Grace Hensley

Born in Henry County, Tennessee, in 1899, Mrs. Hensley first moved to Fulton, Tennessee, where she and her husband farmed until 1948. "Farming got to the place where you couldn' t make nothing. After World War II they began putting all the land into pasture." So she and her family moved to Champaign when one of her sons got a job in a body shop with a war buddy. From 1948 until her retirement in 1968 Mrs. Hensley did
housework to help support her family. She is happy "that I raised six children and never had any problem out of them. They all have professions."

Source: Raymond Bial's In All My Years: Portraits of Older Blacks In Champaign-Urbana, Champaign County Historical Museum, 1983.