Gertrude Carter
Interviewee: Gertrude Carter
Interviewer: Reginald Houston
Date of Interview: 24 April 2002
Length of Interview: ~45 minutes
Gertrude Carter grew up in the Bronx, New York, during the Depression. As a light-skinned, fair-haired black girl she had an interesting experience growing up with darker-skinned foster parents. She and two other siblings lived with a foster family, which became her adopted family, but her oldest sister continued to live with their mother in the city. She talks about the difficulties that her mother and her sister encountered, like bread lines and soup kitchens. She credits Franklin Roosevelt and especially his wife Eleanor for helping people and ending the Depression. Though the welfare system was started at this time, Ms. Carter has a negative view of it because she says that it made people lazy and generation after generation came to rely on it. In this interview, she tells of her school days. She went to a large public school that she says was very good “because it was predominately Jewish.” She maintained a high enough average to attend the high school where she says she was one of only about ten black students—“but everyone got along.” She also talks about playing with her friends and doing things with them around the city. Ms. Carter tells some very funny stories about trying to smoke and hiding it from her parents and another story about beating up a girlfriend of hers that shoplifted. After discussing her life through the Depression, she talks about Pearl Harbor and rationing throughout the war. Ms. Carter also describes what New York was like at the time including Harlem and the Harlem riot during World War II. She worked at a military uniform factory during and after the war to save money for college, which she attended in Alabama. The rest of the interview touches on things that happened after the war, including her time at college, but are very interesting. She discusses experiencing segregation for the first time in Alabama and returning to the North before graduating from college. This interview is excellent. Though Ms. Carter’s release forms are missing from the file and her background information is not available, there is a personal letter from her allowing for the interview to take place.