Interview with Margaret Back, January 16, 1991
Project: Appalachia: War On Poverty Oral History Project
Interview Summary
Margaret Back was raised in a boarding house in Harlan County, Kentucky and attended Cumberland College. She received a degree in education, but states that she did not enjoy teaching. She secured a job with the Kentucky Welfare Department, and mentions her first impressions of the VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) workers who she felt were insulting to the mountain people.Back later found a job working for a Head Start (KIP) program in Kentucky and recalls the problems that she encountered in this program, including the lack of training, lack of staff, and the mismanagement of money. She remembers some of the children that she worked with in the Head Start program and encountering child neglect and abuse for the first time. When the program in her county lost funding, she went to work for a Head Start program in DeKalb County, Georgia. This was an urban county and the children that attended the program were mostly African American. Back states that she did not live in the city, and she explains that she had a lot of trouble because she exposed middle class black families who were using the Head Start program as their babysitter. She eventually left the program and came back to Kentucky where she worked for the state.
Back is very supportive of the Head Start program as a whole. She describes the ways in which the program has helped children to learn, including her own two children. Margaret Back has worked as a social worker in Kentucky.
Interview Accession
Interviewee Name
Interviewer Name
Interview Date
Interview Rights
All rights to the interviews, including but not restricted to legal title, copyrights and literary property rights, have been transferred to the University of Kentucky Libraries.Interview Usage
Interviews may be reproduced with permission from Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries.Restriction
Interviews may be reproduced with permission from Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries.
All rights to the interviews, including but not restricted to legal title, copyrights and literary property rights, have been transferred to the University of Kentucky Libraries.
Add this interview to your cart in order to begin the process of requesting access to a copy of and/or permission to reproduce interview(s).
Back, Margaret Interview by Margaret Brown. 16 Jan. 1991. Lexington, KY: Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries.
Back, M. (1991, January 16). Interview by M. Brown. Appalachia: War On Poverty Oral History Project. Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington.
Back, Margaret, interview by Margaret Brown. January 16, 1991, Appalachia: War On Poverty Oral History Project, Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries.
You may come across language in UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center collections and online resources that you find harmful or offensive. SCRC collects materials from different cultures and time periods to preserve and make available the historical record. These materials document the time period when they were created and the view of their creator. As a result, some may demonstrate racist and offensive views that do not reflect the values of UK Libraries.
If you find description with problematic language that you think SCRC should review, please contact us at SCRC@uky.edu.
Persistent Link for this Record: https://kentuckyoralhistory.org/ark:/16417/xt7s4m91b87m