By Georgia, July 9, 2014 — I was born in Gulfport, Mississippi. My momma had 15 kids and she taught all of us how to take care of ourselves. The houses we had had bricks underneath and planks that you could see through the side. We didn’t have windows, we had shutters. We didn’t have lights, we had oil lamps. And when we washed clothes, we used tin tubs. We had one to wash, one to rinse, and one to soak your clothes in. We had outside toilets, and inside night pots. And every summer, my dad made a new hole in the ground to make outside toilets. We grew our own food. We had cows, pigs, chickens and made our own butter.
I came up to Seattle to help my mom take care of my aunt when she was sick. I went to school up here. In the summertime, we went out to the South Center to pick beans, corn, strawberries and tomatoes to make money to buy our own school clothes. When I got older, I left home and got married. I had two kids.
Then, after the years went by, my brother passed away, one of my sisters passed away, one of my aunts passed away, and my dad passed away. After they passed away, my other brother and sisters and I got closer because we only had each other.