Interview with Mae Powell

Interview with Mae Powell

African American families

African American schools

African Americans

African Americans -- Civil rights

African Americans -- Genealogy

African Americans -- Religion

African Americans -- Social conditions

African Americans -- Social life and customs

Autobiography

Basket making

Cherokee Indians -- Land tenure

Cherokee Indians -- Social life and customs

Enslaved persons

North Carolina, Western -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century

Powell, Mae, 1909-2011

Mae Powell is interviewed by Lorraine Crittenden on August 12, 1986 as a part of the Western North Carolina Tomorrow Black Oral History Project. Born in 1909, Powell grew up in Swain County in Birdtown until the Cherokee took her family’s land away. She spent some time in Canton where her father built houses and her husband Carl worked in the mill. She and Carl moved to Murphy where he worked for the WPA. She recalls her education, religion, games, and some of the Cherokee traditions she hung on to such as basket making and planting by the moon.

Powell, Mae, 1909-2011

Western North Carolina Tomorrow Black Oral History Project

Hunter Library Digital Collections, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723

1910s; 1920s; 1930s; 1940s; 1950s; 1960s; 1970s; 1980s;

1986-08-12

Crittenden, Lorraine

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

application/pdf; audio/mp3;

sound recordings

transcripts

interviews

eng

Sound

Text

36161

https://southernappalachiandigitalcollections.org/object/36161

2019-11-01

All rights reserved. For permissions, contact Hunter Library Special Collections, Western Carolina U, Cullowhee, NC 28723;

Qualla Boundary

Swain County (N.C.)

Murphy (N.C.)

Cherokee County (N.C.)

Haywood County (N.C.)

North Carolina, Western

1:15:26 (sound recording)(duration)

26 pages (transcript)(duration)

Oral Histories of Western North Carolina