Ruthie Mae “Purple Lady” Sisk O’Neal was born in 1939 in Jackson, Tennessee, to George Preston Sisk and Willie Sue Ferguson. She lived with her grandmother, Helen Sisk, near Water Valley, Mississippi. She was the cousin of Annie Pearl Stevenson, another Maid Narratives interviewee. Ruthie Sisk married Willie J. O’Neal in Lexington, Mississippi, in 1960. She had a son, a daughter, three stepsons, 12 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren. She later relocated to Waterloo, Iowa, where she worked at the Schoitz Memorial Hospital and was a member of the Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church. O’Neal was affectionately known as Purple Lady, a nod to her favorite color, which she incorporated into her personal style and her art. From a young age, O’Neal expressed herself through recycled objects that she collected and decorated. After buying her first home in Waterloo, she used the yard to exhibit her art, which was informed by her memories of growing up in the South. Ruthie O’Neal died in 2015 in Waterloo, Iowa, at the age of 75. [Biographical information found in O’Neal’s biography for the African American Voices of Cedar Valley project and in her obituary as published in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier]