Jane Tucker was born in Alabama in 1927. When her father left the family, Jane moved into her grandparents’ home in Lineville with her mother, Iris, and her sister, Betty. As a teenager Jane got a job making a dollar a day in a five and ten cent…

Born in 1919, Lorenzo Wallace grew up on Chestnut Street in Southwest Atlanta near the campus of Atlanta University. His father, Edward, attended Meharry Medical College and was one of the first black surgeons in Atlanta. His mother, Birdie, attended…

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1926, Herbert Kohn could trace his family’s lineage in the region back to the 1400s. His father, Leo, was a World War I veteran and worked in the leather business. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Kohn was…

Born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1940, Andre Kessler was not yet three when his father, Ladislas, was deported to a labor camp in Transnistria. Kessler and his mother, Olga, went into hiding from the Nazis in their own apartment. They were aided by the…

Born in Poland in 1922, Norbert Friedman grew up in a working-class family in Krakow. His father, Josef, was a kosher butcher, and his mother, Gusta, took care of Friedman and his younger brother. In 1935, Poland passed anti-Jewish laws, including…

Born in 1928, Tosia (Szechter) Schneider grew up in Horodenka, Poland, with her parents and younger brother, Julek. When the Second World War began in 1939, Schneider’s childhood came to a hasty end as the Soviets took control of her town. As the…

Jimmy Doi was born in California in 1925. He and his four older siblings were Nisei, first generation Americans born to parents who emigrated from Japan and ran a tomato farm in Oxnard, California. When Doi’s parents decided to return to Japan in…

Born into a family of sharecroppers in Chipley, Georgia, in 1924, Alton Cadenhead developed an early interest in engineering. He even attempted to harness energy from a creek that flowed near his home by installing a homemade paddle wheel. When the…

Born in 1918, Guy Gunter grew up the son of a policeman in the East Lake community of Atlanta. He graduated from Tech High School and studied electrical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He never graduated because he had already…

Born in Prichard, Alabama, in 1922, Hillard Pouncy moved into his grandparents’ home in Eufaula in 1930. They needed support around the house, and Pouncy’s parents decided he should be the one to help them. After his grandfather retired, Pouncy…

Tooken Cade was born Dolores Ann Moran in Detroit, Michigan, in 1924. After her parents divorced, she lived with her mother and an aunt. She attended St. Mary’s Academy in Windsor, Ontario, and during her freshman year at the University of Detroit,…

Louvinia Jordan was born on a farm in Ether, North Carolina, in 1922. She worked in the garden and took care of her family’s animals such as a guinea pig and a pet squirrel. Jordan’s father, Cornelius Vanderbilt Kerns, was a farmer and gifted…