Oral Histories
The Black Families of Yalobusha County Oral History Project emerged after Dottie Chapman Reed, Water Valley native, Class of '74, and author of the column “Outstanding Black Women of Yalobusha County” in the North Mississippi Herald, and Jessica Wilkerson, assistant professor of History and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, discussed ways to collaborate.
In the fall semester 2019, Wilkerson and students in her graduate-level oral history methods seminar, SST 560, began working on an oral history project to document the stories of elder African-American men and women in Yalobusha County. In total, they collected nine interviews.
In the spring 2020, Dr. B. Brian Foster, assistant professor of Sociology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, took over as director of the project and collaborated with students and Ms. Reed on its expansion.
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Brown, Thomas
Thomas Brown, Jasmine Stansberry, and Brian Foster
Bishop Thomas Brown was born in Oakland, Miss. in 1951. After briefly attending Northwest Community College, he transferred to the University of Mississippi in 1971, where he was involved with the Black Student Union just after the events in 1970 at Fulton Chapel.
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Folson Jr., Luther
Luther Folson Jr. and Michelle R. Bright
Luther Folson, Jr. was born in 1969, just two years after the Water Valley School district began integrating in 1967 and the year before the school district was officially integrated and the African American school, Davidson High School, graduated its last class in 1970. He discusses what the racial climate was like for a black child growing up in Water Valley in the 1970s and 80s and describes experiencing little to no racial discrimination at school. Folson’s stories about his adult life in the 1990s through 2019 living in Water Valley and working in neighboring towns contrasts sharply with the his childhood experiences. Folson attended the University of Mississippi in 1994-96, before Chancellor Robert Khayat began campaigning to distance the University from its Confederate symbols by banning the rebel flag from sporting events and retiring the Colonel Reb mascot. He describes meeting Anthony Hervey, an African American man who regularly dressed up as a Confederate soldier and carried a large rebel flag or Mississippi state flag in order to protest removing Confederate symbols from the University or from the state flag, and discovering how much he had in common with a man who he otherwise disagreed with so vehemently when it came to racial issues. Folson also outlines his career as a law enforcement officer, including his tenure at the Water Valley Police Department where he was the only African American police officer who served on the force, leading up to his multiple runs for Sheriff of Yalobusha County. His latest campaign is set to end on election days, 11 days after this interview was completed. The other key events in Folson’s life include battling cancer and the role it played in his Christian faith and fostering children. This interview was conducted as a part of the Black Families of Water Valley and Yalobusha County Oral History Project for Jessie Wilkerson’s SST 560 Oral History of Southern Social Movement class.
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Folson Sr., Luther
Luther Folson Sr. and Michelle R. Bright
Luther Folson, Sr. was born in 1943. He discusses what the racial climate was like for a black child growing up in Water Valley in the 1950s and 60s and describes a brutal murder that occurred when he was about fifteen-years-old, when Sheriff Buster Treloar beat Woodrow Wilson Daniel to death in a jail cell. Folson’s stories about his adult life in Water Valley since the 1960s also include several incidences of police brutality and racially-motivated violence. Folson attended the University of Mississippi in 1975, thirteen years after James Meredith integrated, but he recounts how unfairly black students were treated by fellow students and professors at the University. He also worked with his father as a janitor at the University before Meredith integrated, so he was able to share what the atmosphere on campus was like for black men working on campus before and black men studying on campus after Meredith’s integration. He describes various violent racial moments during his lifetime in Water Valley, as well as racial discrimination he and his family experienced as educators and while running for local office. Folson also speaks about his family life as a child and their experiences as sharecroppers. The other key events in Folson’s life include serving as a chairman for the state head start program, MAP, and traveling to Washington, D.C. with the committee and securing funding from Congress. He also got to meet President Gerald Ford during that trip. This interview was conducted as a part of the Black Families of Water Valley and Yalobusha County Oral History Project for Jessie Wilkerson’s SST 560 Oral History of Southern Social Movement class.
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Gaston, Marie
Marie Gaston and Rhondalyn Peairs
Marie Gaston is the owner of the Table 6-4-72 restaurant in Water Valley, Miss.
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Gooch, Emma (part 1 of 2)
Emma Gooch and Brittany Brown
In this interview, Emma Gooch discusses her life and upbringing in Water Valley, Mississippi, particularly focusing on the impact of her parents and 11 siblings on her life. She talks extensively about her father, who was a World War II veteran, and her education at the Davidson School, where she graduated in 1970, the final year of school segregation in Water Valley. She also discusses her family history and her memory of sharecropping before her family became landowners. She reflects on working in factories and joining the Army, raising a family while in active duty, and retiring in Water Valley. Her interview ends with a focus on her home community, with mention of attending the University of Mississippi, her involvement in her family and the community, and the positive impact and influence of the military on her life.
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Gooch, Emma (part 2 of 2)
Emma Gooch and Brittany Brown
In this interview, Emma Gooch reflects on her time in the army, from basic training and technical school, to being stationed in various locations across the globe, with a particular focus on being away from Water Valley for the first time in her life, the impact and disestablishment of the Women’s Army Corps, being a woman and raising a family while fulfilling military duties, and retirement. She also discusses the opportunity and symbolic importance of attending the University of Mississippi after retiring from the military, her memory of the integration of the university, and her memory of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. She then recounts when her family lost their property and had to sharecrop in order to buy it back and how important that land is to her and her family today. She also centers much of the discussion around her education in the segregated school and her upbringing in the church. She emphasizes the importance of independence and self-sufficiency and her desire to see Water Valley today become a stronger community for the youth.
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Kee, Dorothy
Dorothy A. Kee and Keon A. Burns
In this interview, Dorothy A. Kee discusses her thirty year long career as a teacher and central member to the Coffeeville community. She begins by detailing her parents quest and triumph for Black self-sufficiency as landowners. She reflects on her early childhood experiences with creative problem solving to maintain independence. She emphasizes the importance of education bestowed on to her and her siblings by their parents. Next, she describes the unique challenges she faces as a Black teacher in Coffeeville with a father who is a civil rights activist. She concludes with in depth analysis of her legacy as a pillar of the community.
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Moore, Marjorie
Marjorie Moore and Colton L. Babbit
In this interview, Marjorie Moore discusses her life in Yalobusha County/North Mississippi. Wright recounts growing up as an only child with her grandparents in Bryant, a community in rural Yalobusha County and Coffeeville. Moore tells of her childhood and schooling. Encouraged by her aunt to value education, she attended Alcorn State University, Rust College, and Mississippi State University. After migrating to New Orleans in 1956, Moore returned permanently to Coffeeville in 1972. In 2007, she retired from a career in social work. Moore strongly emphasizes her passion for taking care of children in her community. During her lifetime, she has raised many Yalobusha County children, black and white.
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Morgan, Ethel
Ethel Morgan and Jaimee' Mitchell
In this interview, Ethel Morgan reflects on her life in Water Valley, Mississippi. Morgan was born in Coffeeville, Mississippi and at the age of nine her family moved to Water Valley where she would spend most of her life.
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Pollard, Katherine
Katherine Miranda Roland Matthews Pollard and Rhondalyn K. Peairs
This interview of Katherine Miranda Roland Matthews Pollard gives an account of coming of age in Coffeeville, Mississippi, during the death throes of Jim Crow and the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Her detailed retrospective reflections of her youth activism under the leadership of her father local minister Johnny Roland Sr and organizers from SCLC, show the central role of the Church in the freedom struggle in a small rural county. Pollard illuminates the inner workings of the black community and its citizens in day-to-day life. Black citizens of Coffeeville and Oakland led the call for change and equal rights in Yalobusha County. Wherever there was change occurring the Roland family was in the thick of it. Johnny Roland Sr. championed many causes and put himself and his family in harm's way to gain full citizenship. His leadership was essential to the fight for voting right, school desegregation, securing Head Start programs, and rural legal services. The Roland family also made upwardly mobile transition from sharecroppers to landowners. Mrs. Pollard continues her father’s legacy. She is a minister, and a civic-minded woman of faith. She has worked with many of the programs her family championed during the Movement. She has worked for Mississippi Action for Progress which manages Head Start centers throughout Mississippi and is a direct outgrowth of the Civil Rights Movement. She also was assistant to lead counsel Alvin Chambliss II on the landmark Ayers v. State of Mississippi desegregation case which was successfully argued before the Supreme Court.
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Roberts, Lilly Mae
Lilly Mae Roberts and Keon A. Burns
In this interview, Lillie Mae Caldwell Roberts discusses her experience living in all three cities in Yalobusha county. She begins with an exploration of her mother’s experiences as a single-parent sharecropper in Oakland, Mississippi. She details her narrative of becoming the first known Black registered voter in Water Valley, Mississippi. Afterwards, she expounds on her life after she registered to vote. To conclude, she discusses her activism with the civil rights movements in Yalobusha county.
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Swearengen, James Riley
James Riley Swearengen and Keon Burns
James Swearengen is the mayor of Oakland, Miss.
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Townsel, Yvonne and Margaret Letcher
Yvonne Townsel, Margaret Letcher, and Keon Burns
Margaret Letcher, from Oakland, Miss., is interviewed with her daughter Yvonne Townsel.
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Turner, Ruby: A Living Legacy
Ruby McKie Turner
[Turner has] chosen not to write an oral history of African Americans but, rather, one of Colored Americans through images. These images are those who were among the first freeborn generation of the Civil War, thereby placing them in the historical period of the country changing its course to admit freed former slaves.
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Wright, James
James Wright and Colton L. Babbit
In this interview, James Wright discusses his life in Yalobusha County/North Mississippi. Wright recounts growing up in a sharecropping family on “the Roy Fly Place” in rural Yalobusha County in the 1960s/70s and mentions his childhood impressions of segregation/desegregation. He also reflects on early work at the Holley Carburetor plant and the industrialization/deindustrialization of Water Valley, MS. He also mentions his education at the University of Mississippi in the 1980s and outlines his career track in law enforcement. Wright strongly emphasizes the role of evangelical Christianity in his life and in the Black community of Yalobusha County throughout the interview.
