Interview with Miss Ruby Magee : a native Mississippian

              Interview with Miss Ruby Magee : a native Mississippian
This oral history is provided through a cooperative project of University of Southern Mississippi Libraries and USM's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage.
Funding provided by a National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute for Museum and Library Services
The transcript is presented here for reference purposes only. Interviews in this collection are protected by copyright. PERMISSION TO PUBLISH MUST BE REQUESTED from the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Please call ( 601) 266- 4574 for more information.
Biography
Miss Ruby Magee is a native Mississippian, born in Tylertown in Walthall County. She attended grade school in Tylertown but moved to Columbia, where she graduated as valedictorian of her high school class in 1958. She then enrolled at Jackson State College and received a bachelor of arts degree in history and political science in 1962. While at Jackson State she first became involved in civil rights activity and for a year after graduation served as a research assistant for the United States Department of Justice in its investigation of the Mississippi educational system as it related to voter qualification. During the two following summers, she studied German and English history at the University of Texas on a Woodrow Wilson Southern Education Foundation Fellowship.
In 1964 and 1965 Miss Magee studied American government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During those two years she also worked as an administrative assistant with the Metropolitan Boston Low- Income Housing Project conducted by the American Friends' Service Committee. She left Harvard to become faculty adviser at Friends' World College at Westbury, Long Island in New York. She accompanied and counseled students as they traveled through the United States and later through Scandinavia studying social problems.
After two years Miss Magee returned to Tylertown to help her mother manage the family farm and general store. A year later she became project director of the Neighborhood Center Program, which is an extension of Pearl River Valley Opportunity Incorporated, an anti- poverty agency in Columbia, Mississippi. During the following four years she developed that program as well as helping to organize and advise two local development corporations and a business advisory group.
In 1972 Miss Magee was selected as a National Urban Fellow to serve in a program designed to develop leaders in urban government. The program is sponsored by the National League of Cities, the United States Conference of Mayors, and Yale University and is funded by the Ford Foundation. It includes courses in urban studies at Yale and Occidental College in California plus ten months of intern work under a top- level urban administrator. Upon completion of the year- long program she will receive a Master of Arts degree in urban studies. Miss Magee is also a candidate for a Master of Arts degree in international relations at the University of Southern Mississippi.
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