- Collection:
- Working Lives Oral History Project
- Title:
- Interview with Willie Johnson
- Contributor to Resource:
- Johnson, Willie
McCallum, Brenda - Date of Original:
- 1984-06-26
- Subject:
- Johnson, Willie--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, Willie Johnson talks about life during the Depression, the Ku Klux Klan, his dealings with labor unions, and describes at length the conditions of the mines in which he worked. Johnson describes how his father, like many farmers, moved to the city to work. He and his father were both employed by TCI. Johnson never made it past the fifth grade because he needed to help the family make money, especially during the Depression. He explains that he admired the ideals of the labor unions, and as the United Steelworkers weren't present in Alabama yet, he went to work in the coal mines and joined the UMWA (United Mine Workers of America). Johnson discusses how the unions caused some problems. They divided the workers and were sometimes difficult to deal with. He describes how he began to see that the Walker Country UMWA would strike at times convenient for the workers to go home and do their planting. Johnson also discusses the conditions of the mines. He says they were dangerous and people often died in them. He describes the physical layout of the mines and talks about dealing with rats, keeping them out of their lunches. He talks about children working in the mines, often to help their parents, but they would have to sign a waiver keeping the mine from being responsible for them. Prisoners also worked in the mines for little money, and many of them saved that money so that they could buy property. Johnson describes the Ku Klux Klan's habit of running around scaring people but says he never heard of any violence in his area. He says he talked to one white man who claimed that the Klan wasn't organized around the purpose it came to have in that day. He says the man said it originated for the race, and that blacks should have their own Klan.
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/236
- 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:
-
