Oral history with Dr. Cora Norman

              Oral history with Dr. Cora Norman
F341.5 . M57 vol. 695, pt. 2
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Transcript
This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Cora Norman and is taking place on July 18, 1997. The interviewer is Tom Ward.
Ward: - 18, 1997. We're in the home of Dr. Cora Norman in Jackson, Mississippi. Good afternoon, Dr. Norman.
Norman: Good afternoon.
Ward: I'd like for you to begin just by giving me kind of a brief biographical background of yourself: where you're from, your educational background, what you did before you became involved with the humanities council?
Norman: If I were being interviewed for [ the] job today there is no one in the humanities in the nation that would hire me. I had no background in the humanities. I started out to be an M. D., not a Ph. D. I got to med school during the close of World War II with only two years of college and then found it was easier to get married than to finish med school. [ I married] and started immediately [ working] on my bachelor's in chemistry at what is now the University of Texas at El Paso. At that time [ it] was the College of Mines and Metallurgy in El Paso. My husband was on the faculty there. [ I] got [ a] degree in chemistry; started a family- a son. The deal was [ when] I quit med school my husband would go back because he only had his master's and get his Ph. D. So after a few years, and we had not saved any money, I said, " I'm going to work." No faculty wives worked. It was not the thing that they did in those days. I went to work. And we saved my checks, and then we went to the University of Texas where he did his work. My degree there was PHTS, " putting hubby through school," as many wives were doing. After he left the University of Texas, we were a short time in [ Columbia, South Carolina] while he was finished up his dissertation. He was at the University of South Carolina. When he got his degree and looking for a full time job, it was to [ be] the University of Mississippi, 1961. We had said we were not going anywhere in the Deep South because of the civil rights struggle that was going on. We really didn't want to be a part of that; that's where we went. mus- coh. normanc. doc Page 1 of 25