Esmont Oral History Project

Interview of Jettie F. Gardner-Hardy
by Bernie Jones and Deva Woodley on August 14, 2001.

Jettie F. Gardner-Hardy was born in Esmont on January 6, 1918, one of eight children (see her sister's interview, Ruth Brooks). Her mother, who sewed all the children's clothes, did laundry work for a local white woman and her father farmed on the family's twenty or thirty acres. Most of Gardner-Hardy's relatives lived in Esmont and nearby Keene, but her Aunt Sadie lived in Maryland and she went to live with her in 1935, staying for fifteen years and working in a restaurant. She also spent about twenty years in Philadelphia before returning to live in Esmont. As children, Gardner-Hardy and her siblings ventured into Charlottesville seldom, although they did have an aunt who lived there and they traveled to the Albemarle Training School to compete in sports. Gardner-Hardy describes the schoolhouse in Esmont, the church revivals, and the Baptist Training Union for youth. She tells of her father's accident at the slate quarry that damaged his left leg permanently, and how that affected his opportunities for work. She names some of the midwives and doctors in her childhood community, as well as neighbors generally. Gardner-Hardy remembers not being able to try things on in Charlottesville stores and that black patients, including her father, were relegated to the basement of the segregated University of Virginia Hospital.

Listen to the Interview (36 minutes long):     28.8K     56.6K     Other

Read the transcription of the interview

Esmont Oral History Project: Building Digital Communities, Race and Place: African American Community History, Albemarle County, Virginia. Prepared by the Virginia Center for Digital History, Charlottesville, VA, 2001-2002.