Izetta HallIzetta Hall was born in Louisiana. Her mother was a sharecropper and she had nine siblings. Ms. Hall remembers working long day-shifts for white landowners as a child to make money. During harvesting seasons, she worked in the fields from seven in the morning till five in the evening with a one-hour break. When she was twelve or thirteen years old, her mother told her that she would have to leave home after she finished school. At the age of seventeen, Izetta was put on a bus, that brought her to Milwaukee, where she lived with her older sister until she could afford her own apartment. She arrived in Milwaukee on Christmas Eve and by January 8, she had started working.
Her younger siblings, two girls and three boys, chose the military after leaving home. One is still serving, and the others have retired after more than twenty years of service. Her siblings live around the country doing various jobs related to their military training. Ms. Hall has lived in the Sherman Park neighborhood since 1979. Before moving to Sherman Park, she resided in an apartment on the 2400 block on First Street. Ms. Hall worked on a variety of jobs. Her career started in Wauwatosa, where she worked for about a year until getting laid off. She remembers enjoying her next job as a substitute guard for the City of Milwaukee because she could talk to people from different backgrounds and cultures and learn more about the city from them. Ms. Hall purchased her own home when she began to work at Briggs & Stratton, a Wisconsin-based engine manufacturing company. She is a steward of her home, taking good care of the building. In 2002, there was a devastating fire in her home, and she had to rebuild much of her residence. As a homeowner, Ms. Hall hopes to see an increase in homeownership in the community because she feels that such a trend will bring more stability and respect to the neighborhood. Now retired, Ms. Hall helps out low-income to middle-class income people in her church with their taxes and finances. She is also a secret angel for children. She has been foster parent to four children. She tries to instill values of self-respect into local youth so they can go out and be respectful other members of society. |
The childhood
The work
The reason for moving Milwaukee
The change of life
Her life growing up to a sharecropper mother
Her views on what children need
Stories about some of her children\the problems with fostering
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