Alabama Four - Text
African-American, female, born 1928, born and raised in Chambers County, Alabama, retired office administrator. Recorded by Daydrie Hague and edited by Paul Meier. Running time: 00:03:56
TRANSCRIPTION
My dad preached to us about the importance of school, and plenty days I didn’t want to go, because I didn’t have things like the other kids had. Everything was homemade, which-- my mother was a seamstress. She made everything we wore, with the exception of shoes. You had two pairs of shoes, one for church, one for school. Then the minute you got home, you changed that set of clothin’ and those shoes, and you went to work. After all that workin’, and gettin’ the kids fed, you’d do your dishes, and you had two lamps-- kerosene lamps. We would clear the big table in the kitchen, and everybody sat around and got their homework there. And this was an everyday thing. And, I was kind of slow when it came to math, but I had a brother that was a whiz. We would do all of his English and help him, and he would help us with the math. He wanted to fix the math, just on paper, and you’d take it to school and turn it in, but when you’d ask questions: why this was here to that power, especially in algebra, he’d call you dumb. And then that would start a big fight. And then the mother would break up the game of marbles from outside, which you were eager to go and play. So this went on… Finally, when it got to high school-- that was really hard because you had to have money for this, and money for that. And we did not. It took you for months to save up for a class ring. B-- bu-- but we did it. So everybody got eager to leave, because-- this was before integration, and the older you got, the more you were picked on, goin’ through town and passin’ through the white neighborhood. So we had to change our route goin’ back and forth to school.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY JACQUELINE BAKER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR TRANSCRIPTIONS, January 20, 2008