Oral history with Eberta Spinks

              An Oral History with Eberta Spinks
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
Mrs. Eberta Spinks was born in 1914 in Mississippi. She was one of eighteen children. Of her siblings, three sets of twins died at birth. She survived a bout of typhoid malarial fever as a child in 1919. Her parents farmed until her father moved the family to Tallahalla, Mississippi, in order to take a job at the sawmill there, and later moved the family to Mobile Street in Hattiesburg. Mrs. Spinks attended Eureka School in Hattiesburg. Her mother always grew a large garden out of which she harvested flowers and food which Mrs. Spinks, as a child, often took to the sick and needy of her community. Her mother's generosity in sharing the bounty from her garden and chicken coop provided food for the family and for others in their extended kinship community. Mrs. Spinks married and moved to Laurel, Mississippi, where she worked for Tant's Packing Company for twenty- three years, from 1941 to 1964. She was the birth- mother of two children and the foster mother of eight, as well as caring for older community members, in her home, including her father, until his death. Upon retirement from Tant's Packing Company in 1964, Mrs. Spinks became active in the civil rights movement, housing the civil rights workers in her home, integrating the restaurant of the Pinehurst Hotel for which she was jailed, holding civil rights education sessions in her home to teach people how to register to vote and about public accommodations rights, and driving other people to and from the registrar's office to help them register to vote. She was a member of both COFO and the NAACP. Although her very life was threatened as a result of this work, Mrs. Spinks was steadfast in her struggle for equal rights.
Topics Discussed
Early childhood Parents' farm Hattiesburg's Mobile Street curfew The Great Depression World War I World War II 11 Schooling Civil rights movement Civil rights workers in home
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