Oral History Interview ( Ms. Rosa Nixon) By Ivana Gutierrez


Abstract,

In this interview my interviewee is talking about her being happy graduating from high school when she was younger. I ask her if she could tell me how is it different from back in the day from today. She said lived in a African American community. How her house was when she was younger. She talks about her not going to a segregated school. I ask her if she was ever discriminated About her race or skin color but she couldn't remember. I also asked if she had white friends but she didn't. And my last question I asked was why she came to Philadelphia from North Carolina and she said because there was more jobs in the north than the south.

Research

The topic I choose is when Mrs.Nixon migrated from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. She migrated in 1966, she was 23. The Great Migration is when more than 6 million African Americans relocated from the rural South to the cities of the north. From 1916 through 1970 it had a huge impact on urban life in the united States. Driven from their homes by bad economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many African Americans headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War.During the Great Migration, African Americans began to build a new place for themselves in public life, actively confronting economic, political and social challenges and creating a new black urban culture that would exert enormous influence in the decades to come. Shortly after the Civil War, large numbers of newly freed men and women left the plantations where they had served as slaves and moved to new areas, but most remained primarily in the South.In the south they had driven in a part of economic concerns. Many african americans didn’t have jobs and they were having a poor living condition, so that lead them to move to the North but they needed help to get there. Also the south was losing people and they were probably losing money. (b) In the North many african americans were looking for jobs because they heard they had more jobs than the south. Many of them were still in poor living condition because they still had a low fare waged.

Sources:

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

http://www.uni.edu/historyofblackhawkcounty/peopimmigrants/African-AmericanMig/HeadingNorth.htm

I used some information from an old assignment


Transcript

May 11,2015

Time 6:20


Person who interview her: Ivana Gutierrez

Interviewee: Mrs.Rosa Nixon



IG: Um, hi this is ivana, um I’m interviewing Egypt’s grandmother. Um what is your name?

RN: Um, hi ivana. I’m Ms.Nixon.

IG: I’m gonna be asking you some questions today. Um, so um first question um.

What was like your best childhood memory?

RN: Uh, best memory, my childhood memory is uh graduating from high school. (hahaha)


IG: That's good.  Um my second question is what was it back in the day? Is it different from today?

RN: Uh, different from today uh , back when i was growing up uh it was different uh the community that we lived in uh was most all black community.So we didnt have that much uh you know uh assoseation with other groups of people. We just lived you know in a close community. and we lived in a farm, uh we uh grew peanuts, corn and soybeans um we had a 8 room home which was one level, like a ranch house and it was nine of us, and my mother and father.


IG: oh ok. So um my third question is  Did you go to a segregation school? If yes How was it?  

RN: uh when we went to school there was no segregation, it was an all black school, and even the principal and teachers were black. There was none white person in that school that I can remember.

IG: will um if you did go to a school like that would uh you be friends with the white people?

RN:  Yes i would be yes.

IG: Were you ever discriminated about your race or your skin color?

RN: No I can’t remember being discriminated about my skin color or race.

IG: Um, Did you ever had white friends when you were younger?

RN: No i never had whites friends when I was growing up.

IG: Oh ok, Um what made you come to the North from North Carolina?

RN: What made me come to the north was uh, I was in the south, I finished um high school and I needed a job to help my mother so i came to the north because I heard that you will get a good job if you come to north, that they had a lots of jobs available. So I came to the north to get a job.

IG: Oh okay, well thats all my questions for right now. Thank you for answering my questions.

RN: You're welcome



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