- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Geraldine Ray, September 13, 1997
- Creator:
- Ray, Geraldine, 1937-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Navies, Kelly Elaine
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 1977-09-13
- Subject:
- Family--North Carolina--Social life and customs--20th century
North Carolina--Race relations
African American women--North Carolina--History--20th century
African Americans--Segregation--North Carolina
Buncombe County (N.C.)
African American women--North Carolina--Barnardsville
African Americans--North Carolina--Barnardsville--Social life and customs
Farm life--North Carolina--Barnardsville
Barnardsville (N.C.)-- Race relations
Segregation--North Carolina--Barnardsville - People:
- Ray, Geraldine, 1937-
- Location:
- United States, North Carolina, Buncombe County, 35.61122, -82.5301
United States, North Carolina, Buncombe County, Barnardsville, 35.77761, -82.45485 - Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Sound
Text - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- Geraldine Ray is a lifelong resident of Barnardsville, North Carolina, a small town near Asheville. Ray describes her childhood and young adulthood caring for her disabled grandmother, working on the family farm, and attending all-black segregated schools. She recalls racial segregation as relatively easy to avoid compared to the segregation and prejudice that her black neighbors practiced based on skin tone. She devoted most of her time to school work, raising livestock, cooking, and helping to plant tobacco. She learned these skills from her grandmother because her parents left the state while Geraldine was young. Geraldine briefly lived with her father in Cincinnati before returning to Barnardsville to care for her grandmother. She sacrificed her love of education and desire for a career to nurse her relatives and friends through several illnesses, though she also endured health problems. The interview ends with discussions about her marriage to childhood friend J. T. Ray, her two miscarriages, and raising her two children.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata. - Metadata URL:
- http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/R-0128/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on July 18, 2008).
Interview participants: Geraldine Ray, interviewee; Kelly Elaine Navies, interviewer.
Duration: 01:21:53.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-CH digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Text encoded by Mike Millner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
