Williams, Myrtle L.
Myrtle L. Williams: Great Depression, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement
Interviewed 2004
Student Interview
Q: What is your name?
A: Myrtle L. Williams
Q: When and where were you born?
A: Muskogee, Oklahoma
Q: When?
A: I was born March 6, 1921.
Q: What did your parents do for a living?
A: Didn’t no body work but my daddy. Now what he done, I don’t know.
Q: You don’t know?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: OK. What type of education did you pursue and how far did you go in school?
A: Me?
Q: Yes.
A: Oh, I didn’t get no farther than the sixth grade.
Q: Sixth grade?
A: Ah-huh.
Q: What types of jobs did you have a young woman?
A: Oh, I worked at H. L. Green’s. I worked at Woolworth’s.
Q: What are those? Department stores?
A: Ah-huh.
Q: Department stores. OK. What was it like for a young woman in the 1920s and 30s, that is, what were the attitudes about what young woman could and could not do?
A: When I first started working, I was working at home – at a home. And what that lady’s name now, I don’t know.
Q: OK. What was it like for a young woman in the 1920s and 30s, that is what were the attitudes about a young woman – what could a woman do and what could a woman not do? What were the attitudes?
A: In the 1920s?
Q: And 30s. What was common for a woman to do?
A: Well, young women didn’t do too much working back in them days.
Q: Women didn’t work? And what kind of attitudes did men expect for a woman to have?
A: Oh, a good attitude. Better have a good one.
Q: OK. What did you and your friends do for entertainment in the 1920s and 30s?
A: 1920s and 30s? We would go out to dances and be around football games, but we wasn’t interested in them. (laughing)
Q: Just the boys?
A: Yea. After Douglas men would have them football games, we’d go to the dance afterward.
Q: What are your recollections about the 1930s and the Great Depression?
A: 1930s?
Q: During the Great Depression.
A: Really, we wasn’t doing nothing ‘cause we couldn’t do nothing.
Q: What do you mean, couldn’t do nothing?
A: Couldn’t work or nothing. Now, they would have such as the W – WPA, and all that kind of stuff, but back in then, you wasn’t old enough to get on them jobs.
Q: So what did your family do during the Great Depression? What was it like?
A: Well, my step-daddy would work. He worked at . . .
Q: So he did have a job?
A: Yea. And then we would get the free stuff. . .
Q: Stuff donated?
A: . . . like food and clothing and stuff like that.
Q: From where? Like churches and stuff?
A: No, we would get it from the, ah, the welfare or whatever or whoever would give away that stuff. Whatever they gave away, we got some of it.
Q: So during the Great Depression, were you all, like kind of poor?
A: We was poor. But things back in them days was cheaper than stuff is now.
Q: When did you meet your husband and when did you get married?
A: Well, I met my husband – back in them days – yea, the 30s, ‘cause Rudy (?) was born in ’38, and . . . we got married when . . .
Q: You got married in the 30s?
A: Yea.
Q: You can’t remember what year?
A: No, ‘cause we – Rudy was 38 years old – born 1938.
Q: Did you get married before or after?
A: After. Probably back in the 40s.
Q: You can’t remember which year – 1940, ‘41, ‘42?
A: I would say about ’45. And we was going together before then.
Q: What did he do for a living?
A: He was a construction worker.
Q: What was your reaction to the outbreak of World War II? How did you feel about that?
A: World War II? I think I was working then at Green’s and Woolworth’s.
Q: What was your reaction to the war? How did you feel about that?
A: Well, I really didn’t pay it really the hard attention to it, ‘cause I was working and didn’t pay the war no attention.
Q: Because you were working?
A: Ah-huh.
Q: Pretty much supporting the family, huh?
A: Ah-huh.
Q: How did other young women and men feel at the time in the area of which you were living?
A: I don’t know how they would feel. Wasn’t none of them working. They was getting that welfare. They wouldn’t stood by no work. (laughs)
Q: Did you enter the military?
A: No!
Q: Did you work in the defense industry in any way?
A: No.
Q: That is, did you become one of the women in the stories labeled as “Rosie the Riveter?”
A: Uh-huh.
Q: I want to shift gears for a moment and ask you about race relations for a bit. What were the attitudes of white people that you came in contact with while growing up?
A: Well, now, when I started working, I come in contact with some very nice white folks.
Q: Really?
A: Ah-huh. They was young, though. It was kind of hard to get a job back in then.
Q: It was?
A: Ah-huh.
Q: How did other African-Americans of your generation view whites?
A: I guess we got along OK.
Q: White people and African-Americans got along OK? Back in those days?
A: OK. We was working for them, we had to get along.
Q: So there was never any problems – fights or anything like that?
A: Oh, Lord, no. We didn’t near by have what’s going on here now. Uh-huh.
Q: OK. What kinds of experiences did you have, if any, with Jim Crow segregation in the places you lived in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Jim Crow laws?
A: I don’t know.
Q: You didn’t have . . .
A: Not as I know of.
Q: So pretty much, I mean you didn’t have a problem with segregation or nothing like that? Didn’t nobody didn’t ever segregate against you?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: OK, you remember the Civil Rights Movement?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: Don’t remember that?
A: No.
Q: What was your impression of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X?
A: No.
Q: You didn’t have any impression?
A: No, didn’t know nothing about them people.
Q: Absolutely no impression?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: What was your overall impression of the Civil Rights protests in 1960s?
A: None, ‘cause I didn’t get involved in that stuff.
Q: So, how did you feel about it? You didn’t have no feelings about it?
A: I don’t know – no.
Q: How do you feel it changed American society?
A: Really, I didn’t study up on that kind of stuff. I never did pay no attention. I really didn’t.
Q: OK, what do you think about the young people today? What are your impressions? How are they different. . .
A: Oh, Lord, there’s so much going on around here now till you don’t know who to trust. These young folks – and old folks, too. Things done got rough around here.
Q: So how are the young people different today than they were?
A: They kill and they messing with older folks and doing everything – snatching purses and – everything. Got you scared to get out on the street.
Q: OK, that’s all. Thank you.
