K1025_Audio |
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Object Description
Interview no. | K-1025 |
Restrictions | No restrictions. Open to research. |
Project | K.1.9. Southern Communities: Individual Projects: Wilson County During the Depression |
Project description | Interviews conducted in 2008 with white residents of Wilson County, N.C., who were children or teenagers during the 1930s in middle- and upper-class families. As the world's largest tobacco market, the town prospered economically while most of the country suffered through economic crisis. Interviewees describe their perceptions of the Great Depression, ways in which their families dealt with changes in their lifestyles, childhood pastimes, friends, families, and memories of Wilson in the 1930s and 1940s. |
Date | March 05 2008 |
Interviewee | Boykin, Edna Earle. |
Interviewee occupation |
Teachers Principals |
Interviewee DOB | 1920 |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | McCain, Betty Ray, 1931- |
Abstract | Edna Earle Boykin, born in the 1920s, grew up on a farm outside of Wilson, North Carolina, though the land has since been swallowed by the city. She was raised by her mother alone and had no siblings. Boykin tells about her mother’s decision to build her own house outside of town, on land she inherited upon the death of Boykin’s grandfather. She recalls the extension of city services (including water, electricity, and sewer) to the house, and she describes her family’s relationship with the few neighboring families. As a child, she played with children of the tenants on the farm and attended kindergarten at the home of another tenant. After finishing eleventh grade, she attended Saint Mary’s College in Raleigh for two years, followed by the Women’s College (now University of North Carolina atGreensboro) and teacher’s college at Columbia University. She then taught school for twenty years and was a principal for another twenty years. She also served on the Wilson city council, where she was an advocate for the arts. In this interview she returns to memories of her childhood, recalling games she played, her mother’s job as a clerk downtown, her fondness for swimming, her pets, and her impressions of well-being despite the Depression. |
Citation | Interview with [interviewee name] by [interviewer name], [interview date] [interview number], in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Description
Interview no. | K1025_Audio |