Mitchell, Libby Oral History Interview Nicholas Christie
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Bates College SCARAB Edmund S. Muskie Oral History Collection Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library 8-3-2001 Mitchell, Libby oral history interview Nicholas Christie Follow this and additional works at: http://scarab.bates.edu/muskie_oh Recommended Citation Christie, Nicholas, "Mitchell, Libby oral history interview" (2001). Edmund S. Muskie Oral History Collection. 277. http://scarab.bates.edu/muskie_oh/277 This Oral History is brought to you for free and open access by the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library at SCARAB. It has been accepted for inclusion in Edmund S. Muskie Oral History Collection by an authorized administrator of SCARAB. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Interview with Libby Mitchell by Nicholas Christie Summary Sheet and Transcript Interviewee Mitchell, Libby Interviewer Christie, Nicholas Date August 3, 2001 Place Portland, Maine ID Number MOH 309 Use Restrictions © Bates College. This transcript is provided for individual Research Purposes Only ; for all other uses, including publication, reproduction and quotation beyond fair use, permission must be obtained in writing from: The Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, Bates College, 70 Campus Avenue, Lewiston, Maine 04240-6018. Biographical Note Libby Mitchell was born in Gaffney, South Carolina in 1940. She did her undergraduate studies at Furman University and attended graduate school at the University of North Carolina. She moved to Maine with her husband in 1971 and taught English as a Second Language (ESL). Libby was elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 1974 and served until 1984. From 1986 to 1990 she was Director of the Maine Housing Authority. She returned to the Maine House of Representatives in 1990 and served until 1998, becoming the first woman Speaker of the House in 1996. At the time of this interview, she was a Public Policy Fellow at the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service in Portland, Maine. In 2007, she was the Majority Leader in the Maine Senate. Scope and Content Note Interview includes discussions of: family and educational background; Maine Legislature; women in politics; the League of Women Voters; Equal Rights Amendment; education in Maine; Ken Curtis; “Maine Matters” TV show; and Muskie lobster bakes. Indexed Names Allen, Tom Baker, Christina Beliveau, Severin Bradford, Peter Brennan, Joseph E. Cohen, William S. Curtis, Kenneth M., 1931- Cutler, Eliot Danton, Peter Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 Farenthal, Sissy Flanagan, David Johnson, Robert Wood Lipez, Kermit Martin, Antoinette “Toni” Martin, John Miller, Zel Mitchell, Charles Mitchell, George J. (George John), 1933- Mitchell, Jim Mitchell, Libby Muskie, Edmund S., 1914-1996 Muskie, Jane Gray Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994 Paradis, Judy Redford, Robert Riley, Trish Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962 Smith, Margaret Chase, 1897-1995 Snowe, Olympia J. (Olympia Jean), 1947- Stevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing), 1900-1965 Wathen, Daniel Wexler, Bart Transcript Nick Christie: This is Nick Christie, interviewer for the Edmund S. Muskie Oral History Project, and here with Libby Mitchell on August 3 rd , 2001 at her office at the law school of the University of Southern Maine in Portland. Ms. Mitchell, would you please state and spell your full name? Libby Mitchell: My full name is Elizabeth H. Mitchell, M-I-T-C-H-E-L-L, and just for the record, even though we're in the law school building, this is the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service and, named after him. And I am a Public Policy Fellow at the Muskie School. NC: And where and when were you born? LM: I was born in South Carolina in 1940. NC: And you grew up there? LM: I grew up in South Carolina, went to college at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, to graduate school University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. My husband and I came to Maine in 1971, he came to work for then Governor Ken Curtis and we had intended to stay for a year. And that was in 1971, and we still live in the same house that we moved into in '71, we fell in love with Maine. NC: Now, what was the name of the town in South Carolina you grew up in? LM: Gaffney, G-A-F-F-N-E-Y. NC: Was that a large -? LM: No, a small community right on Interstate 85 near Charlotte, North Carolina, right on Interstate 85. NC: Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up there? LM: It was a small textile town, to tell you the truth, and most people worked for the textile mill or in the peach orchards. Not a lot of other industry or business, the nearest large communities were Charlotte, North Carolina, or Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina. So it was a farming community as well. It was racially mixed; in fact my sister was a teacher there at the time they did a complete integration and she helped preside over a peaceful integration in most schools. My father ran a very small grocery store, and my own grandfather was a legislator from South Carolina. But the irony is my mother had never even told me that until I was elected to the Maine State Legislature in 1974, it just never, she never thought that was a very big deal and never talked about it. And of course he was, he died before I was born so I never knew him. But all, my grandfather was the sheriff there, elected position, had relatives who were sheriffs. So quite frankly, as a child, I would go down to the park on election night and wait for the election returns to come in for the sheriff and other city officials. And I thought this was a terrific life, you know, it was quite exciting, you had the cotton candy, the hot dogs, the vote tallies were coming in, they were chalking them up on a board. So my family was always interested in politics. Only the grandfather that I didn't know about was elected to politics, except for the sheriff; I guess that was elected, too. It was a different kind of politics, they never thought of it as that, and certainly not the women. But I brought that background with me when I moved to Maine, even though, again, I wasn't aware that I would ever exercise that background. It just happened. NC: Now, what was your family's political background? LM: My father and mother were both Democratic. My father was an active precinct worker, a poll worker; he liked to help out on Election Day. He would carry the, back then you would cast, they would literally hand carry locked ballot boxes from a voting precinct over to a central counting place, and he would be one of the observers, and loved to be involved in that. In fact was involved in that until the last day of his life. In fact, the last election he participated in, he went into the hospital immediately after that and, very important to him. And yet, it was not what he did for a living. He was a, had a small grocery store and was a salesman, a traveling salesman. NC: Did you find that the ideals of the Democratic Party were openly discussed in your household, or not really? LM: Not as such, but more in terms of being responsible for your neighbors. I know that he certainly made sure that people in the community who couldn't pay their grocery bills got food. It was just this sense, and of course they were fans of the New Deal but not of Eleanor Roosevelt, because my parents were born at the time when integration was not easily accepted and so they became very uncomfortable about that. But they always voted Democratic to the point that I remember the, my best friend who was the daughter of the owner of the textile mill, in the fifth grade we were having a Stevenson-Eisenhower debate. And of course I remember wearing that Adlai Stevenson button, didn't know why, but certainly my parents wore those and the owners of the textile mill had the Eisenhower buttons. We began to know early on that there was a little bit of money involved, and which side, so we felt very comfortable with the Democratic working people. NC: Now, you mentioned both mills and integration. Now coming to Maine, and in some ways I can see why it must have been a very familiar landscape in terms of the mills, but in other ways, in terms of the social issues - LM: They were different. NC: Very different. What struck you when you first came to Maine? LM: I think your insights are excellent. The transition was not as great as had I moved here from New York City. I came from a semi agrarian, rural, small town background and moved to a small town in Maine called Vassalboro. And in terms of the racial issue, I think my husband and I have felt guilty our entire lives because we did not stay to help deal with the problems. That we came rather where there were at least no issues of color that were visible, even though we quickly learned there were other issues that separated people by race and ethnicity. We didn't see that at first because where I lived everybody was white, Anglo-Sa-, sorry, that was the wind blowing the door closed, it was not an exclamation point. But, I mean, I think that that's a burden, I think, that people who grew up in the south among my generation.