10/01/2026
Oseola McCarty: The Woman Who Washed Clothes for 75 Years and Gave Away Her Fortune
In a small home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, a young girl once dreamed of becoming a nurse.
Instead, life took her somewhere she never expected.
She became a washerwoman.
For 75 years, Oseola McCarty washed, scrubbed, starched, ironed and folded other people's clothes. She never became wealthy in the conventional sense. She never owned a car. She rarely traveled. She lived simply and spent cautiously.
But by the time she was 87, the quiet woman who had spent most of her life washing other people's clothes had accumulated enough savings to make a gift that would touch thousands of lives.
She gave 60 percent of her savings to the University of Southern Mississippi to help students who could not afford an education.
Her story would eventually inspire one of America's wealthiest men to give away $1 billion.
This is the remarkable story of Oseola McCarty.
A Girl Who Learned to Save
Oseola McCarty was born on March 7, 1908, in Shubuta, Mississippi, and grew up in Hattiesburg in a household filled with women.
Her mother, grandmother and aunt supported the family by cooking, cleaning and taking in laundry.
At just eight years old, Oseola joined them.
After school, she would help with the ironing. The little money she earned went into her doll buggy.
But Oseola was already learning something that would shape the rest of her life: save what you earn.
She eventually began taking her money to First Mississippi National Bank by herself.
She later recalled that she did not even tell her mother and the other women in the family that she was going.
A bank teller advised her to open a savings account.
"I didn't know," she later said. "I just kept on saving."
She had no sophisticated investment strategy.
No financial adviser.
No elaborate plan.
She simply saved.
And she kept saving.
The Dream That Never Happened
Oseola wanted to become a nurse.
But her education ended in the sixth grade.
Her aunt, who had no children, returned home from the hospital unable to walk. Someone had to take care of her, and Oseola stepped into that responsibility.
Her classmates continued with their lives while she remained at home.
"All my classmates had gone off and left me, so I didn't go back," she later explained.
Instead, she washed and ironed clothes.
And she kept doing it.
For decades.
75 Years of Wash Day
Washing clothes was not easy work in Oseola's time.
There were no modern conveniences to make the job effortless.
She would build a fire beneath a wash pot, soak the clothes, wash them, boil them and scrub them by hand.
Then she would rinse them, starch them and hang them on a clothesline that stretched about 100 feet.
The ironing continued into the evening, sometimes until 11 p.m.
She once tried an automatic washing machine and dryer in the 1960s.
She did not like them.
The washing machine, she said, "didn't rinse enough," while the dryer turned white clothes yellow.
The machines were eventually removed.
Oseola went back to her scrub board.
Her customers included families whose laundry she had washed for generations.
In her early years, she charged between $1.50 and $2 for a bundle.
Her work was so meticulous that some customers kept clothes she had washed simply because they admired how well she had cared for them.
One businessman wrote about a friend who still had shirts Oseola had cleaned two years earlier. He did not intend to wear them. He simply took them out occasionally to admire them.
That was the kind of work she produced.
A Simple Life Built on Sacrifice
Oseola never owned a car.
She walked.
She pushed a shopping cart more than a mile to the grocery store. Friends gave her rides to church.
She considered a newspaper an unnecessary luxury.
Her television was black and white and received only one channel.
She was known for making do with what she had.
At one point, she cut the toes out of shoes that did not fit her.
Even her Bible had been repaired with Scotch tape because the pages containing Corinthians were falling apart.
Her mother died in 1964.
Her aunt died in 1967.
Both left her some money.
Oseola did what she had always done.
She put it in the bank.
After her aunt's death, she lived alone.
She had animals for company—a dog named Dog, a pig named Hog and a cow named Hazel.
She sometimes talked to them.
"I didn't have nobody to talk to," she explained.
Yet despite the simplicity of her life, Oseola had something that many people spend decades trying to acquire:
financial discipline.
She did not spend everything she earned.
She saved.
She lived below her means.
And she kept going.
Then the Bank Discovered What She Had Saved
Oseola rarely withdrew money from her savings.
"I never would take any of it out. I just put it in," she said.
Over the years, her money was spread across several local banks.
Eventually, employees at Trustmark Bank became aware of the size of her savings.
Two employees, Nancy Odom and Ellen Vinzant, began helping Oseola plan for the future and looking out for her personally.
Even then, she remained extremely modest.
It took considerable persuasion to get her to accept a window air conditioner.
According to the Mississippi Encyclopedia, she would only turn it on when visitors came.
By December 1994, arthritis had finally forced her to stop working.
She was 86.
After 75 years of washing and ironing, Oseola was finally retired.
But she had already begun thinking about what should happen to the money she had accumulated.
And she had one particular institution in mind.
The University of Southern Mississippi.
"I Think They Should Have It"
Oseola had lived only a few blocks from the university.
Yet she had never attended it.
She had never had the opportunity.
She remembered a time when Black people were not allowed to attend.
Now things had changed.
And she wanted other people to have the opportunity she never had.
"I didn't know how to fix it, but I wanted to give it to the college," she said.
"They used to not let colored people go out there, but now they do, and I think they should have it."
Her bank advisers introduced her to Paul Laughlin, the bank's trust officer.
Laughlin needed a simple way to help her decide how she wanted to divide her money.
So he brought ten dimes.
Each dime represented 10 percent.
He wrote the names of the people and organizations Oseola wanted to support on separate pieces of paper.
Then he asked her to divide the coins.
She placed one dime on the slip for her church.
One went to each of three relatives.
Then she paused.
She placed the remaining six dimes on the University of Southern Mississippi.
Sixty percent.
There was no hesitation.
Laughlin later described her as "quite definite" about the decision.
Her attorney, Jimmy Frank McKenzie, had known her for years. She had even washed his clothes.
He made sure the decision was genuinely hers.
It was.
Oseola signed an irrevocable trust that allowed the bank to manage the money while providing her with funds whenever she needed them.
When someone asked why she chose the university, her answer was remarkably simple:
"Because it's here."
She wanted the money to help students who could not otherwise afford an education, with priority given to Black students.
The World Discovered Oseola McCarty
Banks normally keep clients' financial arrangements private.
But this was different.
Paul Laughlin asked Oseola whether he could make the gift public.
"Well, I guess that would be all right," she replied.
The University of Southern Mississippi announced the gift in 1995.
The news quickly spread.
The New York Times put her story on its front page on August 13, 1995.
She became an unexpected national celebrity.
But the reason behind the gift remained simple.
"I'm giving it away so that the children won't have to work so hard, like I did."
She eventually stepped onto the university campus for the first time.
About 1,000 people reportedly gave her a standing ovation that lasted a full minute.
The woman who had spent most of her life quietly washing clothes suddenly found herself being celebrated across America.
Local business leaders immediately matched part of her gift.
Over the next four years, more than 600 individuals, companies and organizations from more than 30 states contributed to the fund.
A quiet washerwoman had created something much bigger than herself.
From a Laundry Room to the National Stage
Before her gift became public, Oseola had left Mississippi only once.
She had never flown on an airplane.
She had never ordered room service.
Suddenly, she was being invited everywhere.
She appeared on Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Late Show with David Letterman and Today.
Barbara Walters named her one of the "10 Most Interesting People of 1995."
She received at least 150 awards.
In 1996, Harvard University awarded her an honorary doctorate.
President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal, one of America's highest civilian honors.
Roberta Flack sang "Amazing Grace" to her at a National Urban League dinner, and Oseola cried.
She carried the Olympic torch.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani asked her to participate in the Times Square New Year's Eve celebration.
When Southern Miss learned that she had once dreamed of becoming a nurse, its School of Nursing named her an honorary alumna.
And despite all the attention, she remained remarkably humble.
The university asked if it could name a building after her.
She declined.
"I'm Braver Now"
Oseola had been painfully shy for most of her life.
Fame changed that.
Not her values.
Not her lifestyle.
But her confidence.
"I'm braver now," she said.
She had spent decades living quietly, almost invisibly.
Now the world wanted to hear her story.
And her story was powerful precisely because it was so ordinary.
She had not built her fortune through a company.
She had not become famous through entertainment or politics.
She washed clothes.
She saved money.
She lived simply.
And when the time came, she chose to give.
The Billionaire She Inspired
Perhaps the most remarkable part of Oseola McCarty's story came after she had already given her money away.
In 1997, billionaire Ted Turner was traveling to New York when he looked at his financial statements.
His net worth had reportedly increased by $1 billion in eight months.
He decided to give away $1 billion.
At a United Nations Association dinner that September, Turner announced his pledge to donate $1 billion over ten years to United Nations programs.
And when explaining what inspired him, he mentioned Oseola McCarty.
"If that little woman can give away everything she has, then I can give a billion," Turner said.
He later described her as one of his mentors.
Think about that for a moment.
A woman who spent her life washing clothes, walking to the grocery store and saving coins had inspired a billionaire to give away a billion dollars.
Not because she was wealthy.
But because she understood something about wealth that money itself cannot teach.
The Real Legacy of Oseola McCarty
Oseola McCarty died in 1999 at the age of 91.
But her legacy was never really about the amount of money she gave away.
It was about what the money represented.
Every coin represented years of work.
Every dollar represented a decision not to spend.
Every deposit represented discipline.
And eventually, every gift represented an opportunity for someone else.
She once dreamed of becoming a nurse but never got the chance.
So she helped create opportunities for others to pursue the education she had been denied.
She never attended the university that received her gift.
But she helped send students there.
She never became wealthy in the way the world usually measures wealth.
Yet her generosity reached far beyond her small home in Mississippi.
Her life offers a simple lesson:
You do not need to have everything before you can give something.
You do not need to be famous before your life can matter.
And you do not need to live a grand life to leave a remarkable legacy.
Oseola McCarty spent 75 years washing other people's clothes.
She saved quietly.
She lived simply.
And when she finally had the opportunity to change lives, she gave.
Her hands spent decades cleaning clothes.
Her savings eventually helped clean the path to education for people she would never meet.
That may be the most beautiful thing about her story.
