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Object Description
Interview no. | U-0536 |
Restrictions | No restrictions. Open to research. |
Project | U.16. Long Civil Rights Movement: The Women's Movement in the South |
Project description | Interviews, 2010 onward, that focus on women's activism and gender dynamics, which were central to the freedom movement and the backlash against it. Topics include reproductive activism, both anti-abortion and pro-choice; the emergence of second-wave feminism in the mountain South and its links to the civil rights movement; the War on Poverty and challenges to job discrimination inspired by Title VII; and the entry of women into the University of North Carolina. Interviews from Knoxville, Tenn., and surrounding areas focus on faith-based activism in Appalachia and its relation to feminism. |
Date | May 10 2011 |
Interviewee | Brooks, Shirley Hale. |
Interviewee occupation |
Secretaries Civil rights activists |
Interviewee DOB | 1935 |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | Wilkerson, Jessie. |
Abstract | Shirley Brooks was born May 4, 1935 in Gatliff, Ky. She and her family moved to Oak Ridge, Tenn. when she was a child. She discusses her family's history in eastern Kentucky, living in a boxcar house when the family moved to Oak Ridge, Tenn. and her grade school education. She graduated from Clinton High School in Tenn., and during the Education Association of Clinton v. Clinton Board of Education , she was called before the court as a witness. She describes the protests surrounding racial integration at Clinton High School in 1956. She then discusses her first job at Magnet Mills; how she longed to attend college but could not afford it; how she met her husband Charlie Brooks; and beginning work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She describes taking time off of work to have children; starting to work again when her youngest child was four; working for the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Conference of Christians, and the National Council of Christians and Jews. She describes the civil rights movement in Knoxville, Tenn. and discusses the role of the Tennessee Valley Universalist Unitarian Church. She discusses her involvement in the church; her participation in the Women's Alliance and Continental Women's Federation; and campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment in Tennessee. She ends the interview by discussing her marriage and relationship to her husband. This interview is part of the Southern Oral History Program's project to document the women's movement in the American South. |
Citation | Interview with Shirley Brooks by Jessie Wilkerson, May 10 2011 U-0536, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Description
Interview no. | U0536_Audio |