Oral history interview with Martha Cooley, April 25, 1995
Subtitle: interview Q-0019, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: McCoy, James Eddie (James Edward), 1942- interviewer; Southern Oral History Program; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Published: 2007
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; African American women; African Americans; Social life and customs; Farm life; Education
Other titles: Interview Q-0019, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Martha Cooley, April 25, 1995; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Martha Cooley learned how to run a household when she was just a girl; by the age of twelve, she had taken charge of her home, cooking meals and hanging tobacco leaves to help her father's farming venture in Granville County, NC. Eighty-five years old at the time of this 1995 interview, Cooley describes a childhood in the rural South before the advent of the civil rights movement, the intrusion of roads and highways, or interference from industrial growth or urban sprawl. Cooley remembers her history and that of her family, recalling her education in a one-room schoolhouse, Sunday afternoons, quiltings, and cornshuckings. She creates an image of an inward-looking, supportive community.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on Dec. 3, 2008).

Interview participants: Martha Cooley, interviewee; Eddie McCoy, interviewer.

Duration: 00:47:18.

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.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 148 kilobytes, 86.6 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series Q, African American life and culture, interview Q-0019, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Original transcript: 29 p.

Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this interview.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements:  Web browser with Javascript enabled and multimedia player.