Description
Italene Gaddis was born in 1925 in Sioux City, Iowa and grew up in Batesville, Arkansas and later Chicago. She worked in a spring factory right out of high school before taking a position at Chicago Molding and becoming involved in unionizing the factory. She later worked as a salesperson selling magazines for the Parents Institute. Gaddis wrote her first song as a young teenager, and in her later years returned to music and began writing and performing her own songs. In this interview, Gaddis discusses being raised to be tolerant and the effect that has had on her life, working during World War II, encountering racism and segregation in the southern US, the Civil Rights Movement and protesting the Vietnam War, and her musical career.