Oral history with Judge Darwin Maples

              An Oral History with Judge Darwin Maples
This oral history is provided through a cooperative project of USM Libraries and USM's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage It is presented here for reference purposes only. Interviews in this collection are protected by copyright and PERMISSION TO PUBLISH MUST BE REQUESTED from the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Please call ( 601) 266- 4574 for more information.
Biography
Judge Darwin Maples was born around 1925. He served as judge for almost thirty years over George, Jackson, and Greene counties, beginning in 1962. He was instrumental in curtailing Ku Klux Klan activity at the time of the Vernon Dahmer trials.
Transcript
This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Judge Darwin Maples and is taking place on July 29, 1997. The interviewer is Tom Ward. Ward: We're in the office of Darwin Maples in Lucedale. Good morning. Maples: Good morning, Tom. Ward: I'd like to begin just by asking you to give kind of a background of yourself: where you're from, your educational career, and your career. Maples: I was born in this county, George County, out in the rural areas across the river, across the Pascagoula River, which is the west side of the country. Grew up there. I was one of eight children. My father was for a long time in public office. He was what you'd call a local board of supervisor back in the old days when the counties did not have any money or anything else during the Depression, the Great Depression of the ' 30s. Anyway I grew up during those periods of time, and I know what the people went through during that period of time. I saw them, like when I grew up I saw-- people would congregate in front of my daddy's front gate begging for food, begging for something to do for work. A lot of those people were barefooted, didn't have shoes, and that was the beginning of WPA days. And I guess the first welfare commodities they would send to the counties. And it was up to the board of supervisors to distribute those commodities, which was clothes and flour that you'd make bread of and things like that to the needy. Anyway, that's where I grew up and I'm aware of hard times. Oh yeah, back then there was eight of us children born, and we were all born in the old home place out there which we still own. And
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