The Alabama couple had been leading a nomad's life in the early months of World War II, moving from job to job. Finally, Hanford's wages lured them to the Tri-Cities.

Pasco had three black families when Velma and Joe Williams arrived in 1943. The young couple represented a 25 percent increase. As it turned out, they were the vanguard of a migration that would permanently alter the demography of the Mid-Columbia.

The war's labor shortage was creating new opportunities for young blacks. Joe, a cement worker, quickly found work in the race to build an atomic bomb. In the next 30 months, Hanford's construction forces would pour 784,000 yards of concrete.

Velma was a shipyard welder, but no welding job was offered. She served food at Mess Hall No. 2.

They were soon followed by thousands of other black workers. No total figure for Hanford's black population during World War II could be found. However, a bunkhouse complex for black workers at 125-127 W. Lewis St. in Pasco housed 5,488 Hanford workers during three months in 1944, according to a 1946 Du Pont publication.

The story of the wartime migration of blacks to the Tri-Cities is told today in the eighth installment of a series commemorating Hanford's 50th anniversary. Articles marking significant dates in the development of the nuclear reservation will appear in the Herald throughout the year.

This month is the 50th anniversary of a flag-raising ceremony dedicating the opening of the first Negro barracks at Hanford. The event launched a long and sometimes troubled road to integration in the Mid-Columbia.

Many blacks moved on when the war was over, shut out of the permanent Hanford jobs that helped make the Tri-Cities the adopted home for thousands of white construction workers. Others stayed.

Only 2,262 blacks were tallied in the Tri-Cities during the 1990 census, about half the number who had lived in that single Pasco complex in 1944. Still, many trace their Tri-City roots back to the war.

When the Williams family arrived in Pasco, it didn't plan to stay past World War II.

"It was so little. You'd hardly know there was a Pasco," recalled Velma Ray of Pasco, the former Mrs. Williams. "It was so dusty.

"It was pretty at night. But in the daylight, you couldn't see nothing but desert."

Hanford had possibly a few hundred Hispanic workers in World War II, according to scattered clues in Hanford documents, said Michelle Gerber, Westinghouse Hanford Co. historian.

That compares with 13,741 Tri-City Hispanics noted in the 1990 census.

Hanford commanding officer Col. Franklin Matthias' diary indicated Hanford officials were worried about dealing with a third segregated population - not wanting to mix Hispanics with whites or blacks.

Eventually, a Hispanic living area was created, although almost no information about it apparently exists today.

Nonwhites worked primarily in labor and support jobs - from construction to food services.

"They were looking for a better way of life. I was making more money than I was in Texas," said Katie Barton, who moved to Pasco from Houston in 1947. In the 1970s, she became Pasco's first black city councilwoman.

She could earn $8 a day as a cafeteria worker at Hanford, compared with $1 a day as a domestic worker in Texas.

Away from work, blacks and whites were segregated - a standard practice of the times and a practice that lingered in the Tri-Cities for decades.

"They stayed their distance and we stayed our distance," said Iola James of Pasco, who ran one of the black barracks.

"Nobody did anything (about the segregation). If you did anything, you couldn't stay on the job," she said.

In 1943, there were 110 barracks for white males and 21 for black males, and 57 barracks for white women and seven for black women.

Hanford had eight mess halls - seven for whites and one for blacks. It had three commissaries for whites and one for blacks - Commissary No. 2.

The black commissary included a tavern that seated 508 patrons. It quickly became overcrowded, according to Du Pont. Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong played there, Hanford veterans recall.

A soda fountain and pool parlor for blacks were built in one barracks building. As the black population decreased after the war, the black recreational functions shrank back to Commissary No. 2.

As the war progressed, a black trailer camp was created at Hanford and a black bunkhouse complex was erected in Pasco.

James, now 86, ran one of the women's barracks.

She followed her construction worker husband, Harmon, up from New Orleans and got a job in a Hanford cafeteria two days after she arrived.

Soon, she was picked to manage one of the black women's barracks - a building James proudly recalls as being declared the cleanest in Hanford.

Like in the white barracks, men and women - even husbands and wives - could not be in each others' rooms.

Spouses often took weekend trips to Yakima together. Otherwise, they could visit each other in a front room at the barracks.

"When company came, I'd answer the door," James said.

Men would sneak in. "Sometimes I was looking out for one (man) and I found another man in the room," she said.

Meanwhile, Velma Williams mastered stacking rows of dishes on her arms to serve food in Mess Hall No. 2 - never once spilling a dish.

"I had fun waiting tables. When you do good and people brag about it, you do it that much better," she said.

As the war progressed and wound down, the number of Hanford workers declined, including black workers.

The black population drop was expected.

In 1943, Matthias' diary stated Washington Gov. Arthur Langley talked to Hanford officials about the consequences of "social dislocation" of laid-off Hanford workers on Washington after the war.

"He hopes arrangements can be made to return most of the construction workmen back to their original centers of activities, particularly the Negroes," Matthias wrote.

A 1949 American Civil Liberties Union report contended blacks were shut out of permanent Hanford jobs.

"There are no Negroes employed as permanent atomic energy workers at Richland, although qualified Negro personnel (have) applied," the report stated.

The report quoted a high-ranking Hanford official saying: "We have enough trouble here without coping with a Negro problem. We've got to think about our white majority, many of whom are Southerners and would not stand for Negroes here."

The same report noted blacks could get jobs as common laborers or carpenters, noting one construction company's payroll was 70 percent black.

The 1949 ACLU report estimated about 2,500 blacks lived in the Tri-Cities in 1948, with 1,500 to 2,000 living in east Pasco.

James left Hanford in 1945 to go to Tacoma after her barracks closed. She and her late husband returned to Pasco in 1947. She worked as a Hanford janitor until a reduction in force in 1949.

Meanwhile, Velma Williams moved from a Hanford trailer park to Pasco. She and her husband brought their children out from Alabama. And she was "too pregnant" to move from Hanford as the reduction in force gained momentum.

"We kept staying and staying and staying," she said.

Velma Williams Ray - she eventually divorced her first husband - began operating a cafe in Pasco and raised 13 children there.