This scrapbook was created by Julia M. Jackson Woods (1911-2000), an African American woman from Louisville, Kentucky, who enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in November 1942. The scrapbook contains greeting cards, newspaper clippings, and ephemera from Woods' service, as well as more than 20 insignia and patches collected from various units, including her own sergeant stripes.
The scrapbook documents the social side of military base life - cards from USO groups and friends, marriages, dances, and other interracial interactions between otherwise segregated regiments stationed at the same bases. A few items at the end of the volume relate to Woods' postwar life in Louisville.
Woods served in the all-Black
32nd Post Headquarters Company of the WAAC. She did much of her training at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, near the Mexican border; she also served stints in Des Moines, Iowa and Midland, Texas. A clipping on one of the initial pages of the scrapbook notes that Jackson was one of Louisville's first volunteers to join the WAAC.
She was discharged on August 14, 1943. After the United States Congress authorized the creation of the Women's Army Corps (WAC), she enlisted in the WAC on May 1, 1944. She ultimately reached the rank of sergeant and served in the military police force.
The Army discharged her on December 24, 1945. After her service, she married Thomas Harry Woods (1914-1961) and was hired as the head of the all-Black Western Kentucky Vocational Training School Department of Cosmetology in Paducah, Kentucky, by 1946.
Want to help transcribe this scrapbook? Check out our volunteer transcription webpage:
https://fromthepage.com/filson/african-american-history/jacksonjulia
