Born: 1907, United States
Died: 2016
Country most active: United States, International
Also known as: Alice Ellis
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Home State: District of Columbia
Dates of Service: 1943-1945
Highest Rank: Technician Fifth Grade
“You’ll be happy if you make someone else happy!” (Video interview with Gwendolyn Copeland, 3:03)
Alyce Dixon dedicated much of her life to helping others. She was involved in veterans’ service organizations and other charities, but took the most pride from helping the people around her in myriad small ways every day. As the third of nine children she was a protector for her younger siblings, and helped to provide for them as soon as she was old enough. Joining the Women’s Army Corps in 1943 is one of the few things she remembers doing for her own benefit – she was hopeful that Army doctors would have a cure for her chronic skin condition. While she did not find a cure, Dixon found that she was well-suited for military life and enjoyed her experience – especially the opportunity to travel around Europe while posted there with the 6888th.
“She came from Boston…”
Dixon was born in Boston in 1907 and retained fond memories of living in a predominantly Jewish and Irish neighborhood there as a young girl. Coming from a diverse family—with a Jewish maternal grandmother and Cherokee paternal grandfather—she took pride in being able to get along with people from all backgrounds. Her father was originally from Washington, D.C., and he moved the family back to D.C. while Alyce was in high school.
“I thought Washington was so pretty, and Boston was very proper and everything. But Washington was so pretty and beautiful, and I went to high school here, I finished high school—Dunbar High School—in 1925.” (Video interview with Gwendolyn Copeland, 31:28)
She also recalled that her mother’s “proper” Boston values led to Alyce holding some misconceptions that in turn led to some teasing from her friends at school. Her mother had told her that kissing boys led to pregnancy, and young Alyce understood that to mean that kissing alone could cause pregnancy:
“She said, “Don’t be kissing boys, it’ll bring on other things!” I was walking from school one night with a fella and he wanted to kiss me and because my father waited on the porch for me he said, “Let me kiss you here.” I said, “No, I can’t kiss you, I don’t want a baby, I want to finish school.” He went back and told everybody at the school the next day, and they asked my girlfriend, “Where did she come from?” She said, “She came from Boston, you know they’re very proper up there.”” (Video interview with Gwendolyn Copeland, 2:11)
After finishing high school in 1925, Dixon enrolled at Howard University:
“I finished high school, and I was going to Howard. And I went one year, and I heard my father tell my mother how hard it was for him to get the money together to send me. Because my dad was only making $25 a week, taking care of nine children. So I said, “I’ll go out and get a job and go to night school.” So I went back to Howard at night one year, and then I got a job to help him. I was the first secretary at the Lincoln Theatre in 1929 – $15 a week.” (Video interview with Gwendolyn Copeland, 5:47)
Dixon gave her parents $5 of the $15 she made each week to help support the family, and also remembered that she developed a strong drive to advance in the field of secretarial and administrative work.
1930-1943: New York, an Unhappy Marriage, and Entry into Government Service
Dixon got married in 1930 and moved to New York City with her husband, where she worked as a registrar at a dental office, and held fond memories of witnessing the energy that infused the city at that time. Marital life, on the other hand, proved to be unhappy. Her husband was angry that she spent a great deal of her energy and resources on her siblings, which led the couple to fall out over finances. Alyce had brought her younger brother to live with them and helped him land a job, and also sent clothing home to her younger sisters. She and her husband were divorced in 1944 while she was in the WAC, but when asked if this was a difficult experience she responded:
“No, no, I forget everything. I’m doing what I’m doing, let the past go… I didn’t let those things bother me.” (Audio interview with Dillon McDade, 9:10)
By 1940, Alyce Dixon had moved back to Washington, D.C. and found a job working in personnel for the War Department. This gave her the opportunity to work in the brand-new Pentagon building at the time it opened. Many years later, Alyce would live in the same nursing home as her ex-husband, and she developed a friendship not only with him but also with his two children from his second wife.
1943-1944: Joining the WAC and Facing Racism in the South
Dixon started seeing the symptoms of vitiligo—a rare skin condition wherein the skin loses its pigmentation—in her late twenties. This experience was psychologically traumatic for her, but she managed to display a sense of humor about it, while simultaneously providing poignant commentary on racism in American society at the time:
“I had been to a number of doctors here and in New York—dermatologists—and they just said, “It’s a lack of something in the pigment, it’s not injurious, it’s not contagious, it’s nothing but a lack of something in the pigment. And one day you’ll be white.” And I said, “Big deal! Make me white now so I can enjoy it!”” (Audio interview with Eric Martin, 1:31)
In all three of her oral history interviews in the Veterans History Project’s archives, she cites her vitiligo diagnosis as her primary motivation for joining the Women’s Army Corps. She believed that “Army doctors knew everything” and would be able to cure the condition. The doctors were not able to help, but Dixon determined to make the most of her Army experience.
Dixon completed basic training at Fort Devens, then went on to Fort Des Moines for training to work in administration. Her first assignment after training was to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, and while she does not detail the racism she experienced there it clearly jolted her:
“I had never been to the South, so it was a shock to me.” (Audio interview with Eric Martin, 16:54)
She soon relocated to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where she displayed talents both for administrative work and journalism. Dixon was assigned to work in personnel for a quartermaster command there, and remembers that after she and other African American WACs arrived, many white soldiers refused to work at the command because they did not want to work with African Americans. This meant that they often had to do “double duty” and Dixon was asked one day to type up a letter:
“And the general came running down the aisle with the letter. I said, “Oh God, what did I do?” He said, “This is the first letter in two months that went out without an erasure or a misspelled word.” He said, “I’m keeping you! I’m going to put you on the men’s roster to give you a rating.”” (Video interview with Gwendolyn Copeland, 16:58)
Given a chance to write for the post newspaper, her first article was titled “The Long and the Short of It” about the adventures of Dixon (who stood about 5 feet tall) and her roommate (who measured 6 feet tall). Evidently the editors were impressed, as Dixon authored two regular columns – called “Wacky Chatter” and “Know Your Officers, Know Your Non-Coms.”
“I want to see some more of the world”: Shipping Out with the 6888th
When the 6888th was formed, WAC leadership were determined to staff it with some of the most talented and motivated African American women in the service. There was a realization that the battalion would be closely scrutinized and used as an indicator of the suitability of African American women for military duties. Alyce Dixon remembers that there were 20 African American WACs selected from her command at Fort Sam Houston, and that she was excited to be one of them:
“Lo and behold, I was picked among the 20 to go overseas. So I said, “Yes, I love to travel, I want to go, I want to see some more of the world.” So I left and went on over….” (Video interview with Gwendolyn Copeland, 17:16)
Dixon recalled that there were millions upon millions of pieces of mail waiting to be handled when the 6888th arrived in Birmingham. She was part of one of the teams responsible for handling packages – re-addressing them for delivery and repairing damaged boxes when necessary. The work was physically demanding, but her standout memory from this duty was the emotionally draining task of returning packages to senders in cases when the soldiers they had been intended for were killed in action.
“Now a lot of it was from the Battle of the Bulge…and all that, most of the soldiers were dead. So of course, we had to go through the mail and try to find the correct addresses, and stack it up and send it back. Some of the wives and sweethearts wrote every day, so we had bundles of mail like that that we had to wrap up and put on there, “Deceased.” That was a very sad thing.” (Audio interview with Eric Martin, 5:21)
In an era when many Americans were still unaccustomed to using the postal system, postal workers could also see some unusual things.
“And then the parents sent gifts over there, and—a lot of the people were from the South and I guess they didn’t understand—because they sent fried chicken, and cookies, and cake, and everything. The room was full of mice and rats, when we went there into those packages, and they had destroyed a lot of them so that we couldn’t do anything with it…. And then a lot of the people put their children’s names—I guess they were uneducated—and they’d put on there, “Buster” or “Sonny,” something like that. And you see, we couldn’t find them. Now and then you could find a tag number or something and locate that. But we had it terrible!” [laughs] (Audio interview with Eric Martin, 5:57)
Some senders, however, showed ingenuity—she once found a bottle of whiskey smuggled inside a loaf of bread. And while the soldiers of the 6888th did everything they could to track down the addressees for each piece of mail, there were occasions when there simply was not enough information available. This meant that they were sometimes able to supplement their rations with the contents of the food packages that could not be delivered. When this happened on Dixon’s shifts, she would take the package back to her barracks to share with her friends, explaining that “Grandma” had sent her some more food.
“I’d go in there after five o’clock, and right away they’d say to me, “Did Grandma send you anything today?”” (Audio interview with Eric Martin, 8:01)
Despite such lighter moments, the working conditions that the 6888th faced in Europe were difficult: they worked in unheated and poorly lit warehouses infested with vermin while trying to track down the intended recipients of poorly addressed mail that often contained rotting food. Dixon recalled that it took a source of inner strength and a fighting spirit to handle these conditions:
“No, it wasn’t stressful to me, I could face everything. I’m not a person who’s afraid, and so I did very well. A lot of the girls got upset and sick and wanted to go home, you know, I’m still out there fighting.” (Audio interview with Eric Martin, 18:31)
Another factor that helped mitigate the stress of the job for her was the opportunity to travel around Europe once the war had ended and they were given time off.
“I love to travel anyhow, and I did a lot over there. Every time a pass came up I took it, and I had a lot of friends who just wanted to go out and party, and they didn’t want their pass. So I’d give them a dollar or two for the pass and go. I wanted to see everything.” (Audio interview with Eric Martin 10:59)
During her time in Europe after the war she visited sites in Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Italy—including Florence, Genoa, and Rome—in addition to England and France.
After the War
Because she had left her civil service job with the War Department to enlist in the WAC, Dixon had the right to reassume her old position. When she discovered that the woman who had replaced her was a single mother, however, she decided not to take the job back and find a different one. She was hired for a new position in acquisitions at the Department of Defense, where she worked as a purchasing agent until her retirement in 1972. Other employees warned her of rampant racism in the office she was going to work in, but she decided to take on the challenge anyway:
“I told a couple of fellows and they said, “oh don’t go there, those people there are so mean and hateful and nasty, they don’t like Negroes.” I said, “That’s the job for me.”” (Audio interview with Dillon McDade 14:55)
Many of the employees in her office did display racist attitudes, but Dixon remembers gaining at least a grudging sense of respect from them by standing up for herself:
“The girl came out that was there… I’ll never forget her. Came out one morning—I wrote a requisition and I made a mistake on it—so she came and she flung it on my desk like that. She said, “What’d you do that for?” I said, “Because I thought it was right.” I said, “Let me tell you something, don’t ever throw anything at me. Because I don’t know what I might throw at you.” I said, “Now, you have been here seven years I understand, and you know the work. I’ve been here seven minutes, I can’t learn that fast. Explain anything, tell me anything, and I’ll know what to do. And they have erasers on pencils, so if you make a mistake you can erase it.” … And I went back, nobody bothered me. And they said, “She might fight you.” I said, “Uh-uh, I don’t need to take that, we’re all humans.” Like I tell them now – we all came from Adam and Eve together, we’re all related. We’re all from one God… So don’t be precious, because you’re hurting yourself being hateful.” (Audio interview with Dillon McDade, 17:12)
After retirement, Alyce Dixon remained active in her community. She joined the American Legion and the Disabled American Veterans, but her greatest point of pride was in being generous and helpful to the people around her:
“I’m very good at sharing what I have…And this past Christmas I decided that I wasn’t going to write a will, I’m going to give everybody what I’m going to give them now, so they can enjoy it now. There won’t be any squabbling after I’m gone – the only thing they’ll do after I’m gone is they’ll say, “What did she leave us?” They weren’t a friend if they don’t remember. But I donated that to all my family and several organizations and my church… I love to share, and I’ve always done it all my life – with my family and everyone else. And so, God has been good to me.” (Audio interview with Dillon McDade, 32:19)
Dixon passed away External in 2018 at the age of 108.