Page 1 of 47 
 
Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Dorothy Mae Harris Turner 
May 11, 1983 
Cassettes 3-4 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  00:01 
This is interview two with Dorothy M. Turner, tape one, side one, being interviewed by Mary 
Rice on May 11, 1983.  
 
Mary L. Rice  00:15 
All right. On the last tape, we discussed your older brother going into the army. He was in 
Germany in World War II. Is that right?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  00:26 
Yes. 
 
Mary L. Rice  00:26 
OK. Now, was he injured at all while he was in the army? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  00:31 
Yes. He got one of his legs broken in three places in a motorcycle-- he hit a army truck. 
 
Mary L. Rice  00:40 
Was this on duty? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  00:44 
I think he was going back to post. I think he was on his off time. He was on his way back to the 
post--  
 
Mary L. Rice  00:50 
OK. So then would-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  00:51 
--and he'd been drinking and he wasn't very straight. 
 
Mary L. Rice  00:55 
OK, so then was he sent home after that? 
 
Page 2 of 47 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  00:58 
Yes, and he ended up with a stiff leg, and they had a metal plate in it, or something. He had a lot 
of pain in it, so he drank quite a bit, all the time. 
 
Mary L. Rice  01:13 
OK, well, did-- I don't suppose there was anything like Alcoholics Anonymous, or anything like 
that that he could go to for his drinking?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  01:21 
Not down there. No.  
 
Mary L. Rice  01:22 
So he just-- did your parents do anything to help him quit drinking? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  01:26 
They asked one of my younger brothers to follow him around so when he would get high or 
drunk, that he could push him out from under the wheel and drive the car to keep him from 
having an accident, because he had several close calls by drinking and not being able to stay in 
the road. He ran a car off the road several times. 
 
Mary L. Rice  01:50 
OK, was this your parents' car? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  01:52 
No, it was his own car. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  01:55 
OK. Was he still working with your parents? When he came back from the army, how old would 
he have been? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  01:59 
Oh, gosh, I guess he was about 26 or so.  
 
Mary L. Rice  02:03 
OK. Was he still living at home then?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  02:05 
No, he was married, he was on his own, but he and his wife moved in at our house for a while.  
 
Mary L. Rice  02:13 
Why was that? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  02:14 
I guess because he didn't have no job, and he didn't want to live with her parents.  
 
Mary L. Rice  02:22 
Page 3 of 47 
 
How many kids did he have at that point?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  02:25 
Just one.  
 
Mary L. Rice  02:26 
OK. So he and his wife and his daughter?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  02:30 
Son. 
 
Mary L. Rice  02:30 
His son.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  02:31 
But no, his son stayed with his grandmother on the other side most of the time. He would come 
down to stay with us just a little bit, but he stayed with his other grandmother most of the time.  
 
Mary L. Rice  02:45 
OK. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  02:46 
So it was mostly just he and his wife that stayed with us. 
 
Mary L. Rice  02:49 
All right. So was it like on the weekends that he would go out and drink? Was-- he was working 
with your parents, then. Your brother was working with your parents. Or working someplace.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  02:58 
No, he wasn't working at all because his leg was still bothering him too much and he had a stiff 
leg. 
 
Mary L. Rice  03:03 
Oh, oh, I'm sorry. OK.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  03:04 
He was he was getting a disability check, and apparently it wasn't enough for him to get a decent 
house to live in [?only?] home, so they just moved in with us until they could find someplace 
that they could afford. So James, my younger brother, used to go out with him at night, because 
he would come in sometimes and he was so drunk he didn't drive very well. So-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  03:30 
Now, James was your older brother.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  03:32 
He was older than me-- 
Page 4 of 47 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  03:33 
Right, but younger than-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  03:34 
Yes, but he was much, much younger than Walter. He was a teenager, so he would-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  03:40 
About how old?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  03:42 
Uh, 19-- no, 18. And when Walter would get ready to go someplace, James would just hop in the 
car, and then he'd ride along with them, him and whoever else he picked up, but then he didn't 
drink, so he would stay in the car while they would go from bar to bar.  
 
Mary L. Rice  04:05 
James didn't drink?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  04:06 
James didn't drink, but Walter and whoever his friends or in-laws that he would pick up would 
go in the tavern with him. So they would go in, getting high, and James would wait for him to 
come out and sit in the car, and then when Walter would come out, high, too high to drive, James 
would talk him out from under the wheel and get under the wheel and drive him to the next one. 
And then when they got ready to go home, James would usually drive him home, because he 
would sit in the car and he would usually nap or whatever. And then when they would come out, 
then he would drive them wherever they were going. So on Walter's birthday, he went out 
celebrating. And they stayed in this tavern in so long till James really went to sleep. I guess he 
was tired of driving around, so he really went to sleep. And this time, when they came back, 
instead of waking him up, they just eased in the car and took off. And Walter was loaded as 
usual, and about three miles out of town, he ran off of the highway, and he hit the gravel, and the 
gravel-- the car wobbled back onto the pavement, but he lost control, and it rolled down the 
highway about five times. The first time it rolled over, Walter fell out. The second, Henry fell 
out. That was his brother in law. He was drinking, too. So he fell out. And then James, by him 
being asleep, apparently, he grabbed on to something and hung on until the car... In the spinning 
over, one of the doors came-- stayed open, I guess, after they fell out, and it was spinning over 
real fast, and it hit the door, and it threw James down the highway about 40 or 50 feet face down. 
On the first day we went in the hospital, we didn't even recognize him. His face was bigger than 
a basketball and he was naturally really slender. His whole upper part of his body was swollen. 
He had a jaw bone broken in two places and had permanent brain damage. He never s-- he was in 
a coma. He never did come out [sniffs].  
 
Mary L. Rice  06:34 
How long did he live after that?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  06:35 
Page 5 of 47 
 
About two weeks. Ao he lived long enough for the swelling to go down in his face a little bit, but 
he still had two black eyes, several bruises, and several places where the skin was taken off of his 
face. And in the accident, he was paralyzed on his right side. He could move his right leg a little 
bit, but his right arm just sort of fall around, because he would roll around. He would turn over. 
He was able to turn over in his coma, but that right side, that arm would just flop around. The 
doctor said he had a stroke on the right s-- had a stroke on the right side. So after he died, Walter 
and his wife moved. They found them a pla-- house that they rented and they moved out. 
 
Mary L. Rice  07:38 
Did that stop Walter from drinking? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  07:40 
For a little while, he slowed up, but he went back [inaudible]. But he managed not to have any 
more accidents, so I guess it got a little better. And about three months after that, after they 
moved into a house of their own, they both left Mississippi and moved up to How-- not 
Howardville, Portageville, Missouri and they stayed there.  
 
Mary L. Rice  08:09 
Well, you already had a sister in Portageville, is that right? 
 
Mary L. Rice  08:09 
Yes, my only sister, she lived there.  
 
Mary L. Rice  08:10 
Well, did they go to stay with her for a while, until they got settled there? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  08:19 
About a couple of weeks and then they found them a place of their own. Walter got a job.  
 
Mary L. Rice  08:25 
Well, that seems to have been a real route out of the South. Isn't that the route you took, too?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  08:29 
Yes, most of us would go by and stay with her long enough until we found out about a job 
someplace, and then we'd go get us a job and get on our own. 
 
Mary L. Rice  08:41 
What-- is that how-- is that how Blacks managed to travel around? I mean, I don't imagine there 
were many hotels or motels or anything like that. You had to have relatives to go to, didn't you? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  08:51 
Yes, we us-- you usually had to have relatives to go to or in some towns, they had rooming 
houses that was owned by Blacks that they could go stay in. But they-- usually, if you went 
north, and you was a Southerner and you went north, these rooming houses wasn't very safe for 
you, because they had a tendency is when you left home, they would break in and steal your 
belongings and things like that. So if you had relatives that lived in the North, you always moved 
Page 6 of 47 
 
in with them, because you knew whatever you had was safe until you could find a job, and what 
the money you had, you didn't have to worry about anybody stealing it.  
 
Mary L. Rice  09:33 
So it was very difficult for Blacks to move where they didn't know somebody or have relatives 
or-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  09:39 
Right. 
 
Mary L. Rice  09:40 
--have friends that had relatives [crosstalk]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  09:41 
Right. Unless they had lots of money where they could go to the better rooming houses. Because 
if you got just a little bit of money when you get out, you've got to go to the bad part of town, 
because that's the only place you can afford to stay.  
 
Mary L. Rice  09:55 
Well, would there be two different Black sections in town?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  09:57 
Oh, yes, there's always been two classes of Blacks, just like everybody else. There was the poor 
Blacks and there was the mediocre Blacks. No Blacks-- very few Blacks, I should say, was rich, 
but there was the mediocre Blacks, and they was almost as segregated against the poor Blacks as 
the whites was against the Blacks, because the middle class had absolutely nothing to do with the 
poor class of Blacks. And if you went to a strange town and went into that middle class Black 
neighborhood, you had to have a lot of money. And then you could get a room to yourself and a 
lock that people wasn't coming in and out all the time, but most of the little places that you went 
when you left the South with just that little bit of money that you made that summer before that 
had to last you until you found you a job, you suddenly went to the lean-tos, and that's where you 
had to stay if you didn't have any relatives around. And then you were subject to get robbed on 
the way home when you'd been out looking for a job, or you were subject to come home and all 
of your clothes and what little things that you brought with you were gone. So you were sort of 
stranded, then. Then if you didn't have no money -- because I went to stay overnight at the 
hospital one time in the Black ward where my sister had surgery, and I woke up the next day 
somebody [?would?] shoot me down for everything I had. 
 
Mary L. Rice  11:29 
Well, would you call police in that case, or...? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  11:31 
[?Unh-uh.?] 
 
Mary L. Rice  11:32 
Why? 
Page 7 of 47 
 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  11:33 
Long as Blacks was [?taking?] for Blacks, they didn't care.  
 
Mary L. Rice  11:37 
They wouldn't even take a report, or...?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  11:39 
Well, they'd probably take a report, but they never found anything because they didn't go 
looking. So the--  
 
Mary L. Rice  11:45 
Was this a Black hospital, by the way? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  11:47 
No, it's a white hospital, but you had segregated wards, and when you go in, they'd-- they gave 
me-- they let me stay there in the [?bed?]-- I was staying to watch after my-- to look after my 
sister, because that way they wouldn't have to keep a nurse aide on duty. And then I-- they would 
let me have a bed for 25¢ a night because I was looking after my sister.  
 
Mary L. Rice  12:10 
About what year would this have been? 
 
Mary L. Rice  12:11 
OK, would that have been in Portageville?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  12:11 
Oh, I [?expect that?] it was about '47. 
 
Mary L. Rice  12:19 
No, that was in [inaudible] in Mississippi. Because I had been living in Portageville, but when 
she got sick, Mom called and she needed somebody in the hospital to look after her, because they 
would have one nurse aide to look after about 150 people, the Blacks, and they had one Black 
nurse aide to come in there in the daytime, and one to come in there at night. So you've got very 
poor ser-- I mean, service, naturally. So this way, Mom called me and asked me would I come 
down and look after-- look after Florance while she was in the hospital. Because this way if 
nobody could bring you a bedpan, sometimes you'd wait for a bedpan [?half a day?], because 
that one woman couldn't do all of that. So they-- most of the Blacks and all of the white nurses 
we had to take care of the white sick people and Black people-- sick people were sort of holding 
on if their family didn't come and look after them. They didn't have no service.  
 
Mary L. Rice  13:18 
How often would you see a doctor, then? I mean, how often would a doctor come to see 
somebody who was in the hospital? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  13:25 
Page 8 of 47 
 
Oh, when you had to have something special, like if you'd had surgery, he'd come and check you 
[inaudible] for the first two or three days until you were stable and then he would come back 
here often enough to see if you was healing properly, or getting infections, or anything like that. 
You usually got to see a doctor once a day if you was really sick. And if you weren't very sick, 
you'd get see him about three times a week. 
 
Mary L. Rice  13:50 
The doctor would have been white? [Crosstalk] [?no Black?] [crosstalk]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  13:54 
Yes, they didn't have no Black doctors. And the nurses was only aides.  
 
Mary L. Rice  13:58 
You didn't see-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  14:00 
You never seen a registered nurses, or RNs, that was Black. 
 
Mary L. Rice  14:05 
[Crosstalk]-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  14:05 
[Crosstalk] because they didn't allow [inaudible]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  14:08 
Yeah. Did these aides give you shots, then? Or did you get any shots?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  14:12 
No, the doctor would give you the shots. And occasionally, if you were really sick, they would 
send a white practical nurse, or usually a practical nurse gave the Black people shots. The RN 
would give the white people shots. But the practical nurse, white practical nurse, would come 
and give you a shot if you was in real bad pain, or something.  
 
Mary L. Rice  14:32 
What would you say was the quality of the healthcare for Black people? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  14:36 
Very poor.  
 
Mary L. Rice  14:39 
So if you went to the hospital that didn't increase your chances of coming out alive that much, or 
am I overstating [crosstalk]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  14:48 
Very little. With a coma or something, then the doctor [inaudible] would see that you wouldn't-- 
couldn't die if he could, but other than that [?thing?], you just sort of waited your turn. Unless 
Page 9 of 47 
 
you was in very serious condition, then they'd come in [inaudible] if they thought you was going 
to go into a coma or something, then they'd come in and they'd probably give you a shot to stay 
[inaudible], or something. But otherwise, you got service when they had time for you. If you get-
- they didn't have time for you, you didn't get nothing.  
 
Mary L. Rice  15:20 
Now, were there hospitals that didn't allow Blacks in them at all? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  15:26 
Not that I know of. I think they always had a Black ward, and you didn't have private rooms. 
You just had a giant-size... In whichever ward that they had, they'd pack as many as they could 
get in there before they would give you any more space. You'd fill the Black ward until there was 
no room for any [inaudible].  
 
Mary L. Rice  15:48 
Well, it was divided into men and women?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  15:52 
Yes. And then you would have your families, and then other people would come in to take care 
of their families. And sometimes, if you was standing there taking care of one of your relatives, 
you would help out the other Blacks in there. You'd dump the bedpans and things like that for the 
other, too, if you had time, if your relative weren't too ill. 
 
Mary L. Rice  16:15 
So if you were there taking care of your relative, you would clean up--  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  16:19 
Yeah. Uh-huh. 
 
Mary L. Rice  16:20 
--to-- I mean, for your relative or anybody else if you wanted to? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  16:23 
Well, if you had the time, or if you let the you know, the stomach for it. Sometimes in the ward 
where she was, there was three or four amputees that was in such bad shape that I just couldn't 
do it. I just didn't have the stomach for it. But other than that, I mean, I'd still give them their 
pills. If the nurse came and left their pills at the door, or something, I'd leave the thing and bring 
the pill to them for them to take or something. But I wouldn't try to change the bandages and 
things on their legs because a couple of the ladies had sugar and wasn't eating properly, or 
something. 
 
Mary L. Rice  16:57 
Did you change your sister's bandages? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  16:59 
Page 10 of 47 
 
No, I didn't change the bandages. But in case one slipped or something, you know, I'd put it back 
and take it down or something. But if she needed to change, I'd go out to the stand in the 
hallway, ask the nurse to get a doctor or somebody to come in and change if it had completely 
come loose, or something. 
 
Mary L. Rice  17:17 
So it's really important to have family around you?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  17:20 
Right. If you didn't have no family, you was in a bad shape. And those would-- in the ward, that-
- the ones that didn't have family, that's the ones that we would help out, because others would 
have their family coming in and out. Some of them would have families living nearby. And after 
they got done their chores at home, they'd come by. Some of them had to work and they couldn't 
come and spend the whole day, but they would stay until late at night, sometimes. But there was 
two or three of them that didn't have no family. 
 
Mary L. Rice  17:49 
Well, when you met with-- we started off talking about when you left home, which was when 
you were about 18 or 17 years old? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  17:57 
Uh-huh. Eighteen.  
 
Mary L. Rice  17:58 
Eighteen? OK, why did you leave home? Wouldn't it have been easier just to stay there, because 
you would have more family around you there? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  18:08 
No, because down there our-- you didn't make-- you barely made enough money to last you till 
the next year, so you couldn't improve yourself, because you was just working yourself to death 
for survival. [Inaudible] I didn't want to spend my whole life-- there was my parents with all of 
these children and in their middle years, and they was almost where they was when they started. 
And I decided I wanted more from my life than that hard work every day and then barely make it 
through the winter, so that you could work just as hard the next summer, year after year after 
year, and I decided that that wasn't the kind of life I wanted for myself. After I worked a year, I 
[?wanted?] a few dollars where I could do something for myself, go back to school, visit some 
relatives that wasn't nearby where you could get in the car and go to overnight or something like 
that. I decided I just wanted a better life for myself, and I saw what the hard work was doing to 
them, and I just wanted something more from life than that. 
 
Mary L. Rice  19:18 
Well, where did you get the idea that there was something more? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  19:20 
Oh, from books. 
 
Page 11 of 47 
 
Mary L. Rice  19:22 
Oh, really?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  19:23 
Yeah, we would read about and we'd see magazines, and we'd see how everybody-- we didn't 
have TV or anything, and then we listened to radio, and we could hear and see that-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  19:36 
So weren't these white people? What would make you think that Black people could do that? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  19:40 
Oh, we knew. The white people wouldn't tell us that we could do that, but we knew if we had the 
chance. And then my brother, when he came back out of the service, he had lived all over the 
United States, and he told us how much better it was in the North than it was down there, and 
how much more-- how much better the people was living, and how much better the wages was, 
and how people-- that you could go to any school you wanted to go to, and you didn't have to be 
rich in order to go to school. But down there, they would tell you if you got out from down there, 
you'd starve to death. That was in order to keep you down there and work you for nothing. But 
we-- when we discovered that there was a lot better life someplace else, I had ambition. I wanted 
to live the best I could. 
 
Mary L. Rice  20:39 
Well, by that-- by the time you left, you were one of the older children, right, that was at home? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  20:44 
Yes. 
 
Mary L. Rice  20:45 
So you-- all your older brothers and sisters left, too. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  20:47 
Right. They had already gone years before. And then, when I was old enough to get on my own, 
I decided that I wanted someplace where I could work five days a week, have two days off to do 
my chores around or whatever, and still have enough money to put a few dollars aside each 
week.  
 
Mary L. Rice  21:12 
OK, so, did you leave alone?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  21:14 
No, my younger sister wanted to go, too, so I took her with me.  
 
Mary L. Rice  21:18 
The one that tried to burn the house down? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  21:20 
Page 12 of 47 
 
Yeah. 
 
Mary L. Rice  21:22 
Jobie, was that it? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  21:23 
Mm-hmm. And I figured that-- Jobie was a little slow, and I figured if I took her with me, I could 
train her how to do other things. And I figured if she left on her own, she wouldn't do too well 
because she just didn't think fast enough. And I-- we'd been warned that the Northern cities was a 
lot faster than down there, and you'd have to stay on your gaurd a little better. And I figured with 
the two of us together, we would be protection for each other in case we run into some hoodlums 
or something, and that we-- I could find a job [?that did?]-- if I got in there okay, then I could ask 
that they bring her in to be trained as a trainee or something. So that way when we first got in our 
home, I found a restaurant job, and I was a waitress and a fry cook, and then I asked him to hire 
her as a waitress. And then from-- by me showing her how to do it, she learned to be a very good 
waitress. And then after she learned to be a-- after she learned to be a waitress, I started teaching 
her to be a fry cook, and then that way I could train her to have a job and own her own.  
 
Mary L. Rice  22:47 
Plus, you would have some company. You wouldn't have to [crosstalk] around by yourself.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  22:50 
Yeah, I'd have some comp-- i'd have some company. And then the Black restaurants was usually 
in a rough part of town. And this way we could go to work together in the mornings and come 
out, but we had the day shift during the week and at night-- on the weekends, we'd have to work 
later at night, and that's the only time we'd have to work until after dark was on the weekends, 
otherwise, we would go in at 6:00--  
 
Mary L. Rice  23:12 
Well, did you work seven days a week?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  23:14 
We'd go in-- no, but we had-- we had two days off a week, but when we first started, we had to 
work weekends, so we would get our days-- our two days off. We only worked five days a week, 
but sometime our two days was during the week. And this way we would-- I tried to get them to 
arrange our off days together. And this way we would walk to work-- get home at night by 
ourselves, because we weren't too far away, maybe eight, six or eight, maybe seven blocks. And 
then we would walk to work-- I mean, walk home. Then we walked to work in the afternoon, 
because we would work late at night. We didn't go to work until around noon. And then we 
worked sometimes until 11:00 at night, just the weekends, because during the week, the place 
closed up early. 
 
Mary L. Rice  23:58 
So when you worked day shift, you would start at what time? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  24:01 
Page 13 of 47 
 
Six in the morning to 6:00 at night. Our shifts was 12 hours. 
 
Mary L. Rice  24:07 
How much would you get paid for that?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  24:10 
Oh, I don't remember exactly what we got paid, but it was so much better than we were getting in 
Mississippi. We thought we were rich. And I remember every week when we would get our 
paycheck, I'd always save up four or five dollars and I thought that was big money. After I paid 
my bills and bought my groceries, I'd have $5 to save, and I'd still leave myself a couple of 
dollars to spend, go to the movies and sometimes go out for dinner, or something. Because back 
then dinner wasn't expensive, so you could go to a restaurant and have a real nice meal for 75¢. 
 
Mary L. Rice  24:51 
Now this would have been in about '48? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  24:53 
'48 [inaudible]. So then we worked together like that for about nine months and then she met a 
guy, and about three or four months after that, she got on her own, all by herself. She moved out 
and got an apartment of her own. So that way, she-- but at least she had learned a trade. So after 
that, she would work in restaurants [inaudible] jobs, off and on for years.  
 
Mary L. Rice  25:22 
OK, so how long did you stay in Portageville? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  25:27 
Oh, I stayed in Portageville a little less than-- about two years.  
 
Mary L. Rice  25:34 
OK. Now, when you moved to Portageville, you had a sister there already.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  25:38 
Yeah.  
 
Mary L. Rice  25:38 
And both of you and your younger sister stayed with this older sister-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  25:42 
Uh-huh. In fact we--  
 
Mary L. Rice  25:43 
--and she was your oldest sister, right? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  25:45 
Uh-huh. She knew about [crosstalk]. 
 
Page 14 of 47 
 
Mary L. Rice  25:45 
OK. So that's how you got on your feet in Portageville, how you a job.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  25:49 
Uh-huh. Yeah. Right.  
 
Mary L. Rice  25:49 
Because you came there with no money other than your bus fare, right? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  25:52 
No, I had a few dollars, but not much, but just a little.  
 
Mary L. Rice  25:55 
OK.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  25:57 
And we got to our sister, she lived in the rural area, so we worked on the farm where she lived. 
So we started to work there until we found us a city job. So we worked every day, because it 
was-- when we first got there, it was cotton picking time, so we could go out and pick cotton 
every day and make money. And then by the time we moved into the city on our own, we had a 
few dollars of our own.  
 
Mary L. Rice  26:22 
How was it picking cotton?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  26:24 
Hard work, just like it was at home. 
 
Mary L. Rice  26:26 
When is cotton picking time? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  26:27 
In the fall.  
 
Mary L. Rice  26:29 
September?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  26:30 
Well, yeah, see, it starts around September, and sometime it goes on up until it snows and 
sometimes [inaudible] December before [inaudible]-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  26:37 
So is it cold when you're picking cotton? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  26:42 
Uh-huh. And then sometime [inaudible] [?cold?].  
Page 15 of 47 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  26:43 
So what does that entail? What does picking cotton entail? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  26:45 
Uh, we get paid so much a hundred. 
 
Mary L. Rice  26:48 
Yeah, well, how do you pick cotton? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  26:51 
Pull it out of the boll and put it in the bag.  
 
Mary L. Rice  26:55 
OK, so [laughs] you have these big fields, right? And, they have cotton plants. How does cotton 
grow? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  27:03 
Well, it grows similar to beans, except you don't have to stake them. It grows about shoulder 
high, mostly.  
 
Mary L. Rice  27:12 
Oh, they're tall. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  27:14 
Uh-huh, it was cotton all the way from the ground up to there. 
 
Mary L. Rice  27:17 
Oh, well, is it kind of like a bush, then? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  27:19 
Uh-huh.  
 
Mary L. Rice  27:20 
OK, and it has those little bolls of cotton all the way up your shoulder height, then? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  27:26 
Uh-huh. And they start to ripen at the top. Then your firstc crop-- your first time you pick it, you 
pick from the top down so far. And then you pick the cotton usually three times. And then the 
second time you pick it, it goes all the way down close to the bottom, and then the last time you 
pick it is usually cold weather by then, and the crop is almost down to the ground.  
 
Mary L. Rice  27:48 
So-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  27:51 
Page 16 of 47 
 
[Inaudible] hot at the top. Down below its leaves and things, it takes a little longer. 
 
Mary L. Rice  27:57 
OK. So with cotton balloons or whatever you call it-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  28:03 
It goes over the-- out of the-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  28:04 
 --the cotton pops out of the plant, is that right? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  28:06 
Yeah. Uh-huh.  
 
Mary L. Rice  28:06 
So it has this big white thing sticking out of the plant. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  28:09 
Uh-huh. But it's upside down. It's up facing you. It grows up like... And when it pops... See, it 
blooms first, and then there's a boll. When the boll opens, that's when the cotton is there.  
 
Mary L. Rice  28:20 
OK, so how do you how do you get it off these plants? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  28:24 
You pull it off the plants by hand, then you put it in a bag until you get a bag full, and then you 
take it out and weigh it and dump it into a big truck. 
 
Mary L. Rice  28:31 
You know, is this, like, a little five pound bag? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  28:33 
Oh, no. These bags are usually about seven or eight feet long that you drag down the row behind 
you, and you fill that bag. When you get to fillin' that bag, depending on how green the cotton is, 
that bag will run from 50-75 pounds time you pack it, because every so often you stop and pack 
that bag. And then when you take that in, you usually [inaudible] one of those. If you're not a 
real good cotton picker, that bag [inaudible] almost half a day.  
 
Mary L. Rice  29:06 
So it takes a while to [?pick a bag full of cotton?]. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  29:08 
Yeah, it takes a long time to fill that bag full of cotton. 
 
Mary L. Rice  29:11 
Page 17 of 47 
 
Yeah. Well, with each cotton boll, would you get, like, a handful of cotton, or was it something 
less than a handful?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  29:18 
Uh-huh. Yeah, you usually--  
 
Mary L. Rice  29:18 
About a handful of cotton. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  29:19 
About a handful of cotton. 
 
Mary L. Rice  29:19 
And you have to pick that handful of cotton long enough to fill up a bag that weighs about 75-
100 pounds?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  29:26 
Right. And the average worker, the average woman, I should say, [?could?] pick from 200 to 250 
pounds of cotton a day.  
 
Mary L. Rice  29:36 
So she could fill that bag twice, about?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  29:39 
Yeah, some twice, and sometimes twice and a half. And that way the average-- some [inaudible] 
pick a lot faster [?and others can't?]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  29:49 
OK, were you a two-handed cotton picker or one hand?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  29:53 
Right. If you were not [inaudible] two-handed-- if you're not a two-handed cotton picker, you 
can't make a living at it at all. But I was a very tender-handed cotton picker. By the time the 
week was up, the first--especially the first two weeks of picking cotton, the first week I picked 
the blood out of my fingers, and the second week I picked with bloody fingers. And then after 
that, you got calluses. After you healed and got calluses then it wasn't so hard, but the first two 
weeks of picking cotton was sheer pain. And I decided, I can make a living easier than that. 
 
Mary L. Rice  30:30 
Well, did you have to carry the bag in, or did somebody come get it? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  30:33 
No, no. You carried it. You--  
 
Mary L. Rice  30:35 
Wouldn't that bag be taller than you?  
Page 18 of 47 
 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  30:37 
Right. You put that bag across your shoulders, and then, if you were little like I was, it would 
almost drag the ground behind and in the front. You draped it over and then you wobbled out. 
But what you tried to do was-- see, they parked a trailer at the end of the road. So what you tried 
to do is to get-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  31:00 
This is interview with Dorothy M. Turner, May 11, 1983. Interview two, take one, side two.  
 
Mary L. Rice  31:12 
OK. When we ran out of tape, you were saying that when you pick-- when you picked cotton, 
you didn't try and fill up your bag. You-- what was [inaudible]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  31:24 
You made more trips to the trailer, that way you didn't have to carry so much weight at one time 
because--  
 
Mary L. Rice  31:31 
So did they have your name on the list, then, and just marked down whatever weight you have? 
So it didn't really matter if you filled up your bag or not?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  31:38 
Right. You weighed your own cotton and set the slip on your own tube. They kept one slip and 
you kept one slip, and you weighed your own cotton and made sure that you counted your time 
up, otherwise you would get cheated. So I would try to come out at the end of the road near the 
trailer every time. And when I was near the trailer, before they moved it again, I would try to 
dump my bag when it was about two thirds full, that way you didn't have to carry so much 
weight. At my size, if you're working so hard to lift that [?stuff?], because after you weighed 
your cotton, you had to help lift it onto the trailer, and this way it wouldn't be such a strain to 
handle that, where some of the bigger women didn't have no trouble, so they could handle that. 
 
Mary L. Rice  32:28 
So how tall are you?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  32:30 
About five foot, one and a half inches. And at that time, I only weighed about 116. It was quite 
[inaudible] to handle. 
 
Mary L. Rice  32:42 
So how long would it row of cotton be?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  32:44 
Oh, depending on the... In Portageville, the rows was considerably [?narrower?] than they were 
down South, because they-- most of their fields was with a tractor, that-- equipment instead of 
people, and about 90% of the fields down [inaudible]. And this way [inaudible] small fields, lot 
Page 19 of 47 
 
of small fields instead of... In Missouri [inaudible] plantation [inaudible]. Was huge, flat lands, 
and they would just make a row from one side of it to the other. So that way it was a lot harder 
to-- because they only parked the trailers at the end of the road, because you couldn't take them 
out in the fields. So that way was a lot harder to get through the sack as often, because you had-- 
because you get to the end of one of those long rows, and if the cotton was really thick, by the 
time you got to the end of that row, you had a lot of weight to drag behind. And then the heavier 
that bag got, the slower-- you know, the slower you could pick, too, because you had to pull that 
bag along. 
 
Mary L. Rice  33:57 
So what did mothers with small children do?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  34:00 
Well, sometimes, if the kid was big enough, they would let them ride on the bag down through 
there. But in the fall of the year, it was a lot of snakes around. So it weren't very safe because the 
kid could get snakebitten riding on your bag. [Inaudible] [?snakes around?] [inaudible] down in 
the shade. [Inaudible] that cotton was a little dangerous sometimes. So, but down South you 
usually let one kid look after the other at home, if possible, especially if they [?weren't?] out 
working. If they were working in their own fields, they [inaudible] took the kids down, but they 
would leave a bigger kid around out under the shade to to look after him, look after the baby and 
see that no snakes [?or anything?], usually with a dog or something around to help. But the kid 
that was looking after you, he usually wasn't old, five, six years old. But at least you could keep 
your baby from getting bit. [Inaudible.] You'd keep the flies away as well the snakes, and bees, 
and bumblebees, and stuff. 
 
Mary L. Rice  35:07 
OK, so you did that with-- when you and your younger sister came up and you picked cotton 
with your older sister [crosstalk]?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  35:14 
This wasn't on her land. It was... Now, of course, when you pick [inaudible] on other people's 
land [inaudible]. So you could only work with your children [?on your whole land?]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  35:26 
OK, when you came up, were you working on your sister's land? Or were you working 
elsewhere?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  35:30 
Working on the land where my sister sharecropped.  
 
Mary L. Rice  35:34 
Oh, your sister was a sharecropper, too? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  35:37 
Yes. [Inaudible] sharecroppers, they had to [inaudible] everything. So it was a much bigger 
[?estate?] than it was down [?home?]. 
Page 20 of 47 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  35:46 
Well, if you had to harvest your own cotton, would you have people come in to help you, or 
would you just have to do it for yourself?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  35:53 
Well, a family the size of ours, we didn't have to, but smaller families did.  
 
Mary L. Rice  35:57 
So your sister had to have to have people come in and help her? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  36:00 
Uh-huh. [Crosstalk] just she and her husband. 
 
Mary L. Rice  36:00 
How would she have managed to do that?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  36:03 
Oh, well, the thing was, the owner of the land, when it started getting close to the end of the 
season, if they hadn't finished all of that cotton in the field, he was the one that hired the people, 
and they would come in and finish up. But whatever they done, half of it came out of my sister's 
share, and half came out of his share, because he would only get half the crop. 
 
Mary L. Rice  36:30 
Now, it seems, from what you've told me, that your sister's life really was very much like your 
parents' life. I mean, this older sister. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  36:38 
Only difference it was they had a lot more land because they had tractors to work it, and then that 
way their half was a lot bigger share. Half of that share, she still made a lot more money. 
 
Mary L. Rice  36:53 
So she and her husband made more money than your parents?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  36:56 
Right.  
 
Mary L. Rice  36:59 
And they were-- I mean, that was-- was it because they were out of Mississippi, too?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  37:03 
Right. And the wages was better, and then they had-- but the only thing is, at this time, though, 
my parents owned their land, so they got all of what came out of the crop, but meanwhile, they 
still had a small crop because the family had dwindled out. By the time they bought land, all of 
the big workers that could really do a man or woman's day's work had gone. And when they 
bought the land, my sister and I was the two oldest ones there, and we-- at that time, we were 
Page 21 of 47 
 
quite small. So for a long time-- it took us a long time to be able to harvest more than three or 
four bales of cotton, because Jobie and I was 10 and 11 years old, and the others was babies, 
because Jobie and I was quite a bit of distance between... The two of us, because we were the last 
two of the second set and then these others was quite small. It was a couple of years after we got 
the land before the other two was big enough to do anything [inaudible]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  38:07 
Before the--  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  38:09 
Boys. 
 
Mary L. Rice  38:10 
--the younger boys would [crosstalk].  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  38:11 
Yeah, before the younger boys was big enough to do at least a half a man's work because they 
was real small children. So this way, if Willie and her husband had been able to buy some land 
down in Mississippi, they could have lived a lot better. But by them moving to Missouri, they 
could live quite well on sharecropping.  
 
Mary L. Rice  38:35 
They did save money and buy a house for themselves, though?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  38:38 
Yes, they saved the money and bought them a house in the little city area, the little city area. So 
that they-- after that, they just had a big garden. They didn't have to [inaudible] a field or 
anything. 
 
Mary L. Rice  38:51 
How did they earn money then?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  38:53 
He would work elsewhere, and she would work around-- in this area where they was, there was 
real close to the farm, and she would work around in the truck patches and make extra money. 
And he got him a job as a carpenter assistant. And this way he would have a regular paycheck 
coming in, and then she would help around-- help the people gather they truck patches and 
[inaudible]. And then she would [?sow?] sometimes and sell it to [?them?].  
 
Mary L. Rice  39:27 
OK, so after you and your younger sister lived-- well, after your younger sister left you in 
Portageville, did you just stay there by yourself, or [crosstalk]?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  39:37 
For that winter. Then the next year, I decided to go back to Detroit. 
 
Page 22 of 47 
 
Mary L. Rice  39:45 
OK, so you had lived in Detroit before then?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  39:48 
Yes, I lived there off and on with my other sister, my next older sister. This was my [?oldest?] 
sister-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  39:55 
In Portageville? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  39:56 
--in Portageville, but I had lived off and old with my oldest-- I mean, my other sister-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  40:01 
Alice. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  40:01 
--in Detroit, in [?Alice?]. I lived off and on with her for a couple of-- uh, three or four years, 
before I left home for good.  
 
Mary L. Rice  40:09 
OK, so you decided to go back to Detroit. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  40:11 
I decided to go back to Detroit [inaudible] because-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  40:13 
So again, you're going to another relative, so that you can get started.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  40:17 
Right.  
 
Mary L. Rice  40:18 
OK, so what did you do in Detroit?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  40:20 
Well, I moved in with Alice, and then I got myself [inaudible]. When you moved in with Alice, 
you didn't have no place where I could just go to work the next day like Willie did, right in the 
field. So I moved in with Alice after-- it was wintertime when I went back there, and I moved in 
with her, and then I went out job hunting and found me a job in a restaurant. So I'd learned in 
Portageville how to cook and wait tables, so it was very easy for me to find a job doing that 
there. So I got me a job in Detroit, which in Detroit, you got about time and a half as much 
money for the same work that you did in Portageville. [Inaudible.] [?You worked eight hours and 
for the time that you did, you worked?] eight hours and you got [inaudible] and you got time and 
a half. The pay that you got doing the same thing, you got time and a half the pay. The weekend 
your check was time and half of what it was for eight hours a day than it was in Portageville.  
Page 23 of 47 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  41:26 
So how long did you stay with your sister?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  41:30 
I guess I stayed with her about three months until I saved up enough money to rent-- pay rent 
[inaudible] [?a place of my own?].  
 
Mary L. Rice  41:37 
So it was very important to you to be in independent, huh? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  41:40 
Right. I always wanted to be on my own from the time I was big enough to understand what it 
was all about. I didn't like the idea of doing all of the work and taking orders at the same time. I 
wanted to be independent.  
 
Mary L. Rice  41:57 
Well, did your sisters still-- sisters still give you orders then?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  42:00 
Oh, when you were small, [inaudible]. That's why Mom never put up much of a fight when we 
went to stay with the sisters [inaudible] we was just moving out of her house into theirs. So they 
try to give you orders. But once you got on your own and start taking the part of an adult, they 
sort of left you alone. And they figured that whatever you got into, you could step out of the 
same way. So they sort of left you alone. But as long as you was living in their house, they 
wanted to tell you when to go and when to come back. And I figured if I was 19-20 years old, I 
was old enough to know that. So I got on my own and [crosstalk]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  42:39 
So what was your social life like by the time you got to Detroit?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  42:43 
Oh, average, I guess. I still liked going to dances, going to movies. Never was a very wild 
person, and I never drank, so I'd go whatever was happening in Detroit. There was a lot of bands 
that would come in town every few weeks or so.  
 
Mary L. Rice  43:03 
So would you go alone, or how did you [?be able to?] get in? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  43:06 
I met people. You would meet them at... My brother in law, he knew quite a few people, and he 
had quite a few relatives. And we would go visit his relatives, and they would invite us to their 
church, and you'd meet men at church, and then they'd invite us to their conventions and things 
that would be happening around and you would [?get to meet?] people, and that [inaudible]. I 
never worried too much about finding a boyfriend because I go to a dance and you always meet 
some-- ran into to somebody that you knew, or [inaudible]. 
Page 24 of 47 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  43:45 
Was that very-- I mean, was it very dangerous? Did you go to, like, nightclubs?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  43:53 
Yeah, but I would go to it in the better neighborhoods, because in Detroit, you didn't have to go 
only to the slum. You could go to the better places. It cost you a little bit more money, but you 
were a lot safer. 
 
Mary L. Rice  44:03 
When you say better places, are these still Black places, or are they Black and white? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  44:07 
Oh, no, they're mixed places. Mixed places. 
 
Mary L. Rice  44:08 
Oh, there was no-- there was no segregation, or...? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  44:11 
Oh no, no, no. You could go to any place [inaudible]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  44:12 
Was it just natural segregation [inaudible]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  44:14 
Well, I mean, you know something like Seattle, you go to the places and wherever there's Black 
music, there's-- 80% of the people there is Black because of the music. And if you like Black 
music, you go to the place where they had a Black band, and you'd go there. But there was mixed 
couples and [?thin?] white couples, or whoever liked Black music was there. 
 
Mary L. Rice  44:36 
OK, you said there were mixed couples. Were there actually mixed couples-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  44:40 
Oh, yeah.  
 
Mary L. Rice  44:40 
--like white women and Black men? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  44:46 
Yeah.  
 
Mary L. Rice  44:48 
Really? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  44:48 
Page 25 of 47 
 
Uh-huh.  
 
Mary L. Rice  44:49 
In -- what would this be -- 1950? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  44:51 
In Detroit. Uh-huh, in Detroit.  
 
Mary L. Rice  44:53 
How was that received in the Black community? [Inaudible]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  44:56 
Well, the thing is-- they-- I mean, they'd accepted it, because ever since the war, people had 
brought back German women. When they came back, they had married German women when 
they were in Germany. And then they knew they couldn't take them south, so they stopped in a 
Northern city. So and by then, this had been happening since back in the '40s, and by the time it 
got into the '50s, it was just a normal thing in Detroit and other Northern cities. It didn't go over 
too well in St. Louis at that time, but occasionally, there, you would run into a couple like that. 
But there are certain places that they didn't go because-- not that they couldn't go, but they knew 
if they went there, it was going to be trouble, you know? So they tried to stay away from that. 
But Detroit was much more non-segregated than St. Louis, so there's quite a few mixed couples 
there [inaudible] I don't know-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  45:49 
Were there many Japanese, or Black men with Japanese women?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  45:52 
Yeah, some with Japanese women.  
 
Mary L. Rice  45:54 
How about Black women and white men? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  45:56 
No. 
 
Mary L. Rice  45:57 
[?None?]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  45:58 
Not at that time.  
 
Mary L. Rice  45:59 
Black women didn't associate with white men, or...?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  46:03 
Page 26 of 47 
 
Well, they associated with it, but it was in the Black neighborhood. They didn't go out and mix, 
you know, in the mixed race. When they went out, the white man would see the Black woman, 
but he'd come to the Black neighborhood to see her. He wouldn't take her out in his 
neighborhood. He would come to the Black neighborhood and hang out there with her. 
[Inaudible]-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  46:25 
[Inaudible] her home. He would take her out to other places.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  46:27 
Well, sometimes you would see-- just occasionally, you would see one in the Black 
neighborhood, but you would never see a-- at that time, you'd never see a white man out with a 
Black woman in the white neighborhoods [inaudible].  
 
Mary L. Rice  46:41 
Would there be trouble because of that [inaudible]?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  46:45 
I think the whole thing was, it was still on the old Southern style that I could hang out with you, 
but I don't want my people to know about it. So that was [inaudible] the thing, because I don't 
think nobody would have bothered him or anything. Because if they could accept a white woman 
being out there, they probably would took it a little harder than seeing with the white-- the Black 
man with the white woman, but I don't think that anybody would bother him. Because it just 
wasn't accepted as easily at that time. But you would occasionally see it, but you onyl see them 
going in and out of their house, or something, or hanging out at their home, or a private picnic, or 
something their own backyard. You could always see it, but they just didn't go out in social 
settings. 
 
Mary L. Rice  47:30 
And it was-- [?she?] was pretty well accepted in the Black commu-- or interracial couples were 
fairly well accepted in the Black community.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  47:36 
Right.  
 
Mary L. Rice  47:38 
Do you think that changed, like, during the '60s, with Black Power and all that, do you think?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  47:43 
Well, for a while it got worse, because when they first started out with the Black Power, a lot of 
the things that, you know, had been accepted, sort of, it got worse sometimes. Because the white 
people got-- [?so?]-- the Black man was [?militant and so did the white?]. So for a while, you 
had more problems than you had before it started out, but you-- they resented you insisting that 
you got the job that the white man had held for years and years.  
 
Mary L. Rice  48:16 
Page 27 of 47 
 
OK, I understand. "They" who? White people?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  48:19 
Yeah, they resented having to give up the job that they had always thought that was theirs. I 
mean, they just accepted the fact that if you worked in a restaurant, you waited tables. They 
didn't want to accept the fact that you could go up and be a receptionist, or they didn't want to 
accept the fact that you would [?stand in?]-- I mean, at the cashier's cage in the bank, or this nice, 
clean job that they'd always considered a white person's job. 
 
Mary L. Rice  48:24 
OK. So you're talking about the whole social climate, not just about interracial couples-- 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  48:57 
Right. Mm-hmm 
 
Mary L. Rice  48:58 
--with Black [?pride?]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  48:59 
Right. And then they were so mad because you got that job they thought you didn't deserve, then 
they started trouble just for the sake of trouble, and not-- they-- the least little things, I should 
say, would tick them off because they was already angry. And this way they started having a lot 
more racial fights and things that they'd had in a long time, so they just sort of accepted it when it 
came along. And then when you go someplace, and if you went to the nicer areas you could 
come and you'd usually run into [inaudible] nobody paid any attention.  
 
Mary L. Rice  49:40 
OK. So when you went out, like, to movies or to nightclubs or whatever, you could-- you had a 
choice of going to, like, a white area or to a Black area? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  49:52 
Mm-hmm [crosstalk].  
 
Mary L. Rice  49:53 
Or-- and then, of course, there was the lower class Black area and the middle class Black area 
[crosstalk]. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  49:58 
But at that time, it sort of started to mix in. The Black wasn't as-- the middle class Black wasn't 
as distant in the Northern cities as they was in the-- St. Louis. 
 
Mary L. Rice  50:13 
Distant from whom?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  50:14 
I mean, wasn't as distant to  the lower-income Black.  
Page 28 of 47 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  50:18 
Oh, OK, so the Black community was [crosstalk].  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  50:20 
Was sort of beginning to come together, uh-huh. They was beginning to come together, then. Of 
course, there was always a slum, and the really poor people lived in the slum, but when they 
went out socially, they wasn't as much friction between the two classes of Black as it was when I 
was younger in St. Louis. 
 
Mary L. Rice  50:41 
And w-- by being a waitress, or-- were you a fry cook, then, too? Waitress and a fry cook? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  50:47 
Uh-huh.  
 
Mary L. Rice  50:47 
OK, you were middle class, then, right? Well, what would you be doing to be low class? I mean, 
what kind of job would you have? Or would you have a job?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  50:55 
If you had-- I mean, the bottom of the line has always been the welfare. That was always the 
bottom of the heap. And then other than that was always day work, or people that worked here 
and there all over town, not just the private maids, but worked in several households with no skill 
at all. 
 
Mary L. Rice  51:14 
You mean that would have-- that didn't pay as much as-- I mean, it didn't pay enough to feed 
your family on [inaudible]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  51:20 
Well, it paid enough to feed-- well, I wouldn't-- depends on how well you could manage your 
money. But it didn't pay not nearly as-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  51:27 
As much as being a fry cook? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  51:28 
--as waitress, or a fry cook, or any type of standard work like that. Paid much better wages. 
 
Mary L. Rice  51:35 
OK, so now, you-- the sister that you went to live with, she was married by this time, is that 
correct?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  51:39 
Yes.  
Page 29 of 47 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  51:40 
OK, what did her husband do? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  51:43 
He was on disability most of the time, but when he wasn't -- he had ulcers. He got ulcers when 
he was in the army. But when he wasn't doing that, he worked at the automobile factory. He 
worked at General Motors [crosstalk].  
 
Mary L. Rice  51:57 
OK, so even with his disability, he was still making fairly good money?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  52:00 
Yeah.  
 
Mary L. Rice  52:01 
I mean, his disability from that. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  52:03 
Yeah, when he would have an a-- I mean, ulcer attack or something like that, then he-- for 
months on end, he couldn't work at all. And then when he go back to work, he'd work in the 
automobile factories, which was making pretty good money. And she worked in a laundry. 
 
Mary L. Rice  52:16 
OK, so now, did that make them, like, upper middle class Blacks, or something?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  52:20 
Yeah, because they was-- they were making very good money. And she not only just worked in 
the laundry, but she was-- she specialized in press. She was-- she pressed [inaudible]. She 
worked in a uniform factory. She pressed the white shirts. And that way, she made so much a 
shirt. And even back in those days, she could come home with the average-- twice as much 
money as the average people did that was working by hour, because she was good at it.  
 
Mary L. Rice  52:50 
OK, how did she manage to get that job? Do you have any idea? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  52:54 
I think she started out when... That was before they had unions. And she started out by... Her 
father in law knew some people that was working there, and they told her about it, and she went 
in and put in her application, and then they [?go down the line?]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  53:19 
She was there during unionization?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  53:22 
Yes. 
Page 30 of 47 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  53:23 
Was she involved in it? Do you know?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  53:25 
I don't [?remember?]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  53:27 
You weren't there when they were being unionized? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  53:30 
Well, I didn't know anything about-- much about her job, 'cause she never said very much about 
it. Even when I was there, she never talked too much about the unions or [?what have you?]. And 
she would say that she was glad that she learned when-- [?or?] got into that job when she did, 
because she started at the bottom and learned. She had a lot of skills that she wouldn't have had 
otherwise and she made a very good living at it because she used to bring home as much money 
as he did when he was working in the factory. 
 
Mary L. Rice  54:00 
Well so actually, I mean, by Black standards, they would have been rich then, right? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  54:05 
They-- in about 15 years, they bought four homes, and two of them was duplexes. 
 
Mary L. Rice  54:14 
So they were making income off the property they were [?renting?] also? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  54:17 
Right. She was-- the properties-- some of the properties they had was paying for itself, and then a 
house that they lived in was a duplex, and the other side of it paid for the side she was on so she 
was living rent-free. 
 
Mary L. Rice  54:32 
And how many children did they have?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  54:33 
Just one. 
 
Mary L. Rice  54:34 
She just had one child and saved all that money. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  54:37 
Yeah. She's very good at managing money. 
 
Mary L. Rice  54:41 
Did that-- did she help you learn to manage money, or...?  
Page 31 of 47 
 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  54:44 
I suppose. I sort of used her as a role model, because when he wasn't working, she still managed 
to keep payments up on everything and keep everything going and when he would have an ulcer 
attack and lay off a [?month?], she would live at the same standard that she did before he 
[inaudible], because she could manage her money, stretch her money for all of them to live 
comfortably.  
 
Mary L. Rice  55:16 
OK, so how long did you live in Michigan?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  55:20 
Oh, I stayed in Michigan off and on, I guess, for about four years. But I didn't stay in Detroit all 
that time. I lived out in Flint. After I got married, I went to Flint and stayed a while, and then I 
went to Battle Creek, Michigan and stayed a while, and I went to Dayton, Ohio and stayed a 
while. 
 
Mary L. Rice  55:46 
So why were you traveling around like that? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  55:50 
Mainly to just try out-- at first, it was just to try out a city on my own and, you know, move out 
the city with my people and see if I can make it without having somebody to fall back on, just in 
case. That was the first thing I done when I moved out to Flint. I would like to live in a little 
smaller town, but not real small. And I would just like to see what it was like to be in a town 
where no relatives lived close by. 
 
Mary L. Rice  56:19 
You'd never lived without relatives.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  56:20 
I hadn't lived anyplace that there wasn't relatives in town, so I moved out to Flint. It's only 45 
miles, I think, from Detroit, but I moved out there and got me a job and done well out there, so I 
figured I don't have to live in a town nearby people. And then a friend of mine moved to Dayton, 
Ohio and she wrote back, told me it was nice down there, and by that time, I'd saved up a few 
dollars, so I got me a map, got in my car, and went to Dayton, Ohio. And I [?liked?] for a 
weekend, and I liked it. I came back. I didn't have very much by that time. So I came back and 
packed up [inaudible] belongings and headed down there.  
 
Mary L. Rice  56:24 
So you'd already managed to buy a car? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  56:56 
Uh-huh, yeah, after you sta-- after I'd saved up and got enough money that I could fall back on, 
then I felt comfortable by going to get me a car. I'd learned to drive. 
 
Page 32 of 47 
 
Mary L. Rice  57:19 
How did you learn to drive?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  57:21 
Mostly taught myself. A friend of mine let me use his car so I would go out to a parking lot of a 
business that was closed on Sunday. So I'd go out that parking lot and drive around and learn to 
[inaudible], and then I learned to parallel park, and I just used these parking things there. And 
then I laid-- took me two pieces-- two pieces of lumber, and I'd lay them down, and I'd get into 
that, and then I'd shorten them, and I'd get into that, because my sister told me what you had to 
go through to get the driver's license. So I learned to park until I thought I was good enough, and 
then I learned to drive in bad conditions and everything, snow and ice and all of this stuff.  
 
Mary L. Rice  58:10 
Was it snowing at the time you were trying to learn to drive? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  58:13 
Well, not when I first started, but before I got my license, it was. When I got my license, the 
street was a solid sheet of ice. When I was taking my driver's test, the policeman that was in the 
car with me, he-- we was going along about 10 miles an hour, and he says, "Stop." I put my foot 
on the brakes, and the car was still going about 10 miles an hour. And he says, "I said, stop." 
And I asked him how. And he looked down and my foot sitting on the brake all the way down. 
And he says, "Oh, you did," [laughs] and we went right on through the stop sign [laughs] 
because it wouldn't-- the car wouldn't stop on the ice. And then after that, I [inaudible] back and 
practiced how to maneuver a car to make it stop on ice. 
 
Mary L. Rice  59:02 
Oh, so you failed the test [crosstalk]. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  59:04 
No, as long as my foot was on the brake when he told me to, I got my license. And then after I 
got my license, I went back and practiced how to stop on ice. [Inaudible] jumping on your 
brakes. I pumped them very slowly, and got a little bit slower, a bit slower, and then I could stop. 
 
Mary L. Rice  59:27 
Now, you mentioned that you got married during your stay in Detroit? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  59:35 
Yes. 
 
Mary L. Rice  59:36 
And was that after you came back from Ohio, or...? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  59:41 
Mm-hmm.  
 
Mary L. Rice  59:41 
Page 33 of 47 
 
Yeah, OK, you had moved back to Detroit? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  59:44 
Mm-hmm.  
 
Mary L. Rice  59:44 
OK. And how did you meet this man? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  59:48 
I had known him since I was a teenager down [?at home?]. He was a Southern man that [?then?] 
moved out of the South like I did. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:00:00 
So you grew up with him? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:00:01 
Oh, no. I didn't [?meet him?] till I was a teenager. They-- his family moved in near my family 
when I was about 15, 16. [Inaudible] [?in the service?]. When the family moved in, he wasn't 
home, and then we got to know his family quite well. When he came out of the service, then 
that's when I met him.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:00:35 
But you weren't interested in him when you lived there, or...?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:00:39 
Oh, sure I was interested in him, but he was a lot older than me. I had to grow up a bit. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:00:47 
OK, so then did he move to Detroit? And you... 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:00:50 
[Inaudible.] His family lived down there but he also had relatives in Detroit. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:01:00 
So right after you were married, did you come to Seattle then, or...? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:01:05 
I stayed there for a little while and then I came to Seattle. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:01:08 
OK, why did you move to Seattle? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:01:11 
Oh, he'd been in the service out here. He liked it. He thought it was [inaudible] the weather didn't 
get so cold and harsh [inaudible].  
 
Page 34 of 47 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:01:22 
And were you willing to come out here?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:01:25 
Sure. I had learned that I could survive without being near my relatives, so it didn't bother me at 
all [laughs]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:01:34 
You weren't attached to being around the-- in the Midwest? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:01:36 
I-- no-- it's funny, once I grew up, I wasn't attached to my relatives. Once I grew up, I decided it 
was time to, you know, live on my own, do my own kind of thing. And I never felt 
uncomfortable. When I first moved from out of the city where I had no relatives, [inaudible] I 
always be lonesome over there, and I found that I could do just fine with just friends and people 
that-- [Tape cuts.] 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:02:06 
Dorothy M. Turner, 5/11/1983. Interview two, tape two, side one.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:02:06 
Now, at the end of the last tape when we were discussing your move to Seattle, now, your 
husband had been stationed here. Did he have any relatives in Seattle? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:02:32 
Yes, he had an uncle and an aunt and cousin that lived here. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:02:39 
OK, so were you planning to stay with them until you got on your feet, or...?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:02:45 
Yes, until we found us a place of our own, until he went back to sea. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:02:51 
Now, how did you get from Detroit to Seattle? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:02:58 
We sold our old car and bought us a Cadillac that would be good enough to make it to Seattle 
without breaking down, because our other car was rather old. So we drove to Seattle in 
December from Detroit.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:03:19 
Why did you start in December? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:03:22 
Page 35 of 47 
 
Well, I didn't know about how dangerous it was because I had never lived in a mountain-- I 
mean, didn't know anything about mountains, and I never knew how dangerous it was to try to 
travel through mountains in the wintertime. And I never knew how much snow and ice that 
would be up there in December, or how many mountain ranges you'd have to travel through. So I 
figured it was just like driving from Battle Creek back to Detroit or Flint or someplace, flat land. 
I had no idea how dangerous it was, but we tried it, and we made it fine. We stopped in Sioux 
City, Iowa and visited some relatives of his and stayed three-- about three days. But then we 
headed out from Sioux City. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:04:14 
Did you stay in hotels other than that? Or did you just not stop, or...?  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:04:18 
On the back of your legs? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:04:18 
We didn't stop because we would drive in shift. I'd sleep for four hours shift, and he would drive, 
and he'd shift-- he'd sleep a four hour shift while I'd drive. So that way we didn't have to stop. So 
then we made it all the way in, and we tried to go to Yellowstone Park. We wanted to see that on 
the way out, but it was closed because of the weather, too much snow and ice, so we turned... 
And that's the reason we took the northern route. We had planned to go further south after I 
discovered that we was getting into the high country, but we wanted to see Yellowstone Park, so 
we came into there. And then after we got that far up, we decided to take the northern route 
across, which was a very bad mistake, and he wasn't very good at driving in snow and ice, so we 
were still taking shifts sleeping. And before I went to sleep for my four hour shift, I asked him to 
wake me up in case we got into the high country where there was a lot of ice on the road, and he 
promised to. And then I got in the back seat and went to sleep. And when I woke up, the car was 
sliding all around in the road. That's what woke me up. And when I opened my eyes, we was at 
11,000 elevation, and he was slipping from our side to the other [?man's?] side of the road on the 
ice, and the roads were so narrow, there was no shoulder that we could pull off on for me to take 
the wheel. So I was still hoping that we'd run into some place-- area where we could pull off the 
road. Meanwhile, we lost control of the car, and it slipped all the way from the bank side of the 
highway all the way across the other [?man's?] side, and slipped off backwards. And we went 
down a 300 foot [?cliff?]. First we turned head over heels twice, and then we hit a tree, and it 
turned us around so we rolled over and over on the side for five more times and landed on the 
bank of the Snake River. And I had fainted when we left the top, right? And when I came to, I 
was pinned down cross ways on the floor in the back-- back of the car with two great big rocks 
piled on the back of my legs. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:07:12 
Uh-huh. And we had garment bags. I was face down.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:07:17 
On the back of your legs or on top of your legs? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:07:19 
Page 36 of 47 
 
On top of my legs, because I was laying on some garment bags that had fallen from the back seat 
down on the floor, and the rock was on top of my legs. But by me being face down, it didn't 
break them, because it was on the back part of it. And motor was still going in the car, and the 
radiator was-- I mean, the radio was on, and I smelled gas. The minute I woke up, there was gas 
all over the place, because when we landed the first time on the back end, I guess we had 
ruptured the gas tank, and there was gas all over the place. So the first thing I can remember 
when I came to was yelling, "Shut the motor off!", because I knew the car would catch on fire, 
being from a family of mechanics. And he was still shook up. I guess he didn't realize that. He 
shut the motor off and the car didn't catch on fire. And we-- he came and got the rocks off of me, 
and we got out, and he made his way up that-- back up that 300 foot to the highway, and flagged 
down someone that went for help. And meanwhile, he came back and started yelling if I was OK. 
And he was so far up, I didn't understand him very well, and I thought he was telling me to come 
up. And I tried to climb back out like he did, and I got up about 25 feet from the ground. 
Couldn't go any further and couldn't come back, because I ran out of rocks to catch on to, and I 
was so cold at that time, because it was 20 below zero at that time. So I was so cold I couldn't 
even find the rocks that I climbed up on, so I was stuck on the side of that mountain for about 45 
minutes, scared to death that I was going to fall back down there and kill myself and couldn't go 
[?any further?]. But the rescue people, when they got there, they walked right up those sliding 
rocks, nothing to hang on to, caught me by the hand and kept walking, because I had no place to 
stand. So he just practically dragged me right up the sheer side of that-- those rocks right on up to 
the highway, scared to death. But at that time, I had long fingernails, so I had to sleep in gloves, 
because I was so nervous after going down that cliff, I'd wake up cutting my hands with my 
fingernails, hanging on to something, I suppose. But it took about three months before I was able 
to get under the wheel of a car again, because I was literally frightened to death every time I'd 
come up to a hill. So we had to stay in-- after in Wyoming. The rescue people took us into the 
city and took us to the hospital and checked us out. When we was OK, we got a hotel room, but 
in going down the mountain, my purse, it came open with all of our cash, and the wallet was lost 
in-- under those rocks. It took them four days to find it. They dug and dug through those rocks 
where the car came down. And we stayed in the hotel, they let us stay in the hotel, but we didn't 
have a red penny. Everything was under the rocks. They dug for four days, and when they found 
our wallet, they brought it back to us with every penny in it. And that way, we paid our hotel bill, 
and then we had to wait until they wired our money from the insurance company back in Detroit 
before we could buy another car to continue our trip. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:07:19 
Why didn't you take the train? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:10:54 
I wanted to, but he insisted that that would be wasted money, because at that time, gas was so 
much cheaper than transportation on the train. Because I was so nervous, I knew I couldn't drive, 
and he had already proved that he didn't drive too well in snow and ice, so I didn't want to ride in 
a car, but he was brave enough to put chains on the new car and drive from there to Seattle. We 
slipped a few times, but not very far, because we wore the chains every time we got to where 
there was the least bit of snow or ice. He would get out and put them on and then when we'd get 
to the flat end where there wasn't any, he'd get out and take them off again. So we survived. And 
then we had planned to arrive in Seattle about three days before Christmas, but with all the delay 
Page 37 of 47 
 
and everything, using the money and then waiting for that-- losing my wallet, and then waiting 
for the money to come from our insurance so we could buy another car, and we ended up getting 
in Seattle on the last day of '54 instead of before Christmas in '54. So then we moved in with his 
aunt. Then we stayed there for about two and a half or three months. Meanwhile, he got him a 
job on a-- as a seaman, and went out to sea.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:11:51 
What did he do [?on a?]...?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:13:12 
He usually cooked. And while he was gone, I found a-- because when-- before he would-- when 
he'd sign up on a ship, they would sign up to send me a check every two weeks. So meanwhile, I 
saved that check until I got a little extra money. Then I went out and found us an apartment while 
he was out to sea. So when we came back, we had our own place. Because I've gotten 
accustomed to living on my own. I didn't like living in anyone else's house. So [inaudible]-- 
since he came in for a little while and then he went back out to sea again, so I decided, since I 
had all this time on my hand, I could go out and get me a job, that way, we could save up to buy 
us a house a lot faster if I could get me a job, and then we could save out of his money and mine. 
So this way, we saved up, and at the next two years, we had saved up enough money to pay us a 
down payment on [inaudible] [?home?].  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:14:23 
OK, what kind of job did you do?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:14:25 
Well, I started cooking. I got a job in a nursing home, and I'd go to work at 6:00 in the morning 
and get off at 2:00 in the afternoon, and after a while, I had all this spare time on my hands, so I 
decided I'd take me some night classes. So I started the Edison School, it was called at that time. 
So I took typing and shorthand, and while he was out to sea at work in the mornings and then 
[inaudible] at night, then my class was always over about 8:00 or 8:30, then I had plenty of time 
to come home and get to bed and get enough sleep to get up and go back to my job in the 
morning. At first, used to have to work on weekends occasionally. And then after I got-- worked 
my way up to First Cook, then I could have the weekends off. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:14:25 
Well, were you working in a restaurant?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:15:34 
Rest home. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:15:35 
Rest home. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:15:36 
Rest home. I done the cooking. But at first, I started off I was an assistant cook. And then there 
was an older lady that was First Cook and she retired, and when she retired, I took over as First 
Page 38 of 47 
 
Cook. That way, I had my weekends free. I cooked [inaudible] then on the weekends, I had my 
weekends free. So we continued that. I never did complete my typing course, but I got 
[inaudible] good at it, shorthand.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:16:11 
So you never worked at [inaudible]?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:16:13 
No, I never worked at it, because I never completed it.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:16:21 
Well, did you like Seattle when you first came here? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:16:23 
Oh, boy, the idea of not having to wade through snow maybe four to six months out of the year 
was sheer pleasure for me. And our little snow would come and be gone in a couple of days. It 
was like summer year around, as far as I was concerned after Michigan. And even down in 
Mississippi, the snow was a lot more than it was... 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:16:49 
Didn't you come here a year, or during the years when they had some really bad snow [?or 
something?]?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:16:55 
Well, the next winter after I came in, the first-- the first winter I came-- I mean, the winter I came 
was OK, but the next year it was really bad. Everybody noticed us Seattle, what kind of snow 
that was. That [?bones?] killed a lot of the plants and things and that first winter was the only 
rough-- really rough winter that we had since I came here, and even that was a picnic compared 
to Michigan.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:17:27 
Michigan winters here are a lot harsher?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:17:29 
Right. From September through May, sometimes. You never knew when you'd wake up in the 
morning and find [?snow?] [inaudible]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:17:44 
This was the first time you'd ever-- I mean, you've lived in other cities from your relatives, but 
they still were fairly close. I mean, you know, they were still within 200 miles or so. So this was 
the first time you'd ever really been, what, 3000 miles away from your nearest relative. How did 
that feel to be so far away from them? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:18:03 
It never bothered me, because, as I said before, I'd gotten used to being on my own, and it never-
- I wasn't as attached to my people as I thought I would be. And once I got away from them, I 
Page 39 of 47 
 
learned to find friends and I'd write them and everything, keep in touch with them, and 
everything, find out what was going on. But other than that, it didn't bother me. I didn't mind 
being away from them. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:18:27 
Well, how close was the Black community here in Seattle? I mean, did you have a lot of Black 
friends that kind of took the place of your sisters and brothers, or was-- or is the Black 
community here in Seattle still pretty loose? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:18:40 
Well, nobody ever took the place of my sisters and brothers, but I had a couple of reasonably 
close friends. But I guess I never did have a lot of of friends. So long as I had two or three, I was 
perfectly happy. I never had to have a lot of friends. I guess, because it was such a big family 
when I was growing up, small groups of people was more appealing to me than big groups.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:19:15 
Well, how did you find the Black community here as compared to in Michigan? And Michigan, 
you were saying, that they had, you know, a low class section of town and then a middle class. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:19:28 
Well, here I found a little bit of that, but not as much because of the size of the city. It wasn't as 
compact as Detroit, and they had the slum, but the slum here is very small compared to the slum 
in Detroit and Chicago and other big cities. So there was areas that you didn't feel perfectly 
comfortable walking around in the afternoon-- evening, rather, once it got dark, you didn't feel 
too comfortable in some neighborhoods. So those neighborhoods you just stay away from. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:20:08 
What neighborhood would that be in [inaudible] Seattle?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:20:10 
Well, when I first came here, it was usually down on Jackson and down and around in there 
where they had a lot of nightclubs and things and a lot of rough people that was hanging around 
on the street corners and things like that. You just avoided that neighborhood, and unless you 
was going to one of the nightclubs with your husband or something. You didn't feel comfortable 
going down there by yourself. But if I wanted to go someplace when my husband was out at sea, 
I would go downtown to those restaurants where you-- where the-- when you walked out of 
them, it wasn't a bunch of people hanging around on the street so much.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:20:45 
So was this a fairly white area [?that you usually would?] go to downtown? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:20:45 
Yes, it was usually white areas. But if it was a Black band playing there, there was quite a few 
Black people on the inside, but they didn't-- the rough type didn't hang out outside, so you felt 
comfortable parking your car and walking to this place. 
 
Page 40 of 47 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:20:45 
So you could go places by yourself, then? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:21:05 
Yes, you could al-- well, you could always go places by yourself. In special clubs and things and 
parties and stuff like that, you didn't feel too comfortable, but if you [inaudible] you explained to 
your friends and went along with them so you didn't feel so isolated. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:21:30 
OK. Now, did you-- when you started working, did you ever expect that at some point in your 
life you would get married and not have to work anymore?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:21:43 
No, it never occurred to me. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:21:45 
Well, did most of the women in your family work all their lives? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:21:54 
Yes, until they reached retirement age. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:21:58 
OK, so you expected to always work in some capacity or other?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:22:02 
[?Yes.?] 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:22:03 
Well, when you married your husband, you really didn't have to work at that point. Is that right?  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:22:10 
No, if I was happy with just, you know, survival. He was making enough money to feed and 
clothe us, pay the rent, and what have you. But we wouldn't have been able to purchase anything, 
a house or anything [inaudible].  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:22:33 
So if you wanted to get ahead, then you would have to work.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:22:36 
Yes. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:22:37 
You really didn't have a lot of choice about that.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:22:41 
Page 41 of 47 
 
Well, I suppose so. If you wanted to get ahead, you'd have to work, but if you didn't, you could 
just [?sit around?], you know, and [?live?]. You wouldn't starve, but wouldn't prosper very much. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:22:55 
Well how did your husband feel about your working? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:22:58 
He accepted it.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:23:01 
So he didn't expect...  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:23:05 
No, he never expected me to stay home and just be your housewife. It was OK with him if I had, 
he wouldn't have complained or anything, but we never even discussed that before we were 
married. We never discussed that you would stay home all the time [inaudible]. Wrote him when 
he was out to sea, and told him that I got me a job, could save more money. He seemed perfectly 
happy, so. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:23:34 
So when he was out at sea, how long would he be gone?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:23:38 
Most of the time it was about two months or two and a half months, sometimes three, but they 
were sailing over three months at a time.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:23:47 
OK, and then he would be home for how long? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:23:50 
Oh, if he got off the ship when he came to town, then he'd be home from three weeks up to two 
months, and then he'd get his unemployment check started after about three weeks, and then he 
was-- we were living on about 1/4 the money that he made when he was out at sea. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:24:12 
So it was really helpful at those points that you were working. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:24:15 
Right, that way, I'd always have a [?constantly?] [inaudible] paycheck coming in all the time. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:24:20 
OK, when he was home from sea and and you were working, what kind of work did he do 
around the house then? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:24:28 
Page 42 of 47 
 
Very little. He'd help out if he had to. [Inaudible] I had to get up early and race to work or 
something, he'd get up and fix his breakfast and straighten up around the house. And then he'd 
usually go play pool or something with his friends or something. He'd go down to Union Hall 
first and see if it was a job in, and if not, he'd go play pool or something with his friends. And if 
it was no food, if he beat me home and it was no meat out of the freezer, he'd get it out and put it 
out. But usually he'd sit around and wait for me to come home to cook it.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:25:05 
[Inaudible] He didn't clean house, or...?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:25:07 
No, he'd help in the yard, but... He cleaned up after himself if he cooked or made a mess or 
something while I was gone, but not very much for [inaudible]. But he could. If I was ill or 
anything, he could wash, iron, what have you. He could do all of that. He only done it-- he only 
felt obligated to do it if I was ill. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:25:30 
Was that all right with you?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:25:33 
No, but I got tired of arguing about it. So it was easier to do it than to raise Cain and then do it, 
so I'd usually just do it. And if he was sitting around the house, when I came and started cooking, 
I'd asked him to help, he'd come and help. But he complained. So I'd get tired of him 
complaining, so rather than to be bothered and I'd just go on and do it. So he just complacent, 
thought that that was my job, even though his job-- my job is going to work, too.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:26:11 
So you have two jobs, [inaudible] you have to take care of the house, [inaudible] working. And 
he had one job. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:26:17 
Mm-hmm. And sometime no. He'd have no job at all when he was in, "on the beach" they call it. 
When he was in-- "on the beach", he'd go out and play cards or do something-- do whatever he 
wanted to do all day while I was at work. He didn't feel guilty about it. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:26:36 
[Inaudible.] 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:26:42 
OK, just before we turned off the tape, we were talking about the fact that your husband could go 
out and... Well, when he was in town, he would help you, but basically, the housework belonged 
to you in addition to whatever work you did outside of the home. So do you feel that you were 
oppressed as a woman?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:27:07 
Very much.  
Page 43 of 47 
 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:27:08 
Do you feel that you were oppressed as a Black woman, then, too?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:27:16 
Yes.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:27:17 
Well, which do you think had more effect in your life? Do you think that you were more 
oppressed as a woman or as a Black? Or do you think that those two can be separated?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:27:28 
It was equally binding. Being a woman, [inaudible]... Had disadvantages of being Black. I also 
had disadvantages, especially with my background. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:27:46 
OK, kind of the pattern I'm seeing -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- it seems like being a woman 
was confining in the home. I mean, you had to do more work than a man had to do in your home, 
but the oppression of being Black was external to your home. I mean, you could get away from 
the impression of being Black by going home, but then when you went home, you had the 
impression of being a woman there, still, even though you had it out in public too. Is that right?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:28:14 
Yes. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:28:15 
Yeah. Kind of a dumb question. It took longer than the answer [they laugh]. OK, um, do you see 
a lot of difference between the way your life went from, say, in the '30s and '40s when you were 
in the South than in Seattle? Is it a-- do you feel that it's a lot better now, or...?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:28:42 
Yes, it is considerably better because you make a decent wage, you have decent working hours, 
you don't have to work from sun to sun anymore. And then, when you work hard, you could 
always, if you are careful, you can always save a little bit. You don't have to work yourself to 
death nine months out of the year and barely survive the three months of winter just to get started 
over the next spring. So this way you can always accumulate a little bit. And you've got 
something to look forward to. It's not like that you know you got to do this year and do that next 
year. And as you work it, if you stay on a job, you move up the ladder a little bit. You get a little 
[inaudible] you can work a little less and earn more money. And then, if you really concentrate, 
you can get someplace in your job. And then you'd get raises every so often. That was something 
you seldom ever heard of down South. You could do the same job for 20 years, but nine times 
out of ten, you still got minimum-- less than minimum wage all the time, and you couldn't work 
your way up a ladder like you do on the standard jobs now. You didn't have no union behind 
you, number one. And you just sort of took whatever your employer gave you. You had no 
choice, and then when you was in a small place, if you walked out on one boss, the other one 
wouldn't hire you because they was all friends. So you had to sort of hang on to what job you 
Page 44 of 47 
 
had, because if you lost that one, or made him angry and he fired you, nobody else wouldn't hire 
you. So you was [inaudible]. It wasn't like the commercial jobs [inaudible]. Walk off of this job, 
and even if that guy was your good friend, if he had opening in his place, he would take you 
because he knew that you was a good employee. But down South, it was no such things of that, 
because if you'd done something to one guy, as far as they was concerned, you was 
unemployable. You didn't get no job any place else. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:31:08 
So the difference there in the opre-- you were obviously more completely repressed in the South 
in the '30 and '40s.  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:31:16 
And they all stuck together.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:31:18 
But part of that is from being in a small community, too, [?don't you think?]? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:31:22 
Yeah, small community. In every small town, everybody knows everybody else, because they all 
go to the same club, the same schools, and things like that. And in the big city-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:31:32 
So do you think that the opression is less in Seattle or different? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:31:40 
I think it's a lot less, because in Seattle, you got a chance. As long as you went in to work, you 
could always find a job.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:31:49 
Well, do you feel that you're still opressed as a Black woman in Seattle?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:31:52 
Right, as a woman, you're oppressed. [Inaudible] as a Black woman, you oppressed a little more. 
So that's something you have to learn to live with because [inaudible] [?better?].  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:32:08 
Is that how you coped with it all your life is just...? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:32:11 
No, I fight it every way I can, but... You can see it getting a little better, but it's not close to being 
right yet. Even with all of our battles and what have you, it's still one-sided. And maybe someday 
it will be equal, but so far-- 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:32:31 
Do you think in your lifetime that it will be? 
 
Page 45 of 47 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:32:33 
I don't know. If I live another 30 years, I might make it, but I don't think it'll be equal in any less 
time than that at the rate it's going now. I mean, something could come up that would speed up, 
but at the rate it's going now, it's been going on for 40-something years, and -- that I can 
remember. Of course, before that, I was a kid, so small, it didn't-- I-- didn't dawn on me what 
was happening, but since I've been an adult for the last 40-- 35-40 years. And it is getting better, 
but it's a long ways from being equal. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:33:13 
OK, do you-- you don't belong to any-- [tape cuts]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:33:17 
This is the Dorothy Turner interview, 5/11 of '83. Interview two, tape two, side two.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:33:30 
OK. When the last tape ended, I was just asking you if you belong to any organizations for Black 
women? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:33:40 
Yes, I do.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:33:41 
OK, are these organizations that are trying to create some kind of change in the position of Black 
women, or...? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:33:48 
Mostly just they assist the neighborhood and help guide the kids in the right direction. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:33:56 
So are these women trying to break down any stereotypes about Black women, or...?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:34:03 
Some of us is, and others are still rushing home to cook for their husband [inaudible] sitting 
around and [inaudible] years ago. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:34:14 
OK, so all-- the Black women that you're associated with -- and these would be middle aged 
women by now? 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:34:23 
They're not all thinking in terms of trying to liberate themselves from the oppression of women. 
Is that right?  
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:34:23 
Yes.  
 
Page 46 of 47 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:34:31 
Yeah. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:34:32 
Are they thinking more in terms of liberating themselves from the oppression of-- from racial 
oppression? Is that...? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:34:37 
Yes.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:34:37 
Yeah. So they think-- is it your feeling that in the Black community, women, especially, are 
more concerned with racial prejudice than anything else? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:34:51 
Right. Right.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:34:51 
And they feel that if they can get out from under that oppression, then everything will [crosstalk]. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:34:54 
Trying to break those barriers, [?and then?] some of us are fighting both at the same time, but 
others are perfectly content to be oppressed at home and [?go out?] there, but they still try to 
break down those racial barriers that they have to put up with.  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:35:09 
Yeah. Do you think those women, the ones that are not fighting the oppression, [inaudible] do 
you think that they are aware of it at all? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:35:20 
[Inaudible] they're aware of it, it's just they don't think they can do anything about it. [?It's going 
to be?] a long time. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:35:28 
[Inaudible] [?have to be like?] [inaudible]. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:35:31 
They've done it for so long, and they figure they've done it for this long, they can survive, but for 
some reason, they feel much more hostile about the [?nation?] than [inaudible]. I think the main 
thing is that they fightin' so hard for the racial thing, because they don't want their kids to have to 
put up with what they did. And they figure that their kids are more liberated than they are in the 
first place, and [inaudible] kids [inaudible]. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:36:05 
[Inaudible] change [inaudible]. 
 
Page 47 of 47 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:36:12 
[Inaudible.] 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:36:15 
[Inaudible.] 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:36:16 
Yes. 
 
Mary L. Rice  1:36:19 
OK, well, Do you have anything more that you want to say that... I think I asked you this already 
at the end of the last interview, but we'll do it again, since this is the last interview. Do you have 
anything else you want to say to posterity? 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:36:34 
I think I've said it [?just about all?].  
 
Mary L. Rice  1:36:37 
OK, well, thank you very much. 
 
Dorothy Mae Turner  1:36:40 
Very welcome. 