A collection of interviews with African-Americans of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, circa twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, who knew Colonel John Robinson, an African-American pilot who was tapped by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Sellassie in the...
Materials in this collection were donated by William M. Colmer: First accession-1970. Additional information online at: http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/archives/m024.htm
Oral history.; Mr. George A. Stevens was born in 1910 in Forrest County, Mississippi. He attended Hattiesburg public schools but graduated from high school in Anthony, New Mexico. Mr. Stevens returned to attend The University of Southern...
Oral history.; Mr. Donald Evans grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and attended Arkansas A and M College on a football scholarship. In the late 1960s, he was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings. In 1968, Mr. Evans married Hiawatha Williams and...
Oral history.; Father Peter Oliver Quinn was born on April 11, 1937, in Ireland. He was ordained when he was twenty-five years old in Ireland, and he came to Mississippi in September, 1962. Father Quinn's first assignment was at Sacred Heart...
Oral history.; Reverend Harry C. Tartt was born on October 16, 1908, in Biloxi, Mississippi. Reverend Tartt attended New Orleans University (now Dillard University) in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1934, Reverend Tartt began teaching school at...
Oral history.; Mr. Jeremiah O'Keefe was born in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on July 12, 1923. Mr. O'Keefe attended Sacred Heart Academy for high school. He entered the U.S. Navy and received his wings in the U.S. Marine Corps in May, 1943. Having...
Oral history.; Judge Robin Alfred Midcalf was born November 13, 1961 and grew up in Harrison County. Judge Midcalf married a man who became an abusive husband and at eighteen she divorced, becoming a single parent. She worked to put herself...
Oral history.; Mr. Larry Hudson Jr. was born on January 16, 1936, in Biloxi, Mississippi. After serving in the U.S. Army in Germany from 1958 to 1960, Larry Hudson Jr. earned a B.S. degree from Jackson State University in 1963. He worked in the...
Oral history.; Bishop Joseph Howze was born August 30, 1923, in Daphne, Baldwin County, Alabama. He attended all-black, segregated schools, and he graduated from high school in Mobile, Alabama. Bishop Howze was a teacher in public and Catholic...
Oral history.; Mr. Coygon Robinson Jr. was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, on December 3, 1951. He attended Perkins Elementary School and Nichols High School. In the fifth grade, Mr. Robinson got his first set of drums, and he continued to practice...
Oral history.; Mr. Earl Napoleon Moore was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, on December 19, 1914. His father was a ship and bridge carpenter, and his mother was a homemaker. Mr. Moore graduated from Biloxi Colored High School. He was a boxer and a...
Oral history.; Mr. Eric Eugene Dickey was born May 7, 1966, in Biloxi, Mississippi, where his grandparents and Head Start exerted positive influences in his early life. In elementary school band, Mr. Dickey began playing trumpet, and later...
Oral history.; Mr. James Madison Johnson was born on March 17, 1955, in Laurel, Mississippi. During his childhood, he lived in George County, Lucedale, Leaf, and McLain, Mississippi. Mr. Johnson attended college at Mississippi Valley State,...
Oral history.; Mr. Jesse Benjamin Richmond Jr. grew up in Jefferson Davis County, where he attended school. Mr. Richmond graduated from the Commonwealth College of Funeral Service in Houston, Texas and served an apprenticeship at Cook-Richmond...
Oral history.; Mr. Lee Owens, Jr. was born on May 7, 1921, in Natchez, Mississippi. As a child, Mr. Owens worked in a cotton field for half a day while attending school for half a day. Because his parents could not afford to send him to school, he...
Oral history.; Born on October 20, 1939, in Sandy Ridge, Lowndes County, Alabama, Mr. Loyce Searight moved with his family to Biloxi, Mississippi, in March of 1947. He graduated from M.F. Nichols High School and went on to earn several other...
Oral history.; Interview conducted on July 7, 1976 with Mr. P.A. Tims of Poplarville, Mississippi. Tims was born on October 20, 1890 in Ethel, Mississippi. In 1912, he enrolled in the first class to convene on the campus of the newly established...
Oral history.; Biloxi Police Director Tommy Moffett was born March 2, 1950, in Taylorsville, Mississippi. He grew up in a household of ten siblings, and they all helped in sharecropping until Mr. Moffett was fifteen years old. His childhood was...
Oral history.; Mr. Tyrone Burton was born in Franklinton, Louisiana, on April 5, 1941. The family owned an eighty-eight acre farm. In 1961, Mr. Burton graduated from Franklinton High School. After high school, Burton attended Katy's Barber...
