User:Cjr100B/Mary Allen (North Carolina)

Mary Allen, a white woman from Sampson County, North Carolina, was interviewed for the Federal Writers' Project in 1938 by William O. Foster. At the time, she was 60 years old and lived with her husband on a farm. The two of them struggled to make ends meet, yet enjoyed the simple life of the country too much to move into town.

Family life
Mary Allen was born in the late 1870s. She lived with her husband, John Allen, on a farm between Smithfield, NC and Clinton, NC. As far as she knew, her family had been farming for many generations. Mary and John had one daughter and three sons. All four of them moved away from home once they got married. Mary also had four “adopted” children – the children of her servant.

Education
Mary Allen completed school through the 6th grade, and John finished through the 4th. There was not a strong emphasis on education when they were young. Once her children were born, there was a little more focus on the importance of education. Mary was proud that all of her children were able to attend better schools than she and her husband, even though none of them graduated high school.

Farm life
The Allens owned two and a half acres of Tobacco and three acres of cotton. Mary’s husband did not like to work and they had to take out some loans for the farm. There were a few years where her family was barely able to break even, much less make a large enough profit. Along with farming, she enjoyed making pottery from time to time in order to bring in a little more income.

Role of women in the South during the Great Depression
Most women during the time of the Great Depression struggled to make ends meet while the family income was so low. Many ended up working jobs or selling their own goods to bring in a little more spending money. Mary Allen sold her pottery in town in an effort to bring in some money for the family. Robert and Helen Lynd stated “no housewife lost her job during the Depression." Women were still expected to fulfill their duties as housewives even though they had little to work with. Susan Ware pointed out that “Women “made do” by substituting their own labor for something that previously had been bought with cash.” As a housewife, Mary was still expected to make sure all her duties were completed, even though the money was not always there to support her efforts.”

Economic downfall of agriculture in the early 1900s
Within North Carolina, farmers felt the sting of a poor market well before the Great Depression. In the decade leading up to “Black Tuesday”, agriculture was struggling. Many things led up to this struggle, but the biggest problem stemmed from the overproduction of cash crops. Too many people were growing tobacco and corn. Many farmers could not sell their harvest, and the ones who could, could not sell them at as high of a price as they were used to. The Allens grew tobacco and cotton, two of the cash crops at the time. This probably contributed greatly to some of the economic trouble that they had.

Many programs were put into place both nationally and on a state level to try and help the economy improve for agriculture. These programs were generally helpful, but some ended up hurting the market more than helping it. The conditions of life for many farmers were not pleasant. RoAnn Bishop stated, “many of our North Carolina farmers are desperately poor, live in wretched houses, and are scantily provided with even the necessities of life.” Many farmers in an effort to escape these awful conditions, had to change the crop they generally produced to one that would be more competitive in the struggling market. The Allens were not alone in their struggle to make ends meet. Many farmers of North Carolina faced some the same problems as they did. The market simply was not there for the cash crops that the Allens were growing.

Federal Writers' Project
Mary Allen was interviewed in 1938 by William O Foster for the Federal Writers’ Project. The Federal Writers’ Project was one of the New Deal programs established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This program was started in 1935 and sought to collect oral histories from people all around the United States during the Great Depression. John T. Fredrick stated, “just as Americans were learning to appreciate and conserve material resources, they were also learning to conserve the cultural resources of the nation." Though the intentions of this program were probably pure, sometimes the oral histories were recorded in a way that reflects perhaps the bias of the time. In the case of Mary Allen’s interview, there was a major issue of voice. Most oral histories are recorded in the voice of the interviewee; Mary’s words should have been written down. Instead, William O. Foster was the narrator of this interview. The danger of this tactic is that if Foster narrated the oral history, then he got to choose which specific details of Mary’s personal history were recorded. Instead of Mary being able to decide what in her past and present was worth talking about, Foster did. This interview should be read carefully, because there is no way to tell how much “editing” took place before it was published.