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Legacies Project Oral History: Katherine Dawkins
Katherine Dawkins was born in 1932 in the Black Bottom neighborhood in Detroit. She had two children as a teenager, and recalls how that impacted her relationships with friends and family. She married her second husband, James Dawkins, in 1963. She has held various jobs, including switchboard operator at the Gotham Hotel and customer service representative at Harper Recreation Bowling Alley and Henry Ford Hospital. Late in life, Dawkins was inspired to return to school and she received her GED at age 79.
Katherine Dawkins was interviewed in partnership with the Museum of African American History of Detroit and Y Arts Detroit in 2010 as part of the Legacies Project.
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Legacies Project Oral History: George Ramsey
George Ramsey was born 1938 and grew up on East Warren Avenue in Detroit. He remembers experiencing the Detroit Race Riot of 1943 as a young child and the Detroit Riot of 1967 as an adult. He attended Northeastern High School with classmates who became famous Motown singers. Ramsey served in the United States Air Force and USPS before becoming a road manager for a Motown recording group in the late 1960s. He worked for Motown music producer Lamont Dozier in California in the 1970s.
George Ramsey was interviewed in partnership with the Museum of African American History of Detroit and Y Arts Detroit in 2010 as part of the Legacies Project.
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Legacies Project Oral History: Fred Lang
Ernst Frederick “Fred” Lang was born in 1916 in Detroit and grew up on Van Dyke Avenue. As a young man he played ragtime and jazz piano in Detroit speakeasies. He attended the University of Michigan LSA and the Medical School. After graduating in 1941, he married his longtime sweetheart, Virginia, and they raised four children. Lang was a radiologist at Harper Hospital in Detroit for 40 years and served as editor of the American Journal of Radiology. He passed away on September 26, 2014.
Fred Lang was interviewed as part of an internship at Applied Safety and Ergonomics in Ann Arbor in 2008 as part of the Legacies Project.
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AACHM Oral History: Paul Edwin Wasson
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Paul Edwin Wasson was born September 8, 1923, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After leaving school in the tenth grade, Mr. Wasson joined the United States Army at the beginning of World War II. In 1943, Mr. Wasson left the Army and came to Detroit. Arriving on the heels of the Detroit Riots, he decided to head west to Ypsilanti. Mr. Wasson marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s; worked at the University of Michigan Hospital for seventeen years, and is most proud of his children. He encourages all young people to get an education.