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Interview with Rosa Summer Vines Joyner Noel (b. 12/17/1922) as part of the Nash County Cultural Center Oral History Project (the first 30:27 of the audio is a separate interview with Rosa’s husband, Charlie Noel, which is not included in the transcript). Noel, a Black woman and one of 9 children in her family, talks about being raised on her aunt’s farm after her mother died when she was 4 years old. She speaks about Southern cooking; describing her cooking methods for pork, collard greens, and chitterlings. She discusses going to Mount Olive School and Bethlehem School during segregation; mentions having to walk to school while white students rode buses; says white students threw things at them from the buses. She also describes what students took for lunch, as the schools had no cafeterias at the time. Noel left school at 15 or 16 in order to make money working in tobacco fields. She used the money to purchase material; learned to sew and made her own clothes, without the use of patterns, based on what she saw in the department stores in town. Noel discusses her first husband, Jesse Joyner, who died from cancer when their daughter was just 13 months old. A year later she married Charlie Noel; speaks about helping him raise 5 children from a previous marriage. She mentions that she works as a nanny for a lawyer named Charles T. Lane; speaks on the difficulties her children faced while trying to find teaching jobs in NC once they finished college. Noel reflects on being in a tobacco packing house when Hurricane Hazel struck; says a tree fell on their house and the storm tore the roof from a barn. She gives detailed instructions on making lye soap, talks about working in tobacco fields, picking cotton, and gardening. Noel remembers Christmas celebrations as a child; talks about her aunt and uncle taking in and caring for a large number of children.

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