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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶
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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶

Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: Faith and Foodways in Alabama

ORAL HISTORY

Lucy Heidorn

County Line Church

Lucy Heidorn is a retired English teacher and a life-long Sacred Harp singer. Born in 1936, Heidorn grew up in Sayre, a small mining community in Jefferson County, Alabama. As a child, she attended weekly singings with her family. Singing runs deep in her family heritage. Heidorn remembers leading her first Sacred Harp song at the age of three. Every Saturday her family worked together to prepare dishes they would bring to the singing. Sundays were spent at all-day singings and dinner on the ground, often at their local church in Jefferson County.

After attending college in Florence, Alabama, Heidorn and her husband settled in the Muscle Shoals area where they both worked in the public school system. Heidorn still attends the annual Reid Memorial Singing, named in honor of her family, at County Line Church in Corner, Alabama.

Date of interview:
2019-09-25

Interviewer:
Michelle Little

Photographer:
Cary Norton

Download Transcript

“

“You rarely would go to a singing that there weren't a lot of fried pies because people- as I said, they took to singings whatever they ate at home and that’s what we ate.” - Lucy Heidorn

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