Oral history interview with Geraldine Ray, September 13, 1977
Subtitle: interview R-0128, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Navies, Kelly Elaine, 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: 2006
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; African American women; African Americans; Social life and customs; Farm life; Race relations; Segregation
Other titles: Interview R-0128, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Geraldine Ray, September 13, 1977; Oral histories of the American South.
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.
Notes: 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.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 135 kilobytes, 149 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series R, Special research projects, interview R-0128, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Original transcript: 47 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.