ANDRE HITCHCOCK - ORAL HISTORY PROJECT 1
Andre Hitchcock Oral History Project University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
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Introduction Mrs. Edwina Calloway is a sharp and energetic sixty-eight year old married African American woman who is a neighbor of mine. She is originally born in Chattanooga, Tennessee living and spending all her life here with the exception of college, where she holds a postgraduate degree from Tennessee State University. Career wise, she retired from being a guidance counselor for over 30 years and still is an active member of a sorority. She is a mother of two daughters who reside outside of Tennessee and is a proud grandmother of four grandchildren. Socioeconomic Status/Family Mrs. Calloway says she grew up poor, yet happy. She says her parents were very nurturing and but also huge disciplinary figures. She mentions getting in trouble and getting belt whippings were her most frightening childhood experiences. She lived in a three-bedroom small house and shared a room with her younger brother up until she when off to college. She always loved being the oldest sibling and wanting to set a good example for her younger brother and sisters. Mrs. Calloway noted how Christmas was always her favorite holiday as a child, yet gifts were not always present due to the family's financial instability. Her father did not have a strong presence in her life growing up due to traveling but he was there whenever she needed him. She connected with her mother more. She also mentions her family was very small and close knit not many cousins, aunts and uncles. Teenage Years Growing up 50's, Mrs. Calloway was a part of the baby boomers era. Her father was in the air force and traveled all over the world before meeting her mother and settling in Chattanooga. Mrs. Calloway mentioned she had a content childhood. Her parents kept her and
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their three other kids sheltered a lot from the outside as much as possible until school started. Segregation had a huge impact on her, she says. Although her parents always instilled her with the upmost confidence in her abilities to do anything she put her mind to, Mrs. Calloway still felt inferior to her white counter parts. Classmates would openly make fun of her hair, call her names, and boys would throw things at her. She told me she always loved school and appreciated the value in education but found it very difficult to deal with other students and teachers. She would come home crying to her parents but they would continually tell her things would get better, and they did as her life progressed. As a teenager, Mrs. Calloway grew very fond of track and field in school. She was a great sprinter and won many accolades for her athletic talent. Adulthood/Education During her 20's, Mrs. Calloway's recalls this period as some the best years of her life. She was in college at Tennessee State University, a member of sorority, and away from home. She said she missed her family but was ready for adulthood and a career in teaching. Going to college was something that was very important to her. After receiving her undergrad in secondary education, she went on the complete a master's degree in counseling from the same school. Mrs. Calloway is the first member of her immediate family to attend college and highlighted her dedication for education and breaking the cycle by raising her college educated daughters to aspire to the same accomplishments. Religion Mrs. Calloway was raise in a Christian religious background with a Baptist denomination. She sung in the choir at all black church here in Chattanooga, which currently, is no longer in service. She has always been a faithful member of church service, attends every Sunday and Wednesday nights bible study and is an active part of her church community. She
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holds her religion as a high priority in her life, much more now than ever before since she has gotten older. Southern Culture Mrs. Calloway describes meeting her husband in organic fashion. They meet in church one Sunday morning while she was attending school in Nashville. She mentioned back then the importance of getting married and the pressure her and her friends went through because their families and the African American culture in the South at the time. She says, "That was the thing to do in the 70's. You have to get married, you have to have children, and you have to live in a nice house. All these things made women like me growing up during the 70's desire to those standards because that what were suppose to do. Things are different nowadays. Marriage is not as important like it use to be back in the day. Many independent women do well without having a man. Society has changed." Mrs. Calloway did follow the cultural African American southern trends she grew accustom to. She does not regret it though. She is still happily married to the man she meet in church thirty-eight years ago and married for thirty-six years. Adulthood/Struggles The hardest thing Mrs. Calloway had to endure was the death of her parents and the guilty feeling placing her mother in a nursing home. He father passed away in 2001 of pancreatic cancer and her mother developed Alzheimer's disease and passed away as well. Mrs. Calloway and her younger sister cared for their mother many years ago and remember witnessing signs of their mother struggling to remember things like how to prepare a sandwich. Mrs. Calloway said it was the most painful thing to witness her mother losing gradually her cognitive abilities. Once it reached, its peaked doctors suggested she should place her mother in a nursing home with routine supervision. Mrs. Calloway accounts her religion to helping her cope with her loses. She
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fears that she is also a risk of developing Alzheimer's disease because of its hereditary nature and does not want to live in a nursing home but is optimistic about it because she takes care of herself with exercising and watching her food intake and believes in the progression of modern medicine. Personal/Professional Reflection Mrs. Calloway's interview has taught me a lot about the aging population. She has single handedly dismantle my stigmas and bias regarding the elderly population. I never thought I could learn much more than wisdom from an older adult. Because my grandparents were decease before I was born, I did not get the chance to experience them, as I would have liked. Until then I always believed that elderly people do not retain their mental intelligence, as they age, which stemmed from what I would see from personal experiences out in the community. The need for geriatrics in this country is growing at alarming numbers. People are taking better care of themselves, medical advances are becoming more assessable, and the elderly population is getting well-deserved respect and recognition than ever before. Geriatric social work comprises on the welfare of the elderly, their families, and communities. Geriatric social workers coordinate care for individuals who need a number of services and will, over a period of months and years, require care at different levels over the course of their lives. The profession aims to seek out resolutions for older adults that address personal, social, and environmental challenges that come with aging all with the goal of enhancing their quality of life. Professionals in the field will utilize biopsychosocial assessments to understand mental health, cultural barriers, physical and organizational challenges faced by an elderly person. These professionals are also using their expertise to recognize differences between normal and abnormal behaviors and aging processes to refer patients to medical
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professionals. It is important to note that geriatrics assist elder adults who have very active lives as well like the population of parenting roles where grandparents raise their grandkids. Geriatrics is the future of much needed social workers in a board field yet filled with multiple areas that desperately need focus.
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Questions 1. What was life like for you as a child? 2. What were parents like? 3. Do you have any brothers or sisters? 4. What do you remember most about being a teenager? 5. What was the atmosphere like in your home? 6. Who were you closest to in your family? 7. What was life like for you in your 20s and 30s? 8. Are you married? 9. What were some of the difficulties/struggles you had to deal with during your adult life? 10. Are there things that you have come to value over the years? 11. What do you fear as you consider the future? 12. How did cultural aspects play a role in your life? 13. What are your fears age you begin to think about aging more? 14. What are your religious views? 15. What is the highest level of education you have received?
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Timeline
The year Edwina Calloway was born 1/23/1947 is the same year when legendary baseball player Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play in the Major Baseball League. In the year 1957, nine African American students attended Little Rock Central High School during segregation, which sparked the famous Brown vs. Board of Education. Mrs. Calloway was just ten years old. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. Many states still banned those laws with Mississippi up until recently was the last state to abolish them. Mrs. Calloway was 20 years old In 1977, the groundbreaking novel Roots won Alex Haley the writer, a Pulitzer Prize when Mrs. Calloway was 30 years old In 1987, Aretha Franklin got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when Mrs. Calloway was 40 years old. In 1997, Between 300,000 and 500,000 women marched in Philadelphia to participate in the Million Woman March. In 2007, Tony Dungy became the first Black head coach to win a Super Bowl title
