was defeated again but was elected on his third run in 1979 when attitudes had changed. It was a tough battle for a while.

[Annotator's Note: Segment begins with the interviewer asking William Winter about civil rights during his political career.] The Brown decision in May 1954 by the United States Supreme Court [Annotator's Note: Brown v. Board of Education] dismissed the separate but equal concept of interpreting the 14th Amendment. That fueled the fire of the issue of integrating public schools in the South. It was a very emotional issue and is what led the creation of the so called White Citizens Council. This was a group of people who were concerned about how they were going to adapt to the new rules as prescribed by the Supreme Court. They decided that they were not going to obey the law and integrate their schools. This led to at least a decade of conflict and confrontation that only postponed the inevitable. Winter was opposed to the integration of the schools but understood that the law had to be obeyed. The Citizens Council was formed in the Mississippi Delta in the summer of 1954. Winter was invited to attend a meeting in Greenwood, Mississippi that June by some of his friends who were interested in providing a defense against integration of the schools there. The meeting was held at the city hall. There were many alarmist statements made about what would happen and how they could not afford to integrate the school. Winter stood up after the strategy was pronounced that they were going to abolish the public schools and would lease the buildings to private schools. They were effectively going to do away with public education. Winter announced that they would not be able to get by with that. Afterwards, only one person told him that he agreed with him. Later on, the people voted to abolish the public schools. This was a battle fought from 1954 until the 1970s. It was not until 1970 that the Supreme Court sent down a ruling stating that there was to be total integration. That is what created so much turmoil in the South. Winter believes that if this would have been approached with a degree of gradualism they could have avoided what is happening now which is the renewed segregation of the public schools.

Hodding Carter, II was a friend of William Winter's. He was not a popular figure in the state [Annotator's Note: in Mississippi] because of his more progressive views regarding race and race relations. He was a segregationist initially and was not for immediate integration of the schools. He recognized that they would not be able to maintain a totally segregated education system in the South and that the sooner they could transition the better everyone would be, both white and black. He was not well received. When Winter was in the legislature a resolution was presented to censure Hodding Carter. Winter was one of only a handful who voted against it. One of Winter's friends in Grenada asked him to invite Hodding Carter to a meeting of the Rotary Club. Winter called Carter and invited him and Carter accepted. During the two weeks between the invitation and the meeting some members of the rotary club called for a vote to rescind the invitation. The vote was held and Carter's invitation stood. After the vote in the legislature Carter wrote an article jabbing at the Mississippi Legislature. Dr. Jim Silver was a distinguished professor of history at Ole Miss and was later the president of the Southern Historical Association. He was a true progressive and liberal. He was a great teacher and a personal friend of Winter's. Silver was not hesitant to speak his mind and made statements that were considered to be outside the reigns of the segregationists in the State. He was singled out as being a communist. Winter rose up on the floor of the house and defended him. After James Meredith was admitted to Ole Miss, Silver befriended him. That was too much and he was dismissed from the university. Silver contacted Winter asking if he would help him get a lawyer. Winter accommodated him and found a friend who would represent him. After some negotiations, it was decided that Silver could remain at the university but could not teach. He finished out the year there then left and went to Notre Dame. To Winter, it was a tragic loss for Ole Miss. After Winter was elected governor he had a reception at the governor's mansion and declared it Jim Silver Day in Mississippi. The thing that really got Silver in trouble was writing the Closed Society book [Annotator's Note: Mississippi: The Closed Society].

William Winter agrees with the interviewer's statement that many black veterans felt more freedom in the Army than they did when they got home. Winter never got to know Medgar Evers. He had been killed in 1963. Winter is a great admirer of Evers and has become a very close friend of Evers's widow, Mrs. Myrlie Evers Williams. Winter feels that Medgar Evers was one of the most courageous men to ever walk the face of the Earth and literally gave his life for the cause of civil rights. He was gunned down in June 1963. That summer, Winter was running for state treasurer. That election was the last really blatantly racist political campaign in Mississippi history. The night Evers was killed, Winter had spoken at a rally in Ackerman then went to Memphis to attend a Presbyterian church meeting. The following morning at breakfast one of the elders of the Presbyterian Church was talking about the murder of Medgar Evers the night before. The elder, a professed Christian, made a disparaging comment about Evers which almost made Winter sick. Evers was a great man who is finally being recognized for the contributions that he made. Winter did not keep in touch with any of the troops he trained in Alabama [Annotator's Note: during World War 2]. After he went overseas he lost track of all of them. He did not know as many of the civil rights leaders as he wished he could have known but he did know some of them. Still, Winter maintained a good relationship with his African-American friends in Mississippi and believes that they identified him as trying to do the right thing. One of Winter's playmates when he was growing up was a kid his own age named Roy Knoll [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling]. They were good friends as boys. When they went into the Army they were placed in segregated units and lost touch with each other. Years later, in the 1980s, Winter was scheduled to make a speech in Chattanooga. When he got off the plane his white host told him that there was a man there who wanted to have breakfast with him. The host told Winter that the man was an African-American named Roy Knoll. By this time, Knoll had had a career in education and had been the administrative assistant to the mayor of Chattanooga. The following morning they had breakfast during which they reminisced about growing up on the farm. After breakfast Knoll told Winter that his grandfather had been a slave boy on Winter's great grandfather's farm and that his grandfather played with Winter's grandfather on the farm in the 1850s. In the 1930s they played together on that same farm, even though it was a segregated society. Knoll's whole family voted for Winter when he was elected governor. They had come a long way. They both came from the same background but with totally different associations and experiences, but still there was a common bond that holds them together. Even in the segregated South there were personal relationships that overcame the system's differences.

William Winter recognized during his OCS [Annotator's Note: officer candidate school] class how important education was and how handicapped people were who did not have an adequate education so he made education the number one part of his platform when he ran for governor [Annotator's Note: of the state of Mississippi]. After three years they passed what was then the most sweeping education reform act in the country. It was a major breakthrough. Ever since then education has not been on the back burner. It is now an issue that people take seriously. Dean Rusk, Secretary of State under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and friend of Winter's, told Winter one day that World War 2 was the last glorious war. It was the last war that was totally supported by 99 percent of the people in America. It was a war that had to be fought and the United States had to participate in. Since then, the United States has fought a number of other wars which have caused this country to have a cynicism about political decision making with respect to going to war. Winter believes that President Truman made the right decision to go into Korea to stand up against communism. Winter was called to active duty during the Korean War and spent several months at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Winter was opposed to the Vietnam War and was very opposed to going into Iraq. Those two wars have caused the people to have less faith in the correctness in political leadership. The First Gulf War was necessary. The first President Bush was right in stopping the invasion of Kuwait. It was done with the support of many other countries and of the people. Winter wrote to President Bush [Annotator's Note: President George W. Bush] expressing his feelings that the United States should not be starting a war with so many uncertainties about it and for the wrong reasons. After 11 September [Annotator's Note: 11 September 2001], the United States could have justified going into Afghanistan to set up a base from which to operate against the Taliban however after going into Iraq, the United States has pushed Afghanistan to the back burner. Winter took great pride in being part of World War 2. The United States came out of World War 2 positioned higher militarily and morally than any other country in the history of the world. Over the years there has been a deterioration in the understanding of America's role in the world. The United States cannot be the guarantor of rights for every person in the world and has become weakened economically because of the wars this country has fought to do so. Museums like The National WWII Museum are very important because they are a way to educate people of what World War 2 was like, stood for and was accomplished. The National WWII Museum is more important now than ever before. It is a great educational institution. Visiting the Museum has caused Winter to gain an even greater appreciation for the price that was paid in order for the citizens of the United States to be able to live the way they live now.