Natalie Collins

In this recording, Natalie Collins is the guest being interviewed by her adult child. She is asked about her life living in Southern California, to which she talks about being in a large family and how schools were segregated and integrated. She also speaks about the dairy farm her family had, which was run by her father to support his family. She then talks about how her parents separated and explains how living between parents changed the way she and her siblings attended school. After a brief discussion of how her mother preferred ice boxes to fridges and the friends from her childhood, Collins talks about going to churches different in denominations and then about the racism in her time. In her own words, Collins never experienced racism in extreme events other than being called names, rarely, and segregation in the movie theater. However, her father was very much active in that discussion for racial equality. Once she was older, Collins explains she worked in house cleaning and looking after children and later attended college. She went to Tuskegee University to study business and, after coming home, married her future husband, the father of the interviewer. The recording ends with a discussion of her wedding in Las Vegas.