Lost Voices
Memphis Tennessee Garrison lived in the coal fields of McDowell County, West Virginia, most of her life. In the mines, she worked in order to provide the black miners and their families with a sense of black culture and heritage. For twelve years I brought upstanding people from around the country. She helped to educate these blacks and to give them a sense of identity in an attempt to promote their lives. Memphis helped organize the April 9th celebration in the coal mines which was a celebration for the black race.
She worked for the coal mine for over twelve years entrenched in the labor situation, yet she was not working towards the unionization of the unions as Mother Jones did at the time. She tried to alleviate the inequality that the blacks were experiencing due to their race. The blacks were used as strike breakers because they provided a cheap source of labor. The negro was unskilled, just out of slavery for forty or fifty years and he had nothing. Everybody was poor.
He learned to
survive. Then he learned to be comfortable surviving.
Then he learned how to attain while surviving. Then he
learned to boss what he had attained while surviving. It
was an evolution for him, from nothingness, from want,
from ignorance, on up to where he could stand as a man. The region, the coal mines in which
Memphis grew up provided her with a rural life, a life
surrounded by the white minds behind the coal companies.
Biography | Race | Gender | Family | Education and Career | Effect on Community