Interview with Donna Brault, History 150, spring 2025, Conducted by Lily Kroeger, March 7 2025

Overview to Social Change Interview- During this time period women didn’t have many rights. In the 1960s basic rights that we wouldn’t even think about now were not available then. These women’s pay was around 60% of what the male pay rate then was. Birth control was approved in 1960 and this changed a lot of things for women–over 80% of women used birth control after it was approved. This time was also apart of the feminist wave. In 1966 the National Organization for Women was created, this then opened more opportunities for women.

Biography– Donna Brault graduated high school at Lexington high school in MA and then attended Chamberlin Junior College. She was born on 6/25/50 and had two sisters growing up. Her parents divorced from a very early age and took care of her sisters. She worked an office job during this time and then got married at 18. Later on she moved to Duxbury MA and raised her family there and still lives there to this day. She had 2 daughters and 6 grandchildren.

grandmother 0:01
Okay, yes, okay. So my first year of college, I was living in Lexington, and, you know, I had a background of, you know, a rough family life. My mom was an alcoholic, and my mom left, and my father had to come in and take care of us, and nobody really helped me get into school, because the family was in turmoil. So I found a school in Boston called Chamberlain junior college that was very easy to get into. But my first year, I lived in Lexington, and I had to commute to Boston to go to school. So the difficult part of that was that I would have to walk about a half a mile to a bus stop and take a bus to what they called Arlington Street Station, and then I would switch from there and take another bus to Harvard Square. And from Harvard Square, I would take a train to Boston Park Street station and get off there, and then take either a trolley or a different train up to Boylston Street, which is where all the classrooms were. So that was my first year, and I had to be home in time for 330 to get my little sister home from school and get her off the bus by 330 so it was a very tough year and a tough commute, but I got through it my second year my parent, my father, had sold the house in Lexington and moved to downtown Boston, and I talked them into letting me live at the dorm, which was on Clarendon Street in near Commonwealth Ave. So that’s where my first dorm was my second year, and I lived at school that second year, and there was a lot of social things going on at the time. That was when Martin Luther King was assassinated, and we had just gone throughsegregation, where, you know, Boston was a very difficult city to segregate, and you know, went through all that. And also the Vietnam War was entering, was ending. So a lot of the girls at my school, there were boys too, but got involved in, you know, protests for the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King had been assassinated, and I had a very good friend who was working for a political candidate called Kevin White. And because I was friends with her, we kind of got, I got involved with, you know, helping to run his political campaign. So it was a really fun experience. So there was a lot of social change going on that was in 1968 and, you know, dormitory life was fun because I was right there on the corner of Clarendon and Commonwealth Ave, which is beautiful section of Boston. So you really got to enjoy, you know, the social life in Boston. And it was a, you know, very nice campus because it was right there on Comm Ave. And I also met your grandfather that year, and I spent a lot of time taking a bus up to new report to visit him and then back to school. And this was the old days where dormitories had the entrance on the first floor, and there was a dorm mother who sat there at the desk. And in those days, you weren’t allowed to be out overnight. You know, you had certain hours, and you had to be in the dormitory by 10 o’clock, and it was a girls dorm. Back in those days, it was just one sex dormitories. Do you have any questions?

lily Kroeger 3:56
about like, the rights? Were you ever like? Did you ever get like, stuck in any or like, were involved because of your friends?

grandmother 4:03
Well, most, yeah, most of them were on the common and one time, the Boston Public Library there was, which was very close walking distance. You know, we had walked over to see it was going on, because there were protests for the Vietnam War there. And, you know, you couldn’t help but get caught up in the crowds. And you know, I never picketed a sign or whatever, but you know, it was interesting to see the political movement. And I also witnessed near the old church there they had, you know, protests for when Martin Luther King was assassinated, it was a, you know, it was a city in turmoil then, because of the, you know, I mean, how to phrase it, desegregation, you know, when, and there was a lot of turmoil in in the city, because it was just. When the black community, you know, was beginning to have really basic rights. So was a very,you know, very disturbing time, lots going on.

lily Kroeger 5:18
Was high school like a lot different for youth in college, or was it like similar?

grandmother 5:23
Oh, it’s very, very different, very different. Lexington High School is where I graduated from. It was considered a very, very progressive school. We basically had, it was like a campus setting. They had built classrooms that were adjacent to the actual school. So like in college, you would walk from one building to another, which was unusual back then. And we had just my senior year, they had just started bussing in black students, what you kids used to call would call Metco now we had the first signs of desegregation by having, you know, these kids from the big cities were bused in. And so that was the first, you know, experience with, you know, desegregation in our school. And yeah, college was very different for me than high school. And, you know, just a different experience, you know, meeting new people and, yeah,

lily Kroeger 6:28
were there a lot of girls that, like, went to college with you? Or is it like, was it 50/50 or was it other percentages?

grandmother 6:35
No, I was definitely more girls than boys back, you know, when my graduated in 67 you know, I would say most everyone I knew went to what we used to call a secretarial school. I think it was Katherine Gibbs was a big name back then, and it was a school where you would go and learn typing and dictation, because that was really a field that, you know, a lot of women went into another popular choice. A couple of girls I knew in high school went to the dental force, that school, which was part of Tufts, where you would go and learn to be a dental hygienist. But most, three of my four friends went to Katherine Gibbs to learn to be a secretary. That’s what you know, basically you did. And other than that, some of the people I knew went to state teaching schools like Salem State, that was a big teaching school, and those are the most popular choices for schools back then.

lily Kroeger 7:38
Were there a lot of girls that went to your college?

grandmother 7:43
No, not. No one I knew went to my the little school that I went to, because, again, I didn’t have any support, you know, with any kind of college planning. And I had a really hard time junior and senior year emotionally, because my parents had divorced. So I had a hard time keeping my, you know, stuff together. So, you know, nobody really helped me with college planning. That wasn’t until I graduated that I had to on my own, find someplace that I could go to school. There was no planning. There was no, you know, writing of essays and, you know, real college planning. So I really kind of did this on my own after I graduated, and just found someplace that I could go. And even on my first day when you could get dropped off at college, my father had remarried, you know, Doris and they had decided to go away, so I had no one to take me to school and drop me off and get my things. Moved in. So my sister Ellen had taken the day off from work, you know, to get me dropped off. So there wasn’t a lot of, how can I put this any kind of family support. I was on my own

lily Kroeger 8:55
in your graduating class. Was there were was there more girls or guys, or was it equal?

grandmother 9:03
I would say pretty equal.

lily Kroeger 9:05
Okay,

grandmother 9:06
definitely pretty equal.

lily Kroeger 9:08
Um, during this time, there was a lot of like, feminist waves, did you? Did any of these things like, affect you? Like, like being able to get, like, credit cards and like birth control and stuff like that.

grandmother 9:22
Definitely, definitely women, when, at that point, were not allowed to get credit cards. You had to be married and had to be under your husband’s name, and birth control had just become legal. So it was the very early days of, you know that women’s movement very early. So no, women didn’t have credit cards. It was very hard to get birth control. And you know, it was just the beginning stages. There were very few women’s rights then,

lily Kroeger 9:56
I know you, you got married young, right?

grandmother 10:00
Very.Yep, very young.

lily Kroeger 10:01
Were there was that like normal or like, did other people around you get married around the same age as you?

grandmother 10:08
Um, I was probably on the young side, but not unheard of back then. You know, you did get married younger, and I don’t know what the rate was for college. And, you know, college acceptance back then, I, you know, I wasn’t, you know, into it, but, you know, again, it was 1967 and not everyone went to college. I lived in an affluent town, but even at that, not everyone went to college. A lot of the guys went in the service, and that was hard because Vietnam existed, so you really didn’t want to go in the service, unless, back then, they had the draft. So of course, you you know, could get drafted. So a lot of the boys went off to the service because of the draft.

lily Kroeger 11:02
Since it was a lot of feminism, like, during this time, were there like riots or like things that, like affected you with school wise?

grandmother 11:10
No, I did not see any riots for women’s rights, but I was well aware of it, and, you know, was supportive of it. I didn’t, you know, as I said, I saw a lot of protests regarding Vietnam and Martin Luther King, but there were not a lot of protests for the women’s right, not in Boston. I didn’t witness it, but I was aware of it. And you know, those rights were just beginning.

lily Kroeger 11:39
Um, did you get treated like differently because you were married versus like not married or

grandmother 11:45
No, no, no. I when I got married, I went right to work. Got, you know, a full time job because, you know, I was, was 67 so literally, I got married 1969 and I actually didn’t turn 19 until after I was married. So literally, I was married at 18, and then a week later, I turned 19, and we had our first apartment, and we had rent to pay, and we were entirely self sufficient, and, you know, pa, and I had to have a car and pay the bills and pay the rent, and we got full time jobs and we supported ourselves.

lily Kroeger 12:28
What was what Job was that?

grandmother 12:31
My first job was at a place called Newbury canning, and it was a an office job.

lily Kroeger 12:40
Was it like Secretary? Was it like that, or was it different,

grandmother 12:44
similar secretary and payroll and doing time cards, and we had the first, I guess you would call, not really a computer, per se, that you would know, but it actually had like a bookkeeping machine, so I did the payroll and time cards and that kind of thing and some invoicing.

lily Kroeger 13:11
What job did pa have?

grandmother 13:15
Pa had been in college. Did not grab graduate. He went to Bentley, and he was an A cost accountant, and his first job was at Sylvania, which was for being a cost accountant.

lily Kroeger 13:32
Since your mother, your parents were divorced, was there, like perceptions people had about them, or anything like that?

grandmother 13:40
Yes, yes. My senior year, there was a lot of perception divorce was very, very rare back then, and was one of those things people didn’t talk about. And my oldest sister, Ellen, was already married and gone, and I just had, you know, Lorna, who was nine years younger. And yeah, there was a lot of social we were kind of like outcasts. A lot of parents didn’t want their kids playing with us, because we were the divorced family, and plus, my mother had become an alcoholic. And really, basically, if you were to look at the circumstance, then it would be, you know, we would neglect it, and, you know, mistreated because she was a raging alcoholic and didn’t clean and didn’t feed us. It was a bad situation.

lily Kroeger 14:30
Did that affect your like, schooling?

grandmother 14:32
Like, Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah. I struggled my senior year, you know, because we had, you know, my mom was an alcoholic, and then she left, and my father came in and took care of us. It was very Yeah, it was very traumatic.

lily Kroeger 14:48
Since she was divorced. Did she have things like, did was she able to get a credit card before? Was that?

grandmother 14:54
No, no. Very different. Yeah, back then, women really were not treated fairly legally. It was hard to find a lawyer who would, you know, really fight for a woman back then, the men had all the power and all the money. Women didn’t work back then, and she really was left in a situation where she couldn’t afford to take care of us, because all she had for money was what, you know, my father gave her and back then, you know, there was no second car so, you know, and you had to be home for your kids. There was no place to get a job. So it was very limited for what she could do for herself, which is probably why she ended up letting my dad, you know, take over so she could go find a job and have a life to me, I understood, but my younger sister felt like she had been deserted.

lily Kroeger 15:52
Did your father get full custody of you?

grandmother 15:55
Yes, yep.

lily Kroeger 16:00
Did the like rules with credit cards and like, jobs and things like that? Did they like affect your like, day to day life after college? Or was it like different?

grandmother 16:14
Because, yeah, yes, yeah, it did. You know, everything was a more limited. You know, jobs for women, it was very limited what you could do. There weren’t a lot of options. You know, it was a man’s world. Definitely

lily Kroeger 16:33
okay. I think that’s it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Bibliography- Green, Caroline. “Campaigning against Women’s Rights? Britain’s Global Colonial Legacy in the Early UN Women’s Rights Agenda 1950–1962.” The International History Review, 29 Aug. 2024, pp. 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2024.2394134  Accessed 4 Oct. 2024  PEER REVIEWED 

BLAKEMORE, ERIN. “Women Faced Unchecked Discrimination in U.S. Schools—until Title IX.” History, 3 Mar. 2022, www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-history-and-legacy-of-title-ix 

Walsh, Kenneth. “The 1960s: A Decade of Change for Women.” US News & World Report, 12 Mar. 2010, www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/03/12/the-1960s-a-decade-of-change-for-women .

Research– Title IX revolutionized women’s rights as well. This was introduced in 1964 as a civil rights act. This included no segregation and banned discrimination from anything based on race, color, ethnicity and gender. Title IX mostly helped women in sports and in education. The year Title IX was introduced, the rate of women going to college rose to 41%, from years before that the average percent of women graduating college was nearly 20%. In 1965 President Lydon Johnson issued an order which enacted civil rights protections for government employees, but the problem was, it didn’t include gender in this.  While this was going on, the United Nations human rights agenda began to view these rights for women to be an issue for this act. The United Nations acted on these treaties including Conventions on the Political Rights of Women (1952), the Nationality of Married Women (1957) and the Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages (1962), these three acts were on the women’s rights agenda and pursued the way for rights during this time.

transcription process– I mostly used my guiding question but my interview also turned out to be more about my interviewees life and it was more story telling. My questions were based on how her schooling was and actions that happened during that time. But I changed some questions when she was talking about her life then. I had a couple of questions that asked about protests and laws then which were answered differently than I expected. My interviewee told a lot of stories and talked more than I expected which was informative to learn about. My interview was conducted over the phone, it was a phone call and I was able to record it on notes through the call. The audio turned out more clear than I anticipated as well. During the transcription process I listened to the audio while also reading it to make sure nothing overlapped or if the speaker during that time matched up to the audio. Otter Ai mostly got everything correct except the person talking so I had to reassign the speaker a few times. This transcript was clear and the guide helped me differentiate what the seeker was getting at and where it was supposed to be said. This transcript could help readers grasp the idea of what was going on with the ability to actually read it first hand while also listening.

follow up-

My grandmother and I talked after the interview and discussed what we talked about. She was happy how the interview turned out and thought she got all the points that were needed to really explain her story of this time. She did wish she got to talk more about her schooling as an individual but over all the interview hit all the targets that were meant to be talked about. I conducted this on a phone call on March 9th 2025.