Oral history with Ms. Eleanora Hayes

              Oral history with Ms. Eleanora Hayes
F341.5 . M57 vol. 747, pt. 2
Funding for this project provided by The Mississippi State Legislature, The Mississippi Humanities Council, The Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi.
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Biography
One of thirteen siblings, Ms. Eleanora Hayes was born on May 28, 1930, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, to Willie and Evangeline Sellers. She grew up on her father's farm in Catahoula, Mississippi. During winter months, she and her siblings attended school, and during the six- month cotton- growing season, they stayed out of school to pick cotton. She attended Valena C. Jones High School in Bay St. Louis, until her junior year, when she began working, including work as a housekeeper, a bartender, a model, and an outfield worker for the Weatherization service in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Ms. Hayes' extended family lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, and she has passed much time there, working as well as participating in Mardi Gras.
In the 1960s, she participated in one of the Gulf Coast wade- ins, the harbinger of desegregation of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
In 1961 Ms. Hayes married her present husband; she is the mother of four children.
Table of Contents
I. Family background
II. Childhood
III. Working on the Gulf Coast
IV. Segregation
V. Working at the Playboy Club in New Orleans
VI. Traveling in the Air Force
VII. Weatherization for senior citizens
VIII. New Orleans
IX. Mardi Gras mus- coh. hayese. doc Page 1 of 30