Interview with Mattie Mack, December 5, 1991
Project: Family Farms of Kentucky: African American Farmers Oral History Project
Interview Summary
Mattie Mack was born in 1937 in Fairfield, Georgia. Mack, her mother, and her siblings worked on white-owned farms as sharecroppers. Her father worked as a mechanic. She discusses a variety of jobs that she had as both a child and young adult and talks about the necessity of this employment for her family's survival. She tells how she moved to her current farm when she married her husband, who she met while attending Tuskegee University. Her husband worked at the nearby Olin Mathieson Chemical Plant. Their farm was a dairy farm, supplemented with a tobacco allotment. Mack's husband's off-farm employment was an important part of their farm's finances.Mack states that she had some nursing training at Tuskegee Institute, although she was not able to finish her program. While a student, she had some experiences with Martin Luther King, Jr., although these were limited. She talks about her work in a maternity ward and as a Licensed Practical Nurse in Louisville, Kentucky. She shares stories about her experiences with the Klu Klux Klan, segregated schools and racial discrimination during her childhood in Georgia. During her adult life she provided foster care for thirty-seven foster children and also looked after local elderly persons. She discusses the difficult economics of agriculture and the barriers which make it difficult for young persons to start farming.
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All rights to the interviews, including but not restricted to legal title, copyrights and literary property rights, have been transferred to the University of Kentucky Libraries.
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Mack, Mattie Interview by Maureen Mullinax. 05 Dec. 1991. Lexington, KY: Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries.
Mack, M. (1991, December 05). Interview by M. Mullinax. Family Farms of Kentucky: African American Farmers Oral History Project. Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington.
Mack, Mattie, interview by Maureen Mullinax. December 05, 1991, Family Farms of Kentucky: African American Farmers Oral History Project, Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries.
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