Oral history interview with Blanche Scott, July 11, 1979
Subtitle: interview H-0229, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Jones, Beverly Washington, 1948-2020, 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; Women tobacco workers; African American beauty operators; African American women; Tobacco industry; Tobacco workers; Health and hygiene; Social life and customs; Child labor; Beauty operators; Education; Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company
Other titles: Interview H-0229, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Blanche Scott, July 11, 1979; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Blanche Scott began working at the Liggett and Myers tobacco factory in Durham, NC, at the age of twelve. She spent more than two decades there until she left to pursue a career as a beautician. In this interview, she recalls her two careers and her motivation to rise from poverty and her religious devotion. Researchers interested in the industrializing South will find her recollections of life as a child laborer in a tobacco factory particularly useful. She describes how relatively lax child labor laws enabled her to land a job; the dynamics of the factory floor and the influence of unions thereupon; and some of the details of tobacco work, including her handling of the noxious burly tobacco. This interview offers an interesting look at the tobacco industry, which dominated North Carolina for decades.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on February 13, 2008).

Interview participants: Blanche Scott, interviewee; Beverly Jones, interviewer.

Duration: 00:57:14.

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 Jennifer Joyner.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 120.4 kilobytes, 104.8 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series H, Piedmont industrialization, interview H-0229, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Sharon King. 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.