Memphis Tennessee Garrison: Remarkable Story of Black Appalachian Woman

As a black Appalachian woman, Memphis Tennessee Garrison belonged to a demographic category triply ignored by historians.

The daughter of former slaves, she moved to McDowell County, West Virginia, at an early age and died at ninety-eight in Huntington. The coalfields of McDowell County were among the richest seams in the nation. As Garrison makes clear, the backbone of the early mining work force-those who laid the railroad tracks, manned the coke ovens, and dug the coal-were black miners. These miners and their families created communities that became the centers of the struggle for unions, better education, and expanded civil rights. Memphis Tennessee Garrison, an innovative teacher, administrative worker at U.S. Steel, and vice president of the National Board of the NAACP at the height of the civil rights struggle (1963-66), was involved with all of these struggles.

In many ways, this oral history, based on interview transcripts, is the untold and multidimensional story of African American life in West Virginia, as seen through the eyes of a remarkable woman. She portrays a courageous people who organize to improve their working conditions, send their children to school and then to college, own land, and support a wide range of cultural and political activities.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Author: Garrison, Memphis Tennessee
Published: 06/30/2001
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 9780821413739
Pages: 282
Weight: 1.34lbs
Size: 9.28h x 6.38w x 0.95d