Lost Voices
Known to many people as "Mrs. Civil Rights of West Virginia," Memphis Tennessee Garrison was a leader of women in her community. As a welfare worker in McDowell County, she provided educational forums for women on hygiene and other topics. In addition, she organized women club representatives for Red Cross projects throughout the county. They would help in making things for needy children... they would help in cancer drives. The Red Cross also set up clinics for handicapped children in which women of the community volunteered. They would set up this big American Legion building... They would bring those children in there from on top of those mountains to that clinic. During World War II, Memphis organized other activities. I had the sewing room, I had the knitting classes where you would knit and sew sweaters for the soldiers.
Although women contributed in countless ways to their
community, peculiar attitudes toward them were evident in
the coal mining camps of McDowell County. The papers said I was the
best informed woman about the mines in the United
States... the best informed Negro woman. I was the best
informed of any kind of woman because the white women
weren't involved in the mines. They'd come down sometimes
and were taken in to see what the mines were like. There
was a superstition that for a woman to go in the mines
was bad luck and if one of those women would go in and
somebody would get hurt during that week afterwards, oh
then it would roll: 'Keep them women out of that mine,
they bring bad luck.'
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