User:Cjr100B/Jennie Rowe

Jennie Rowe was a child before the Great Depression with three brothers and sisters. She was born and raised in Newton, North Carolina in McDowell County. On June 19, 1939 Rowe was interviewed by the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) by Ethel Deal, and this document is now housed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Southern Historical Collection.

Early life
Raised by an abusive father and an abused mother, Jennie Rowe was unable to experience many functions that people attended. Church and school were important aspects to people during her time. However, according her their father, learning made girls crooked and boys worthless.

Her alcoholic father made illegal moonshine. With the fear of becoming discovered, the family’s social life was greatly hindered. The children were not able to attend school because if people found out about the alcohol their father would have been arrested. The alcohol made the father an aggressive person and the relationship between Rowe and her mother was never close.

The poverty-stricken household had to focus on work that needed to be done on their farm. This was another reason that school was not a necessity. The farm that Rowe worked on raised corn, turnips and potatoes. There was only one cow that provided the family with milk. Rowe’s designated housework was to cook in the kitchen and make sure there was food for everyone. Struggling with difficult family life made Rowe and her siblings mature faster than other children their ages.

Rowe’s father committed suicide with a shotgun. Her mother was upset not because he died, but because he died unsaved since church was not a part of his priorities. However, his death yielded an opportunity for education and Sunday school for Rowe’s siblings.

Adulthood
After getting married to Mr. Walter Rowe, Rowe left her hometown and went to Whitesboro, North Carolina. Her aunt’s husband died and needed care. The aunt did not treat her well and Rowe decided to work at a cotton mill making $4.50 a week. Her husband’s family consisted of “renters” or people that rented small areas of land or houses and moved constantly. While attempting to move away from his family to live with only his wife, his health tormented him and caused him to stay in the Veteran’s Hospital located in Tennessee.

Walter Rowe earned $30 from the government a month that took care of Rowe and himself while he was in the hospital.

Education during the Great Depression
In Rowe’s married adulthood, the FWP did an interview to portray larger social issues that were occurring at the time. Rowe never received any education to help her in the future. She stayed illiterate. Children living in a rural area “often had a more difficult time attending school, compared to children living in towns.” In addition to missing school during harvest, Rowe was unable to attend due to her father’s alcoholism. Ewing and Hicks found that there were many under-funded public schools that ran out of money during this financial crisis which hindered many states and caused them to close. Despite North Carolina modifying the budget for education to allow schools to continue, Rowe still could not learn to read. In 1930, there was 10% illiteracy in North Carolina.

Gender roles and the Great Depression
Rowe needed a job during the Great Depression; therefore, she started work in the cotton mill, since the income from just one person was not enough to sustain an entire family. The per capita personal income in North Carolina during 1929 for farm populations was $167 a year. This income would cover all expenses whether they were need or want based. When men lost their jobs, the husband would feel like a failure affecting the role in the house. Women saw their roles in the household enhancing

Jennie Rowe received $30 a week due to her husband’s hospital stay. This kept her family afloat and she was able to survive without changing her habits. However, when she was younger, she had to do household tasks that were traditionally associated with female roles.

Federal Writers Project
The Federal Writers’ Project was started by Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal. The FWP attempted to reveal America through stories of normal people by hiring writers to portray the lives of others. Taylor stated that the “work of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) guides, created by many unknown, unemployed Americans, resonated throughout the twentieth century.” Jennie Rowe was interviewed to allow her story to be known by others. The interview is written with colloquial diction that shows the audience aspects of social issues that were relevant to Rowe.

The title of the interview is “Maybe Some Day I Can Read to Myself”. This title projects the need of education during rough times instead of ignoring the situation completely. The colloquial diction found in the interview shows how uneducated she was. Additionally, gender roles are prominent in the interview. The children in the family had to do much of the work. The boys mainly worked in the fields and Rowe was forced to do stereotypical women’s chores.

The WPA writers took many notes on different, unrelated topics ranging from prison systems to horse racing. Because there were many conducted interviews, people had a voice in society to give details on how different people lived. The eyewitness accounts helped show the suffering that actually happened.