EDITORS NOTE: This report was first published in The Green Wave Gazette, Abington, Mass., High School’s student-run newspaper and was referred to The Meridian Star by tutor and adviser Jim Dorman. 

Inspired by the novel “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett, which describes the treatment of African-American maids by their white female employers in a fictional story set in Jackson, Miss., students sought someone who lived through the 1950s and 1960s in the south and did similar work to talk about her experiences.

They found Ann Barry, 85, who lived, worked and raised a family while living in Boston for 42 years, but who is originally from Toomsuba, Miss. Their account follows:

Born Ann Robinson, Ann Barry was the second child of her father’s second wife.

She married at 19, and had her first child not long after that. She eventually had six more children who have given her 14 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. At different times, she also lived in St. Louis, Alabama and Cleveland before settling in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston for 42 years. She now lives in Jacksonville, Fla. with her granddaughter.

Despite the turbulent times of Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, she has many good memories, especially about her school, the Stevenson Vocational High School, in Meridian. She recalled a teacher, Ida Thornton, and principal, M.E. Hannah.

“I had a lot of fun there, and I had no problems with anybody,” Mrs. Barry said. “The principal and the teachers were behind you. They built you up (and encouraged) you to do the things you should be doing. I enjoyed being in Mississippi.”

Her mother worked at a knitting mill, and her father was a farmer. Because of this, the poverty of the area didn’t affect them as much, she said.

“We didn’t have to worry about things to eat. We always had meat and my mother used to have a garden full of everything; greens and anything she wanted to cook,” Mrs. Barry said.

She acknowledged, however, that some of her schoolmates may have had a different experience, and might not have had parents that were as supportive and dedicated as hers.

“We had praying parents,” Mrs. Barry said. “They were religious people. They gave you a foundation to stand on, and some children didn’t have that. (Some parents) were alcoholics, or ‘good time Charlie bells,’ that didn’t go to church or do anything substantial. Some people had it real hard because they didn’t know how to do things for themselves. It was hard. You have to have a good foundation; you have got to have something to fall back on (when life is hard).”

If you were struggling, however, neighbors were there to help.

“Whoever needed something, they knew they could come and get if from you. (If people were in need) you would stop and help your neighbor,” Mrs. Barry said.

Grandfather a slave

Mrs. Barry has seen a lot of change. While growing up, she was close to her grandfather Andrew Young, a former slave who was sold on the chopping block at 5-years-old to a “mistress” in Mississippi. He lived to be 96. 

“He was my mother’s father,” Mrs. Barry said. “I knew him very well. He was some man. Oh, wow! He had power.”

She lived in the south during segregation and the civil rights movement, and knew how dangerous life could be for African Americans in Mississippi. Mrs. Barry lived close to several civil rights crimes committed in her home state, including the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money in 1955, the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers by a white supremacist in Jackson in 1963, and the murder of three civil rights workers, by the Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County, on their way home from a voting rights meeting in 1964. 

“They killed a lot of people,” Mrs. Barry said.

From an early age, she learned to live with segregation and racial injustice. 

“You knew what you could do and what you couldn’t do. You were taught that. A black boy had to be home by sundown. When it started being dark, (he) better be in the house, because sometimes, they (the police) would just pick at you. You didn’t have to be doing anything,” Mrs. Barry said. “You had to sit in the back of the bus, and if there wasn’t a seat, you had to stand up and hold on the best you could. It didn’t matter how many seats there were in the front. You could put your money in the slot next to the driver, but then you had go around to the back door of the bus. It was ‘the segregation.’ There were things you didn’t do, and if you did, you knew it was trouble.” 

Domestic employment

Like the women depicted in “The Help,” Mrs. Barry performed domestic work. She found jobs through “word of mouth,” working for a family for a time, and they would recommend her to their friends who were looking for a maid. 

“You did everything, all the cleaning, the washing, the ironing, the sweeping and the mopping; and you would take care of the kids if you had to,” Mrs. Barry said. “You worked in these homes, and you worked by the week. You got $2 a day. You worked sun-up to sundown, and, that’s all you got – $2 a day.”

But, unlike the maids in “The Help,” she didn’t feel stuck in any one job. 

“If I was displeased with how you treated me, I just didn’t go back,” Mrs. Barry said. “I didn’t say anything because you didn’t speak to someone like that. You could get in trouble; they might call somebody in that might do something mean or hurtful to you.” 

Change didn’t come to Mississippi and other parts of the south until more and more African Americans could vote. Mrs. Barry did her part to help by driving people to the polls.

“I drove so many people that didn’t have transportation,” she said. But, at the polls, she saw people who could not read or write being asked to read the Constitution. “That was just to keep them from voting.”

And, then they closed the polls early. So, no one could vote. “I had to load people up and take them home,” she said. “There were a lot of things that happened.” 

But, eventually, she and others did get to vote. “I voted for President Kennedy,” Mrs. Barry said.

Problems in Boston

In the mid 1960s she moved to Boston and raised more children, but race relations were not perfect there either. While living in Dorchester, near Blue Hill Avenue, she says she could feel the tension in the air. 

“I can’t explain it to you, but it was there. The taint was in the air,” Mrs. Barry said. “I was in Boston when Martin Luther King got shot and James Brown came to Boston to help quiet things down. But, it was rough. I was there (in 1967) when they tore up Blue Hill Avenue, and when they burned the stores, people were afraid and they moved out. The place was destroyed. There was a lot of racial stuff that went on, just like now. This (country) could be the loveliest place to live in if people just didn’t have so much hate. And, it’s not just one race, it’s in everybody” 

Mrs. Barry said she was glad to finally see a black president when President Obama was elected in 2008.

“I was happy. I really was. I knew it would come. I didn’t know when, but I knew it would come,” Mrs. Barry said. “I think it went well. It went over smooth. They always fought against him, but it’s all right. The fight is over.”

If there is one piece of advice that Mrs. Barry would like to pass on it is the importance of faith and prayer.

“The only thing we need to do is pray. But, so many people feel like they don’t need to. A few people can’t carry the whole load,” she said.

Mrs. Barry said she believes there is still much to be done. She said that civil rights have come a long way but not far enough. But, as for her own life, she looks back on her experiences with joy and nostalgia, and not with regret. She has lived a life fraught with adversity, but she continues to look to the future with hope and optimism.

Abington High School is located in Abington, Mass. about 20 miles south of Boston. Read the Green Wave Gazette at www.greenwavegazette.org.