- Collection:
- Working Lives Oral History Project
- Title:
- Interview with Lera Maggard
- Contributor to Resource:
- Maggard, Lera
Hamrick, Peggy - Date of Original:
- 1984-07-18
- Subject:
- Maggard, Lera--Interviews
- Location:
- United States, Alabama, Jefferson County, Birmingham, 33.52066, -86.80249
- Medium:
- interviews
transcripts - Type:
- Sound
Text - Format:
- audio/mpeg
image/jpeg - Description:
- In this interview, Lera Maggard discusses growing up on a farm, raising a family during the Depression, and working at an iron mill during World War II. Maggard describes her family life growing up. Her father was a farmer. She remembers how the family stayed in debt to the merchants in town all year and settled up at the end of the year. She recalls that they lost the farm after her mother died. Maggard also talks about education, how she always stressed it to her children. She explains that as the oldest girl in the family, when her mother died, she had to leave school to take care of her brothers and sisters. When her own oldest son wanted to drop out of school to help her family after her husband died, she insisted that he stay in school. She adds that her sons were all in the military, and most of them went to college on the GI Bill. Maggard recalls surviving the Depression. Her husband died right before it began, so she had to find a way to work to support herself. She rented out part of her large home and worked for the WPA. She describes dealing with the relief agencies, especially the Red Cross. She says Ida Shepherd, a black woman, was difficult to deal with, but Mrs. Barfield, a white woman, was nice; she would sometimes come to her house and sit and talk to her or eat dinner with her. Maggard mentions working at the Stockham iron mill during World War II, when a lot of women were getting industrial jobs to help out with the war effort. She remembers that women were not in the union at the time she was working, but they supported it.
The digitization of this collection was funded by a gift from EBSCO Industries. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.libraries.ua.edu/cdm/ref/collection/u0008_0000003/id/215
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Images are in the public domain or protected under U.S. copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code), and both types may be used for research and private study. For publication, commercial use, or reproduction, in print or digital format, of all images and/or the accompanying data, users are required to secure prior written permission from the copyright holder and from archives@ua.edu. When permission is granted, please credit the images as Courtesy of The University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections.
- Original Collection:
- Working Lives Oral History Project
- Contributing Institution:
- William Stanley Hoole Special Collections Library
- Rights:
-
