Oral history interview with Doretta, 1981

Biographical Note

Doretta was born in Harlem, New York City on September 27, 1919. She graduated junior high in 1935 and dropped out of high school after one year. She got married to a teenage sweetheart in 1937. The marriage lasted a year, but they remained friendly until he died in 1949. Doretta spent many years manufacturing umbrellas, a stable union job. In 1943, she was incarcerated for six months in the Women's House of Detention for a dispute that others had at her apartment. Charges were dismissed. Her introduction to heroin happened at the age of twenty-nine, after she was laid off from the umbrella work. A neighbor introduced her; she started due to curiosity. She moved to Norfolk, Virginia in 1953. After being arrested for selling drugs, Doretta served two years before returning to New York City in 1957. She worked a variety of jobs after returning to New York, including as a live-in domestic worker, umbrella manufacturing again, and as a receptionist at Gold Star. By 1970, Doretta joined a methadone program. She married again later in life. Doretta was interviewed for the project that led to the book Addicts Who Survived. The name is likely a pseudonym for the project

Scope and Contents

Doretta begin the interview by discussing her youth in Harlem in New York City, her education, her family history, and her parents' lives and employment. Doretta describes her first encounter with the criminal justice system and her experience in Women’s House of Detention in 1943. Doretta discusses her employment in the umbrella manufacturing, including nature of work, union, and coworkers. She describes her first experience with heroin, obtained from a hustling acquaintance who lived in her building. She describes moving to Norfolk, Virginia, her jobs there as a cleaner and a drug dealer, and her incarceration for two years for dealing. She describes work as a housekeeper in Great Neck, and returning to umbrella manufacturing after that. She describes the variance in drug use she had during different eras in her life and various aspects of her drug use. She discusses different attempts to get off heroin including multiple visits to the Bernstein Institute and her methadone maintenance at the time of the interview

Subjects

• Doretta--Interviews.
• Drug abuse--United States--History--20th century.
• Drug addicts--Rehabilitation--United States.
• Drug addicts--United States.
• Drug dealers--United States.
• Drug traffic--United States--History--20th century.
• Heroin abuse--United States--History--20th century.
• Imprisonment--United States.
• Interviews.
• Joseph, Herman, 1931- interviewer.
• Methadone maintenance--United States--History--20th century.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Umbrella industry--United States.

Access Conditions

Copyright by David Courtwright