Where We Worked

Minnie Ola Shipp - Ace Hardware Corporation

Retired with 20 years of service. She was the first black woman to work at Ace Hardware and she endured racism but God took her through it.

Her Story: Minnie Ola Shipp was the first back woman to work at Ace Hardware Corporation on Hwy 138 down from Sweetheart Plastics. In 1964, she started as a maid on a trial basis and had to clean the entire building from the front office to the warehouse as well as maintain the cafeteria. For those of you that know the location it is a massive building. The white men were very devious to the point of spreading their feces on the bathroom doors and walls for her to clean. She soon went into the office to complain and their vp had the doors taken off the hinges to shame and degrade them as they tried to do mother. She also had to burn all the trash so she would pick a day and sit outside all day burning trash. She joined the union which the white women kept telling her not to do. It is not good to join even though they were members. When a job came open pulling orders she bid for it and had the seniority to win the job. Then she went on to be the first to be a checker which was their quality control checking people's orders to make sure they were right before shipping to the stores. The employees at first did not want this black woman reviewing their work but things settled and they found that mother was actually saving their jobs because the errors were identified and corrected. Some of those same people had reading difficulty that they did not want anyone to know. When my sister Virginia had her first child, mother had put in weeks ahead that she needed to be off to go to S.C.. Her immediate manager told her on the day she was scheduled to leave that she could not go. If she left she would not have a job when she came back. She went in to their vp and he told her she could go. It had been approved. To say the least her immediate manager was not happy and tried his best to get her back through trivial stuff. Just before she was to retire in 1989, she had hurt her knee and was in physical therapy. She could work but was to be on lite duty. She was told if she could not do the job don't come to work so she went home. She put in for her retirement and the front office told her she was shy some number of days to officially retire. This meant she would not get her retirement pension. She had to get a lawyer and go to a hearing. She had in her possession copies of her time cards some of which the office had "mysteriously" misplaced. She won her case and received her retirement pin and pension. They hired 3 people to replace her; Annie Mae Baynes our cousin for the cafeteria; a white woman for the office; and a white man for the warehouse. While she was there she taught people how to read; she taught them how to support one another when someone was sick or going through something; she taught them how to get along with people that were different from them. I think she got the last laugh as the saying goes. The same people that tried to prevent her from getting her retirement ended up not getting their retirement. Ace Hardware decided to move to Gainesville and did not take very many current employees with them so those left behind did not get to retire and therefore no pension. The picture is of mother receiving an award.

Submitted by Norma Shipp to the Black Heritage of Rockdale County Facebook page.

Retirement Gathering with family and friends