Born in 1942, Barbara Freeman Cooper grew up in the Fort Hill Homes housing project on Lemon Street in Marietta, Georgia. She attended Lemon Street Elementary School and Lemon Street High School. After graduation, Cooper attended Tuskegee Institute, married, and moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught in the District of Columbia Public Schools system for over 30 years. After retirement Cooper returned to Georgia and eventually settled in Austell.

Born in 1940, Eartha Bryant Head grew up in the Fort Hill Homes housing project on Lemon Street in Marietta, Georgia. She attended Lemon Street Elementary School and Lemon Street High School. After graduation, Head trained as a Licensed Practical Nurse at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and worked one year at Marietta’s Kennestone Hospital before starting nursing school at University Hospital in Augusta, Georgia. She returned to Kennestone in 1964 and began work in the segregated psychiatric ward. She is still working as a Registered Nurse over 50 years later.

Listen to the audio recording of their oral history interview.