Stevenson, Annie Pearl, 1945-
Person
Biography
Annie Pearl Stevenson was born in 1945. Stevenson was one of nine children. Her father was a sharecropper and later owned his own farm. Stevenson began working at approximately age 15 in Oxford, Mississippi. Stevenson moved to Waterloo, Iowa, at approximately 18 or 19, where she washed dishes at Black’s Tea Room and worked in domestic service. She later worked for the National Bank of Waterloo and retired from the John Deere Community Credit Union at the age of 53.
Found in 1 Collection or Record:
Stevenson, Annie Pearl, 2009
File
Scope and Contents
Annie Pearl Stevenson discusses her experiences working in domestic service in Mississippi. Her interview focuses on her experiences doing housework for an Italian-American family. Stevenson recalls that her employer, who owned a restaurant, brought lunch home for her. When he did not, she was permitted to pick food up from the restaurant, but only via the back door. She wore a work uniform and was made to use the side door to the house. She recalls helping her aunt, Pearline Jones, clean William Faulkner’s home on one occasion. In addition to her work in domestic service, the interview touches on other experiences of racism in her life and in Mississippi more broadly: her inability to enroll at Ole Miss due to segregation; the impact that the lynching of Emmett Till had on her; and an incident in which both the ticket clerk and the bus driver at her usual bus station called her a racial slur. She recalls supporting James Meredith on the day he integrated the University of...
Dates:
2009