Kentucky 7

Listen to Kentucky 7, a 52-year-old woman from Louisville, Kentucky, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 52

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1948

PLACE OF BIRTH: Louisville, Kentucky

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: African-American

OCCUPATION: university student

EDUCATION: some university

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS: N/A

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject has a modest, working-class background.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Rinda Frye

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 22/04/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

When I was a little girl, I grew up in the Shepherd’s Square Projects, uh, Louisville, Kentucky. And it wasn’t all segregated at the time. I went to black schools; I went to, uh, the community center. That was my favorite part of the living in the projects because living there, you know, I learned how to — in the center, we had cooking schools, we had sewing classes, we had the choir, we had skating, we had everything that could keep you in that community where we were supposed to stay anyway. So, it was all right growing up there, and I loved that. It was Grace Presbyterian Center. That’s where I spent my entire evening, in that center. And I learned to sing, I learned to sew, I learned to cook, and I learned to play, and I learned to have fun. And I attended Booker T. Washington. That was from the first th’u the sixth grade. And it set right beside Jackson Junior High School, which is now Meyzeek, and it’s integrated now, but when I went it was just an all-black school. An’ I went there one year, and that was, uh, sixth or seventh grade, and then we had to leave the projects because my mother got sick. She caught, uh, tuberculosis. So we moved with my grandmother for a whole year, which was a whole move from the east end. I don’t know if you would call it the west end, but we was at 24 Vincesne [spelling?]. She was running a boarding home that she was buyin’, so she rented out rooms. So we moved in with her, and my mother went to the sanitarium, Hazelwood Sanitarium, to stay for a year, n’ we stayed with my grandmother. There I went to Madison Junior High School, which is now part of C. Russell, and it was an all-black school. I didn’t care for that school too much; it was rowdy, really rowdy. So I sort of stayed to myself. And when my mother came out of the hospital, she went into, uh, LPN training, to become a nurse, and we moved over on Cedar Street, and I started into Central High School. Life really begin to pick up then, but it was still segregated; we still was all black, but my mother was makin’ better money, and we bought a home: 1523 Beach, and, uh, that was the best time of my life.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Chris Olmstead and Sandra Lindberg

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/04/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
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• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

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