Serena Henderson Parker was born in the small town of Huntsville, North Carolina, in 1923, the daughter of a sharecropper who eventually bought his own farm. Never enslaved because of their light skin, Parker's grandparents and great grandparents, though rural farmers and laborers, were educated and literate; Parker herself was educated in segregated schools and began a teaching career in 1946. In this interview, Parker remembers her childhood in rural North Carolina; recalls her education in a one-room schoolhouse; reflects on her family history, which includes brushes with slavery; and describes her rural community. This interview will be particularly useful to researchers interested in the foodways and social lives of African Americans in early and mid-twentieth-century rural North Carolina.

The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.

Title from menu page (viewed on December 16, 2008).

Interview participants: Serena Henderson Parker, interviewee; Eddie McCoy, interviewer.

Duration: 00:46:51.

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.

Forms part of Oral histories of the American South collection.