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Nan Orrock oral history interview, December 16, 2006

 Item — othertype: Oral History
Identifier: OrrockN_20061216

Scope and Contents

Interviewed by Janet Paulk. Nan Orrock begins by talking about her early life in Abingdon, Virginia, and about the early lives of her parents in the rural south. She discusses how an aunt, who worked on Capitol Hill, was an early influence on her life. She graduated from Mary Washington College, where she had become active for racial justice. Orrock states that attending the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a watershed moment in her life, as it led her to work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in its Atlanta office. She worked on a program for SNCC called the Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS), which informed her of the level of violence that civil rights activists were facing in places like Greenwood, Mississippi and Albany, Georgia. She helped form the Virginia Student Civil Rights Committee, and was active in the Southern Student Organizing Committee in which she met her first Husband Gene Guerrero. Orrock speaks about the role of religious organizations in the civil rights movement and the shift by many activists from civil rights to the anti-war movement. She reveals how her interest in country music led her to become involved in labor activism.

Dates

  • Creation: December 16, 2006

Creator

Restriction on Access

Oral history available for research.

Biographical Note

Nan Orrock (1943-) served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1987 to 2006, when she jumped to the Georgia State Senate.

Extent

2 item(s) (audio (2:19:11 duration) transcript (69 pages))

Language of Materials

From the Collection: English

Repository Details

Part of the Special Collections Repository

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