The great migration

Interviewee: Pearl Williams

Interviewee DOB: May 5 1954

Interviewee Ethnicity: African American

Interviewer: De'jah Williams

Abstract

I interviews my grandmother who was kind of apart of the great migration because she moved to Philadelphia at the age of 11 and She moved here from Warsaw,North Carolina. I'm this interview we talked about how slavery impacted Her as a child living in the south and the difference between North Carolina and Philadelphia. We also talked about the MLK speech and how his speech impacted us as a whole and did it change much I'm the world today.

Research

The Great Migration is the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that lasted up until the 1960s.

Sources

•http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129827444

•http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration

•http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_migration.html

Transcript

dw: What events do you remember around the time martin luther king gave his speech?

aw: what events do I.. that i remember , i don't know i as only , i was in the fourth grade when martin luther king gave his speech , so i mean i really don't remember. you have to remember now that i am 60 years old now , that was a long time ago.

dw. so you don't remember anything around the time ..

aw: when he gave his speech.

dw: and what do you actually know like where were you what was going on during the time of the speech?

aw: i was ugh… i don't know where was I, maybe ugh , i guess i wasn't at school at the time when he gave the… when did he give the speech? when you know i don't know maybe in school maybe i was in school . i remember the speech i remember when all those people went to washington you know cause i was in north carolina at the time, so i can't remember exactly where i was.

dw: Did, did any of that , that was going on affect your childhood in any way as far as segregation?

aw: yes cause ugh at that time i was in north carolina like i said and we did go to school with white children we was ugh we went to there was a black scholl and white school you know during that time

dw: okay

aw: and white people was always calling us the ‘’n’’ word back then i remember that do you want me to tell you about what i did to somebody that called me the ‘’n’’ word?

dw: sure.

aw: the was this girl that lived across the road from me and that the time it was a little road highway like and it was was me and my oldest brother wade  and it was a boy and a girl they lived across the road and they had plum tree ugh i think  they had a pear tree they had all kinds of fruit trees they had bates fig tree and we liked the plums and you know by them having the tree they didn't  eat all them plums they be falling on the ground and sometimes they would really act.. they would stand across that road and throw  plums at us instead of giving them to us.. (laughter)

dw: (laughter)

aw: letting us eat em .  cause we wanted to they you know they had so many , it didn't matter to them , they actually would stand across that road and through those plums at us and call us the ‘’n’’ word and see my brother is real dark skin wade he is real dark real dark and they really use to call  him black you know names, so, the, the girl had a long pony tail so when our parents wasn't around because my father and my mother use to tell us don't bother them just don't may then no mind you know but you know we was tired of them calling us names so we caught them one day , i caught that girl and i tried to beat her head in that ground i told her dont you never ever call me a nigger again and every time she would see me she run, she hall tailed in the house mmhm and …

dw: during this time did it affect your education in any way?

aw: no cause i learned what i wanted to lean anyway , if i didn't wanna do nothing in school ( laughter) no let me stop at that time yes, no it didn't affect my learning at all because during that time i had to remember the getsy bird adrees i remember that abraham lincoln gets bird adress i was in the fourth grade and i remember we all had to learn and everybody had to stand up in the class and recite the and i remember Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure, now i don't remember anything else now i you know its it comes back every now and then ugh ok now

dw: ummm… what major changes happened during the civil war and now , are there any major changes during then and now

aw: thats why they umm i think thats when we all started going to school together black and whites , i think that umm we even started to going to churches because you know we didn't go to the same church with white people you we you know we had our little black little church and  they had they and  you knew they ugh and you know of course, of course they churches was big  and pretty we just had the little wood  churches them little shakes but, we had the holy ghost now (claps) we use to get down you know cause i went to church  every every sunday, bible school you know but umm it was i mean  looking back at it i see that it was hard you know from our parents but when , as me being a kid it it was it wasn't bad for me  you know  i mean because it was the way it was the time them it was you know and thats thats how i you know thats where i lived and that's how the people was and we just played and mind our business and you know play with each other and it wasn't like  i didn't have a problem with it it was the older people it was out parents that you know but umm you know like i said i don't remember a lot because i was young you know i was a kid i was just in fourth grade at that time

dw: how did you feel about discrimination , did it .. did you feel any kind of way ?

aw: umm no well yea i do remember i felt a certain way one time cause my father use to take us to the beach every summer , and one summer he took us ………...