Corder, Rose Frazier

Interview 215a : In this interview with Jonathan Gerland and Richard Donovan, sisters Rose Frazier Corder, Wilhelmenia Frazier Hardy, and Arverta Frazier Mosely reminisce about their lives growing up in the southern Angelina County African American settlement of Boykin Settlement in the middle of the 20th century. They all attended the Vernon County Line School (near the Blue Hole) and then went on to have professions and higher education. Mrs. Mosely attended Prairie View College and became a teacher at Camp Nancy and then spent the rest of her career as a County Home Demonstration Agent or County Extension Agent. At first the office was segregated and she only worked with African American women, but in the 1960's and 1970's the offices were racially integrated and she taught all women to can and freeze food and other domestic skills. Mrs. Hardy moved to Houston and then Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her husband, where she attended cosmetology school and real estate school. She talks about the differences in culture and race relations in Milwaukee than in Houston and Boykin Settlement. Mrs. Corder moved to Milwaukee as a teenager to live with her sister Wilhelmenia, where she adapted to life in a school of 3000 students. She continued her education and became a nurse in Milwaukee and California, before returning to Lufkin. The Frazier sisters grew up in this African American community in a family of 13 children that all survived to adulthood. Their ancestors, the Runnels, were former slaves who settled in the area.