This oral history interview with Ethel Fernandez was conducted in Hudson, NY at the adult home where she lives. Ethel will be turning 100 years old on Tuesday June 11, 2013. Some of the topics covered were: growing up in Hudson, relations between people of different races and nationalities in neighborhoods and schools, some the jobs she had held including being a maid, the “Atlanta Castle” where it seems that she and her family worked, the Depression, and the changing attitudes of young people now. Many of the questions were asked by writing them down as Ethel was hard of hearing.
I was born in 1981 into a bi-racial family in Long Island, NY, and have lived in Brooklyn for the past 10 years. I work as work as the Project Director of a community organizing and urban agriculture project in Brooklyn, and am interested in oral history’s capacity to capture and amplify the stories of people whose lives are often not viewed as remarkable, but I believe, are. Within this I am especially interested in the stories of low-income people and families and people of color. This was the first formal oral history I ever conducted.
Oral history is an iterative process. In keeping with oral history values of anti-fixity, interviewees will have an opportunity to add, annotate and reflect upon their lives and interviews in perpetuity. Talking back to the archive is a form of “shared authority.”