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Susan Gardner and Lillian Gardner

From the Collection: Pain and Promise: Remembering the Fight for School Integration


In this recording, 98-year-old Lillian Gardner is interviewed by her daughter Susan Gardner about her long life and her experiences witnessing the breadth of the integration process and its aftermath. Lillian recalls her first experiences with segregation after moving from Indiana to Tennessee, and the frustration she felt as a white person in the Jim Crow South. She and Susan reflect on the ways in which Lillian’s life story captures enormous shifts in our nation’s history.

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