Ruth Minor
And I tell my children often, I said, thank God I knew how to eat beans. I thank God that I came up on what they say, the rough side of the mountain. Because, you just don’t cave in when something happens, you know how to ride out the storm. And I said people that have come up in the soft winter night. That’s why during the Depression you saw people jumpin’ out the windows and all that. Well, you ain’t see no Black people jumpin’ out the windows. We ain’t had anything to begin with (laughs) and hey, this is normal everyday living. And we knew how to eat chicken feet and the backs and the necks of the chicken, and in other words, we knew how to make due with little or nothing. When you have nothing, you don’t have anywhere to go, it’s just everyday life. But, we were happy. We had one another. And so, we knew how to survive.
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Ruth Minor was born in Chester and grew up in a family of 13 children. She left Chester in 1968, but returned twenty-five years later when her sister became ill. Although her sister passed right before she returned to Chester, Mrs. Minor has remained in Chester with a strong conviction that there was a reason for her to come back. She is currently earning a masters degree in Organizational Leadership at Eastern University, and she also serves as the President of the Resident Council of the Chatham Estate Senior Village. Although most of her neighbors at the village are much older, she says that she enjoys being around older people because she is always learning from them.
Interviewed by Sable Mensah in March, 2009
Courtesy of Ruth Minor (right side)