- Collection:
- Working Lives Oral History Project
- Title:
- Interview with Charlie Scott
- Contributor to Resource:
- Scott, Charlie
Hamrick, Peggy - Date of Original:
- 1984-07-23
- Subject:
- Scott, Charlie--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, Charlie Scott describes a life of hoboing and gambling, as well as a mining job and making moonshine during the Depression. Scott's birth father was a coal miner. His step-father worked at a coke oven. The family left the country to come to the city for work. Scott's first job was at a coke oven. When he left that job, Scott hoboed around the country, living on earnings from gambling. He traveled through Kentucky, Chicago, Memphis, Arkansas, and Mississippi. He describes hobo life and says he mostly traveled alone because it was safer. Scott explains that he had a short-term job with the Ringling Brothers Circus. He was also in jail for stealing, and he worked in a chain gang. He said people weren't beaten or mistreated unless they misbehaved, and no one was actually chained unless they'd tried to escape. Later, he says he was accused of stealing a pistol, which was actually a payment for winning a gambling game. This landed him in prison for 26 years. Scott also recalls hearing about prisoners working in the mines, though he never had to. He says some of them were killed, and it was much rougher work than he was doing. Scott ends by explaining that he survived the Depression by gambling and selling homemade whiskey.
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/283
- 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:
-
