Emma Jackson on Employment

Authors

Maureen Elgersman-Lee

Files

Description

Emma Jackson Full Interview

Emma Jackson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1941. She and her husband John Isaac Jackson had three children, and at the time of the interview she had been living in the Lewiston-Auburn area for forty five years. She spent the first ten years of her life in Maine doing domestic work, and then worked in the nursing field for thirty years, at a number of different facilities owned by Central Maine Medical Center. She discusses her life in Lewiston, challenges in finding housing she and her husband faced when they first moved to the area, prominent African American citizens and businesses in Lewiston, her husband’s career in area shoe factories, and her religious life and family history with Christ’s Temple Church.

On Employment:

Quote 1

Interviewer: Does anyone else come to mind?

Emma Jackson: “I didn't know that many -- no, because we were church people.” Interviewer: Right. Emma Jackson: “So we were involved a lot in the church and, ah –“

Interviewer: Anyone you remember through the church who had their own businesses or, um, prominent in--

Emma Jackson: “I can remember the Richardson's but they were in Portland. They owned some kind of a cleaning service.”

Interviewer: Right. The Kippy's.

Quote 2

“But, ah, they seemed to be prominent. But I don't -- don't really know because we really didn't know that many blacks at that time…“there wasn't that many. And we didn't -- we only knew that were involved mainly in church…One of our members owns a, ah, beauty shop…Crystal. Uncle Q's. Do I know any other black owned – you know, I don't know any other black-owned businesses.”

Quote 3

“So that worked out. And my husband was in the shoe factory. To get in the shoe factory -- you could get in the fact -- or get in the mills. But any other jobs, they weren't that plentiful.”

Publication Date

4-30-2003

Publisher

University of Southern Maine African American Collection

City

Portland

Disciplines

African American Studies | American Studies | Cultural History | Digital Humanities | Education | Genealogy | Higher Education | History | Labor History | Oral History | Other American Studies | Other Education | Other History | Public History | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies | United States History | Women's History

Recommended Citation

Elgersman-Lee, Maureen, "Emma Jackson on Employment" (2003). Quotes. 9.
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/we5quotes/9