I got my first job when my husband Stanley was in the Air Force, the black Air Force. He was stationed at Tuskegee. My very first job was there. When I came home I didn’t work. When my first child was born I stayed home. I didn’t go back to work until we moved out here.

Twenty years after I left Tuskegee they were looking for a librarian but I just did not want to work. My youngest child was only about one or two years old. But they were desperate for someone to work one night a week and a Sunday afternoon. I could do that because I wouldn’t have to pay the babysitter.

So I told them: “OK I will join.”

And I stayed for 38 years. I worked at the Sunnyvale public library. When I was a librarian at Tuskegee I made $127.00 a month. When I started at Sunnyvale I made $3.50 an hour. Two of us started at the same time, another librarrian and I, and we got such little money that we forgot to get our checks!

Finally they called us up and asked us to please come over to the finance office and pick up our checks. You would work for seven hours and make twenty or $21.00. What’s that? Finally when we had three checks sitting there they asked us to please come and get them.