- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Leroy Beavers, August 8, 2002
- Creator:
- Beavers, Leroy, 1951-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Taylor, Kieran Walsh
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 2002-08-08
- Subject:
- African American barbers--Georgia--Savannah
African Americans--Segregation--Georgia--Savannah
African Americans--Georgia--Savannah--Social conditions
Savannah (Ga.)--Race relations - People:
- Beavers, Leroy, 1951-
- Location:
- United States, Georgia, Chatham County, Savannah, 32.08354, -81.09983
- Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- Leroy Beavers Jr. recalls segregation and integration in Savannah, Georgia. Beavers walks the reader through a history of the city, from its golden years in the 1950s, when African Americans thrived in a self-contained community, to the decay of the 1960s and the damage he sees as having been brought about by integration. Beavers condemns integration, calling it "a genocide of a social life . . . where people had just a pure natural respect for each other." Beavers maintains that the closely-knit black community unraveled because new opportunities tempted African Americans and the spirit of self-reliance faded. A proud community slumped as drugs and crime infested black neighborhoods, and African Americans began to discriminate against one another. This crowd of social pathologies gathers on Martin Luther King Street, a name choice Beavers bitterly condemns. A bristling attack on integration, this interview provides an interesting perspective on the legacy of integration in a southern city.
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-0170/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 28, 2008).
Interview participants: Leroy Beavers, interviewee; Leroy Beavers Sr., interviewee; Kieran Taylor, interviewer.
Duration: 00:45:55.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
