AAHP 309 Jocelyn Carter Ingram African American History Project (AAHP) Interviewed by Marna Weston on June 10, 2013 55 Minutes | 40 Pages
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Joel Buchanan Archive of African American History: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/ohfb Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz 241 Pugh Hall PO Box 115215 Gainesville, FL 32611 (352) 392-7168 https://oral.history.ufl.edu AAHP 309 Jocelyn Carter Ingram African American History Project (AAHP) Interviewed by Marna Weston on June 10, 2013 55 minutes | 40 pages Abstract: Jocelyn Carter Ingram was born in St. Petersburg, Florida and was raised in Gainesville, Florida. She tells about her journey through segregation across Florida. She gives detailed accounts of staples in the Gainesville community like 5th Avenue, Lincoln High School, and her time at Santa Fe. After receiving her Associates Degree, Jocelyn completed a nursing degree in Tallahassee at the Florida A&M. She tells about her dislike of University of Florida’s treatment of African Americans, gives commentary on the Trayvon Martin trial, and her concerns with the racial equity and Black advancement across the nation. Keywords: [Sante Fe College; Florida A&M University; Nursing; Black America; Lincoln High School, Gainesville, Florida; Desegregation] For information on terms of use of this interview, please see the SPOHP Creative Commons license at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AfricanAmericanOralHistory. AAHP 309 Interviewee: Jocelyn Carter Ingram Interviewer: Marna Weston Date: June 10, 2013 W: This is Marna Weston from the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program on June 10th, 2013. I’m interviewing Jocelyn Mauritia Carter Ingram. Ms. Carter, if you prefer, thank you very much for allowing me to come here to do this interview with you today. C: Thank you very much. W: Could you please state and spell your first and last name just for the transcriber gonna be able to get that. C: Okay you say Jocelyn. I say JOHCELYN. J-O-C-E-L-Y-N. Carter, C-A-R-T-E-R. Ingram I-N-G-R-A-M. W: So that’s me being country with the Jocelyn because I have a cousin Jocelyn in North Carolina. C: Well I always said my name was Jocelyn but one day somebody asked what my name was and I told them. My father was standing behind me. “That’s not your name. I named you Jocelyn so your name is Jocelyn.” I said, “Here from now my name is not Johcelyn, it’s Jocelyn.” So that’s how I got the name Jocelyn, sir. W: Okay. When and where were you born? C: I born St. Petersburg, Florida, 1955. W: Okay can you give the date please? C: December 9th, 1955. W: Okay, were you born at a hospital? Was it a mid-wife? C: Hospital. W: Okay what hospital were you born in? AAHP 309; Ingram; Page 2 C: All I know it’s in St. Petersburg. I can’t think of the name right now. W: Okay, who were your mother and father? C: Marie Davis and Wyatt Carter. W: Do you know their birth dates? C: My mother birthday is September the 13th, 1935. Yeah and my daddy birthday was June 11, 1929. W: Are either of them still living? C: My mother still living. My father died. He was sixty-eight years old. W: I’m very sorry for your loss. That’s young. Where does your mother live? C: In Gainesville, Florida. W: Okay and is she still sharp? Has all her faculties? Maybe can do one of these interviews? C: Yes. Oh yes she’s a very—oh my Lord, she do better than me. [Laughter] Yes. W: Who were your mother’s mother and father? C: Lillibelle Davis and Obi Davis and I never met my mother or my grandfather, our mother’s father, and my father’s mother died when he was like a childbirth so we never met his mother either and I never met his father. W: Do you know their names? C: Unh-uh. W: On either side. Let’s start with your mother’s parents, do you know where they were from? How they came to this area? C: Well my mother, I don’t know. She met my grandfather. He’s half Cherokee and half White, and we never met any of his people at all. So that’s we really wanted AAHP 309; Ingram; Page 3 to do. We really want to do a family tree but so far the only person who I’ve met just my grandfather on my mother’s side and on my father’s side he wasn’t here. I don’t even know their names. W: Where are those folks on your mother’s side from? C: Montgomery, Alabama. They’re from Alabama. W: Okay and do you have brothers and sisters? Could you mention them from oldest to youngest please? C: I have a sister names Cynthia. She’s about our—I say she about four years younger than me. She’s from St. Petersburg, Florida. She’s my half-sister from my daddy’s side. W: Are you the eldest? C: I’m the third oldest. W: Third oldest okay. C: Yeah and then I have a sister Yvette from my mother and father. Yvette Hart and she’s in Atlanta, Georgia right now. And she has two kids and then me. I’m the second oldest. And then the third oldest is Margaret and Margaret has three boys. And right now one, he has his doctorate in criminal justice and he’s working on that. And then one of them just got in school for sociology and one’s in school now in North Carolina. And then Caroline, Caroline had three kids. One was in school in North Carolina. She has a daughter here that working at Shands. Also she’s a cosmetologist. Her baby daughter graduated last year, just had a baby and she’s trying to get into cosmetology school. Caroline come Donna. Donna is—we went to nursing school together at Florida A&M University. She had a boy AAHP 309; Ingram; Page 4 and a girl. Her daughter just graduated from Florida A&M School of Pharmacy. She’ll be a doctor in pharmacy next year because she doing internship now. Her baby son, AC starts, he just got a full ride to the University of Florida in engineering, bio-med engineering. W: That’s the one with robotics you were telling me about before? C: Yeah he starts in August of this year. And then the last one is Junior, my brother. He has Shante [Phone goes off]. W: Okay, it’s you. C: Could you stop that? Give me a minute. W: Of course. Okay and its back. C: Okay. W: Is that your brother who was outside painting right now? C: No no, that’s Dred. Dred is a person that, he the jack-of-all trade. He had been in foster home all his life. People treated him wrong all his life. When he met my mother, he fell in love with my mother. And now they do a barter system. He don’t really have money. He’s something like a homeless person, but he paints the [inaudible 5:32] for my mom. He do stuff around the house for my mom. That’s how he pay his way and he like come through every so many months because he from Jamaica. He come through, we have a list for him and now he’s painting inside and outside the house. That’s how he pays his way which is good because that’s expensive. W: Yeah that’s nice. It is expensive. C: Okay so that’s my way of, her giving back too. Because then that way he don’t AAHP 309; Ingram; Page 5 shuffling and we feed him. From him doing it everybody’s happy. Like my mom right now she’s getting at the age now. She seventy-eight years old. She need people to take her back and forth to the doctor and stuff like that. He’s the ideal person to do stuff like that because my thing is I’m just getting back to Gainesville. See I’m going through changes with my nursing so right now everything working out fine. W: So kind of like extended family, like a cousin? C: He’s extended family. No, no, he’s not a cousin. He’s an extended family. Been with my mom for years. W: Okay. C: And we just look out for him like family. Getting back to my brother Junior, he got Shante and little David. Then he remarried like ten years now to another one. Her name is Sherry, Sherry Carter. So other than that, that’s my family. W: Okay terrific, terrific. So now what is your earliest memory of education? C: Well. My earliest memory of education to me is when I found it was very important. I went to Florida State one day just sitting on the campus walk around. Really just in a lot of trouble here. You know like this day and age we hanging out with the wrong kind of people and fuck it’s okay. I feel it’s okay to live like that, but then I wanted more because the house that we grew up in my father build up to it twice fold, he passed. but now since there’s more room for us I always wanted space because that close ear. Because during the time when we moved out here, my brother was the first child to be born in Lincoln Estate and these houses were going for like fourteen to eighteen thousand dollars.