Title: Oral History Interview with Serena Henderson Parker, April 13, 1995. Interview Q-0073.
Identifier: Q-0073
Interviewer: McCoy, Eddie
Interviewee: Parker, Serena Henderson
Subjects: 
Extent: 00:00:01
Abstract:  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.