Using the WPA ex-slave narratives to study the impact of the Great Depression.

FOR AT LEAST TWO GENERATIONS ACADEMICS HAVE BEEN REAPING THE benefits of the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) Federal Writers' Project. White-collar workers employed by this program during the 1930s summarized and indexed government records and newspaper articles, compiled local histories, and interviewed men and women from all walks of life, preserving for posterity the life histories of thousands of ordinary people. (1) Folklorists, anthropologists, sociologists, theologians, human ecologists, and historians have all used these records to great advantage. (2) But for historians, one of these projects actually resulted in a paradigm shift in the scholarly discourse. The WPA workers' interviews with ex-slaves made it possible to rewrite part of the history of the antebellum South from the perspective of the slave. (3)

Although the "new" histories of slavery represented a tremendous breakthrough in African American, southern, and American history, historians have not all been in agreement about how and whether to use the WPA narratives as source material. John W. Blassingame did not use them at all in his now classic study, The Slave Community (1972). In a later work, Blassingame detailed his concerns about the power dynamics of the interview process, the competence of the interviewers, and the advanced age of the informants that led to his discomfort with the narratives as sources. And although most scholars of slavery writing during and since the 1970s chose to use the narratives, they did point out that the documents were, in some ways, flawed. (4) It is partly in response to this seeming incongruity that historian Donna J. Spindel, in a recent study of history and memory, took her colleagues to task. Spindel concluded that they "allowed the potential richness of the ex-slave interviews to overshadow their weaknesses." (5)

Concerns about the narratives have always been wide-ranging. Because most respondents were children at the time of emancipation, some scholars have feared that the narratives were reliable only as sources about childhood. By the same logic, those few former slaves who were adults (or nearly adults) at the time of emancipation were so old at the time of the interviews that their memories were questionable. There were apparent statistical problems as well. The states of residence of the former slaves who were interviewed did not correspond proportionately to the geographical distribution of slaves during the antebellum period. And because only about 2 percent of the former slaves who were still alive in the 1930s were interviewed, the nearly 2,200 narratives did not seem a large enough sample. On top of all these warnings came another, focused squarely on the issue of race relations in the South. Most of the former slaves were interviewed by white WPA workers; as a result, historians contended, the information relayed was likely to be tainted. (6) (Indeed, some of the former slaves were interviewed by members of the families who had owned them, which could have resulted in even more constrained responses than otherwise might have been offered. (7) )

The foregoing concerns were undoubtedly valid, but the preoccupation with them has obscured other important ways we might utilize these documents as historical records and with substantially more confidence. The Great Depression looms large in these narratives. But none of the scholars commenting on the interviews' use for studying slavery has explored with any depth their relevance to studying the depression. C. Vann Woodward suggested that the former slaves' longing for the "good ole days" was related to the contemporary economic crisis. He noted, "After all, these were old and helpless people, often living alone in the worst years of the Great Depression, sometimes admitting they were hungry and not knowing where the next meal was coming from." John Blassingame's well-known discussion of the narratives also related the responses of the former bondpeople to their desperate conditions at the time of the interviews. And Paul D. Escort wrote, "The milieu of the 1930s itself constitutes a potential problem. Due to the Depression, most of the former slaves were destitute and dependent upon the aid of family, white people, or government officials. Perhaps poverty coerced people into saying what they thought the 'government man' wanted to hear." In the introduction to his study of All Saints Parish, South Carolina, Charles Joyner reinforced these conclusions in a comment about WPA respondent Ben Horry: "Aged and penniless, struggling to survive during the Great Depression, he may well have looked back too fondly upon a time when it was the master's responsibility to provide for those too old to work. Moreover, the racial etiquette of segregation that prevailed in the 1930s did not encourage him to tell whites, especially local whites, anything that might disturb them." (8)

Because these historians concentrated on the problems associated with using the narratives for studying slavery, they did not follow their own implicit lead in these other directions. Yet, there are important reasons for pursuing the matter. There are, oddly enough, few secondary sources dedicated to the topic of black life during the Great Depression. Most accounts actually focus on the New Deal and do not provide much detail about how people, especially the elderly, actually lived and survived, or about what factors seemed to matter most in how they experienced the crisis. (9) A systematic examination of the WPA narratives can yield that kind of detail. Equally important, most of the primary source material on African Americans and the Great Depression is quantitative government data. While such data are very useful in providing the basis for understanding qualitative conditions of life, they do not allow for a full discussion of people's lives and lifestyles. (10) Perhaps the most significant body of primary source material that directly and explicitly fills this gap is the spate of studies in sociology, anthropology, and social psychology completed primarily by Ph.D. students and graduates of the University of Chicago in the 1930s. These volumes go a long way toward informing us about how black people lived, especially in the South, during the Great Depression. But each of the "Chicago studies" focuses on a specific town, village, or city, and there are altogether too few of them to make general conclusions about conditions for African Americans as a group. (11) By contrast, the Federal Writers' Project workers canvassed, albeit in a limited way, a third of the country--including all of the former Confederate states, (12)

This essay, therefore, intends to accomplish several things, both methodological and substantive. It explores, directly and indirectly, the potential for using traditional--if still controversial--sources in, as yet, a nontraditional way. These narratives are a resource pool that was created with the express purpose of recording details about nineteenth century life. Using these documents to study the twentieth century not only contributes substantively to our knowledge of that century but, ironically, also helps address some of the most vexing questions about the interviews' value for studying the nineteenth. Moreover, studying the narratives for their perspective on the twentieth century results in new and compelling questions related to the Great Migration, a major turning point in African American history. This approach also supplies evidence for the role of gender in experiencing the Great Depression, another major American event. It broadens our understanding of the labor history of the tumultuous 1930s. And perhaps most important, it provides a vivid picture of the impact of aging in the very specific historical context of the Great Depression and the New Deal.

A sample selection from one WPA ex-slave narrative suggests the richness of this record for revealing aspects of twentieth-century life. Charley Williams was ninety-four years old and living in Tulsa at the time of his interview with a representative of the Oklahoma Writers' Project. His narrative begins this way:

      Iffen I could see better out'n my old eyes, and I had me
   something to work with and de feebleness in my back and head would
   let me 'lone, I would have me plenty to eat in de kitchen all de
   time, and plenty tobaccy in my pipe, too, bless God!

      And dey wouldn't be no rain trickling through de holes in de
   roof, and no planks all fell out'n de flo' on de gallery neither,
   "cause dis one old nigger knows everything about making all he need
   to git along! Old Master done showed him how to git along in dis
   world, jest as long as he live on a plantation, but living in de
   town is a different way of living, and all you got to have is a
   silver dime to lay down for everything you want, and I don't git de
   dime very often.

      But I aint give up! Nothing like dat! On de days when I don't
   feel so feeble and trembly I jest keep patching 'round de place. I
   got to keep patching so as to keep it whar it will hold de winter
   out, in case I git to see another winter.

      Iffen I don't, it don't grieve me none, 'cause I wants to see
   old Master again anyways. I reckon maybe I'll jest go up an ask him
   what he want me to do, and he'll tell me, and iffen I don't know
   bow he'll show me how, and I'll try to do it to please him. And
   when I git it done I wants to hear him grumble like he used to and
   say, "Charley, you ain't got no sense but you is a good boy. Dis
   here ain't very good but it'll do.... "

      Dat ain't de way it going be in Heaven, I reckon, but I can't
   set here on dis old rottendy gallery and think of no way I better
   like to have it! (13)

These first few paragraphs of Charley Williams's narrative say more about the life of an elderly person during the depression than about the life of an antebellum slave. Williams's house was in bad shape. The porch--the gallery, as he called it--was missing planks in some places and rotten in others. His own physical condition was not much better. He had bad eyes, a bad back, and perhaps he suffered from headaches. Having neither food in his kitchen nor tobacco in his pipe, Williams lacked as much in the way of basic necessities as he lacked in luxuries. And he lived in town, where survival seemed nearly impossible to those who grew up able to eat by hunting and farming, even if unable to earn a wage--Williams's metaphorical (and elusive) "silver dime." Finally, Charley Williams was old--ninety-four years old. Even if jobs had been abundant and black people had enjoyed access to them during the 1930s, Williams was too old and probably too ill to work much. Although the depression-era circumstances of Williams and other ex-slaves might not have been so different from those of other people at the time, here is an extensive set of records that we have neglected for the study of life during the depression generally, and for the study of a complex social group of elderly, black, southern, former slaves, specifically, for whom such an examination is overdue. Moreover, if we probe these narratives for insights into the twentieth century rather than the nineteenth, they go far beyond their obvious (though debatable) usefulness as ex-slave narratives and are transformed, exquisitely, into American narratives of the Great Depression.

Some time after the WPA ex-slave interviews began, the Federal Writers' Project national office supplied workers with a 333-question survey. The instructions made clear that some items were more important than others and that workers should use their own discretion as to how to utilize the questionnaire. Still, most workers probably asked the former slaves some variation of the question about whether they thought slavery or freedom was better. (14) Though rarely stated explicitly, it is likely that what has caused scholars considerable concern about the truthfulness of the interviewees' responses is the frequency with which the former bondpeople seemed to say that slavery was better. It is precisely this kind of response that makes looking at these narratives to study the Great Depression so important. From that perspective it becomes clear that the former bondpeople often refused to answer the question. At the very least, they refused to answer without putting their response in the very specific context of the Great Depression.

When the question was put to Henri Necaise of Mississippi, he replied, "It aint none o' my business 'bout whether de Niggers is better off free dan slaves. I dont know 'cept 'bout me, I was better off den." Necaise, and others sometimes more emphatically, actually avoided comparing slavery and freedom directly; instead, they offered opinions comparing the conditions they endured while enslaved to those they faced as people who were free but living during the Great Depression. Parker Pool said, "I think some o' de slaves wuz better off when dey had owners and wuz in slavery den dey is now." The important word here is now. As Pool elaborated on the status of black people during the depression, he surmised, "De nigger now is a better slave den when dey [white people] owned him," because he still received virtually nothing for his labor and had to bear all his own expenses. When ninety-year-old homeless and hungry Andrew Boone heard the question, he responded, in part, with a poem: "The ole bees makes de honey comb, the young bee makes de honey, niggers makes de cotton an' corn an' de white folks gets de money." Boone concluded, "Dis wus de case in Slavery time an' its de case now." (15) Over and over, former slaves used the word now and consequently turned the questions about slavery versus freedom into discussions about the depression. Their responses beg for more in-depth analysis. (16)

To be sure, the experiences and responses of the freedpeople ran the gamut. A few, instead of comparing the antebellum period to the 1930s, talked about the immediate postemancipation period, which they insisted was much more difficult than the Great Depression. (17) And many during the depression seemed not to suffer significantly beyond conditions related to old age at any time. (18) But the suffering was dramatic and life-threatening for others, and the sources of the former slaves' distress are especially clear. One of them was hunger. (19)

As the former slaves were questioned about their lives "in the old-time days," they talked about the hunger they were feeling as they spoke. (20) South Carolinian Jesse Davis, who lived with his wife and his son, was apparently ill fed and ill clothed. Yet he was modest and merely invoked a kind of religious stoicism for his interviewer. Even though the Bible indicated it was acceptable "to beg God for my daily bread," he remembered that "De Good Book" also said, '''Take no consarnment 'bout your raiment. "Other informants spoke much more directly about their hunger. South Carolina octogenarian Elias Dawkins admitted to having been so hungry that he had once eaten animal waste. Eighty-six-year-old Gable Locklier reported on the Wednesday afternoon of his interview that his last real meal (fish and grits) had been on the previous Sunday. North Carolinian Andrew Boone, then in his nineties, noted at the time of his interview that he was hungry and without food, but that he had eaten "tomatoes cooked widout any grease" for breakfast. Meat grease, usually salted pork fat, was regularly used to season cooked vegetables. And it was very cheap. To have noted that his tomatoes were "cooked widout any grease" was probably Boone's way of commenting on his dire economic situation in addition to his hunger. (21)

Many of the freedpeople stated explicitly how much better they had eaten as slaves. Ninety-seven-year-old Andrew Goodman of Dallas, Texas, insisted, "I never was cold and hongry when my old master lived, and I has been plenty hongry and cold a lot of times since he is gone." Harry Johnson, only eighty-six years old, remembered cobbler, dumplings, and corn bread "with plenty butter"--not the typical diet of the average slave. Eighty-five-year-old Mississippian Gus Clark said, "Slav'ry was better in some ways 'an things is now. We allus got plen'y ter eat, which we doan now." And 105-year-old Henri Necaise maintained, "I always had a-plenty t'eat, better'n I can git now." (22)

More often than not, general scholarship on slavery indicates that slave diets were deficient, and poor nutrition was the rule rather than the exception. (23) Consequently, former slaves' more favorable commentary on antebellum food consumption makes the point of their suffering during the 1930s very dramatic. But these particular recollections of eating well before emancipation are not necessarily faulty. Clark and Johnson would have just reached the classification of prime hands in the mid-1860s, as they entered their late teens. They would have been both old enough to be allotted full rations and still young enough to be members of families with elders who would see to their eating as well as possible. Goodman and Necaise were fully grown and single before emancipation and therefore in complete control of their rations. As prime hands, who were also able to hunt and fish for themselves, they were likely to have been among the best fed slaves on a plantation. Neither is Johnson's memory of pies, pastries, and butter for his corn bread problematic. Johnson's mother was a cook, making it possible for her son to eat very differently from the average enslaved adolescent. Altogether, the status of these and other individuals under slavery is as relevant as their plight during the depression in explaining their specific responses about food. But more to the point, while the stark deprivation that freedpeople experienced during the Great Depression might have made their memories of food during slavery more vivid, it did not have to make those memories incorrect. These men's individual lifetimes had obviously exceeded the life expectancy of slaves born in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, suggesting, at least, that they might have been adequately fed during critical stages of their lives. And so rather than automatically raising doubts about former slaves' claims, these comments about food under slavery should draw attention both to the depression-era diets to which slave diets were compared, and to the particular circumstances of their individual lives under slavery. The WPA narratives provide extensive evidence of both. (24)

Still, hunger undoubtedly helps to explain why some former slaves wished to see their old masters again. Slaves did, usually, at least eat regularly, even if not very well. Perhaps hunger also helps to explain why some respondents seemed to equivocate when asked whether slavery or freedom was better. If one considers the whole range of responses from the former slaves, however, a much more complex picture of the discussion of slavery and freedom emerges than historians have heretofore revealed. Consider, for example, Donaville Broussard's comment: "Oh, I don't mean slavery was better than to be free. I mean times were better." Like the others, Broussard clearly focused on time (then versus now) rather than status (slave versus free). "Times" might have been "better" simply because he was much younger and more able then. It is also possible that his social values were harder to maintain during the 1930s than they were before emancipation. At this late stage of life, freedpeople probably had more friends who had died than were still alive and more children living away from them than with them. Given their age and limited resources, they likely lacked the ability to reach many of the people and places important to them. As a result, the impact of aging, coupled with this major economic depression, made it impossible to take full advantage of being free. But Henry Wright warned his interviewer (and, subsequently, historians) not to misconstrue his positive comments about life before emancipation: they did not mean that he wanted that life back. Altogether, the freedpeople's responses were routinely more sophisticated than what the questions, on the surface, seemed designed to elicit. Indeed, among the freedpeople were those who undoubtedly thought the original question was absurd, not simply because it was ludicrous that anyone would prefer enslavement over freedom, which is the inference of historians (and why suggestions of positive experiences under slavery seemed dubious), but rather because, as Andrew Boone put it, "It's all hard, slavery and freedom, both bad when you can't eat." (25)

Poor nutrition, however, was not the only source of these elders' misery. In particular, the narratives suggest that while many had quite adequate housing during the depression, Charley Williams was lucky to suffer only from a leaky roof and a decrepit porch. Laura Clark, an eighty-six-year-old Alabamian, crawled under her bed when it rained because her "house" had no roof at all. Andrew Boone, who had no grease for his tomatoes, had been living in an abandoned tobacco barn for years. And South Carolinian Jessie Sparrow was no longer able to cook because her kitchen leaked so badly when it rained (and apparently had for such a long time) that the room had rotted, and the stove had rusted beyond the point of being functional. (26)

Sparrow's housing had come to her through a formal or informal bequest. "Miss Ellen," Sparrow's former owner or employer, left Sparrow lifetime rights to the house, such as it was: part of it Sparrow described as "just like out in de yard." Tillie, whose last name was not recorded, was more fortunate. At the time of her WPA interview, she was living in the historic Cornwallis Headquarters in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she had worked as a maid for many years. Although unable to work by the mid-1930s, she had "a home an' plenty to eat." (27)

But few former slaves reported living in a place, even a run-down one, free of charge. In fact, many, if not most, were still renters on white people's property, and they were able to pay their rent in cash or to exchange some service like housekeeping and yard work for their housing. (28) Nonetheless, advantageous connections to white people often helped these elderly ex-slaves gain some form of relief (in commodities or cash) or to qualify for regular pensions, thus enhancing their circumstances. William Baltimore, 103 years old, from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, ate very irregularly after losing his eyesight, until white friends located his Union army record and helped him obtain a military pension. City police officers who took their meals at Frankie Goole's Nashville home secured her "relief orders." Cheney Cross's situation was not only similar, but the details of her narrative remind us of the bureaucratic problems that nineteenth-century enslavement created for twentieth-century freedpeople. When the depression hit, Cross could not qualify for relief because, she said, no one where she lived knew her age. Probably more to the point, there was no white person in the town who could verify her age because until the 1930s the births and deaths of southern black people of this generation were rarely recorded systematically by any but their former owners. Only after a former employer located the daughter of Cross's former owner, who vouched for Cross's age, did the elderly woman qualify for some relief. (29) Thus, even if the former slaves romanticized the past and manipulated their interviewers when they expressed their desires to see their old masters and mistresses again, their words often demonstrated more than affection, "false consciousness," or deception. Freedpeople's connections to white people, "their" white people in particular, could still make a measurable, qualitative difference in their lives.

The WPA Federal Writers' Project narratives also suggest the difference that being male or female could make if one were black, old, and poor in the South during the Great Depression, especially if one could not count on personal acquaintances or children for support. Tillie's work as a domestic servant for the historic Cornwallis Headquarters assured her decent room and board during her old age, but most elderly black women of her generation had spent their lives in agricultural labor or domestic work in private homes, which rarely led to such comfort during the depression. More frequently, and often at best, the child or grandchild of a former owner or employer simply delivered a much needed meal, a load of firewood, or some old clothes from time to time. (30) Even though men suffered and benefited in some of the same ways as women, men had often had better opportunities than women for more diverse, more lucrative, and more institutionally based, public-sphere occupations before the depression, and therefore men were more likely to have reliable sources of support in their old age during the depression.

One-hundred-and-four-year-old Ransom Simmons, a South Carolinian, is a good example. He received a twenty-five-dollar-a-year pension because of his previous service to the Confederacy. Moreover, because he had worked for the Columbia Dairy for many years, he received, free of charge, all the milk and ice cream he could consume. One immediately wonders if the protein-rich commodities contributed to his longevity. Alex Huggins and Henry H. Butler, both Union military veterans, received seventy-five-dollar-a-month pensions, making them, in relative terms, fabulously wealthy for the time. Thomas Dixon, a retired minister, not only received an annual pension from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, but his status as a minister probably secured him an eight-dollar monthly pension from the Welfare Board of South Carolina, while most of the South Carolina interviewees were still waiting to hear about the status of their pension applications. (31)

Even when men had done domestic work for a living, it was often of a more lucrative sort than that performed by women. Maryland resident Page Harris started waiting on midshipmen at the Naval Academy in Annapolis when he was seventeen years old. With his wages and extra earnings, probably from tips and errand money, he bought a 120-acre farm in 1897, where he still lived, "raising a variety of vegetables." Women's domestic work did not often lead to the purchase of such a parcel of land. Consequently, if they were unable to earn a wage during the depression, they were much more dependent on friends, family, and public assistance. Harris, on the other hand, in addition to providing for his own table, was able to sell some of his produce and generate an income. (32)

Harris's situation suggests that rural dwellers had an advantage over town or city residents in that they could grow their own food. Certainly that is what Charley Williams thought. But, in fact, the narratives indicate that this was true only if one owned, could afford to rent, or was allowed to use the land for free. Harris could live relatively well during the 1930s because he resided in a rural area, grew much of his own food, and sold his surplus. But equally important is the fact that he owned the land and therefore could grow food. Fewer than 20 percent of southern black farmers owned the land they worked during the 1930s. Others--overwhelmingly sharecroppers and tenant farmers, who along with day laborers made up 70 percent of black farmworkers--did not have the luxury of choice. Whoever owned, or held the lien on, the crop told the farmers what to grow. Landlords favored cash crops. Similarly, lienholders who were merchants sometimes discouraged food production in order to supply the needed commodities at exorbitant rates during the growing season, and then claim a larger portion of the crop at its end. (33) Thus, rural life held some advantages, though only under certain circumstances.

The realities of northern or urban life turn out to be equally complex in light of the WPA narratives. The few narratives of former slaves living in northern states contained in these volumes corroborate other historians' conclusions that people in northern, urban settings successfully qualified for more public assistance than those in rural, southern locales. But the narratives suggest another important advantage for northern men in particular. The range of male-dominated occupations in the North and South was similar, but the opportunities for black men to experience the whole range were far greater in the North. (34) This access might have been a consideration in David A. Hall's postemancipation move from Goldsboro, North Carolina, to Canton, Ohio, where he worked in a flour mill for the next seventy years. As a consequence of his employment, he earned substantially more money than he could have in the South, and he accumulated property, which he was able to sell off as needed, perhaps as the depression deepened. It is safe to assume that as a property owner, Hall had some security. But even more important, his decades of employment in the flour mill provided him a monthly pension. (35)

Many southern freedmen acquired property and struggled to hold on to it during the 1930s. But few had had access to factory jobs for as long as David Hall of Canton. Moreover, most southerners who reported having worked for extended periods of time in business or industry were permanently laid off when they reached a certain age or at the onset of the depression, and they did not receive pensions for their years of service. Seventy-five-year-old Robert Bryant from Herculaneum, Missouri, worked for more than thirty years for the St. Joe Lead Company, even relocating once when the company moved. About 1925, he lost his job because of his age. Lewis Mundy, of Hannibal, Missouri, was laid off from the Burlington Shops around the same time, after being told he was too old to work. Giles Smith worked for a meatpacking company in Fort Worth, Texas, from 1908 until he was let go in 1931 because of his age. Although ninety-six-year-old James Davis from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, worked for a local railroad company for forty-eight years, he did not receive a company pension when his job ended. Ultimately, it seems that in the South, especially, long-term employment with a single company was its own (and perhaps only) reward. (36)

Not all of these elders' efforts to continue to work during the depression were stymied by age- or business-related layoffs. Some were complicated by poor health. Gus Clark returned to direct relief when his health failed after only a few days of public road work. Aleck Trimble performed public work until he "wo' out." Louis Lucas worked for the water and gas companies and for the streetcar line until he, too, "got broke down." (37) When these men lost their jobs, they could count neither on company pensions nor on automatic transfers to direct relief, which provided cash payments without requiring work of recipients. There had always been considerable and widespread opposition to direct relief: payments were seen as demeaning, stigmatizing, and contrary to American notions of individualism. (38) Black citizens often had difficulty qualifying for either direct or work relief, but after the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which emphasized work relief, was established in 1933, those who were physically able to work probably stood a better chance of getting a job. Gus Clark, Aleck Trimble, Louis Lucas, and others tried but were not able to keep up.

Many other men lost their jobs because of local responses to New Deal regulations designed, ironically, to relieve distress. When, for example, FERA set a minimum wage in 1933 and the National Recovery Administration (NRA) mandated that there be no discrimination between black and white workers' pay, some employers complied. Others ignored the rule or reclassified positions held by black workers, leaving them with the smaller and probably already reduced wage. Many employers simply fired black workers. (39) But equally devastating, before the depression black men like Gus Clark and Aleck Trimble regularly did "public work," which simply referred to hard, dirty, often poorly paid, outdoor (usually road) labor. During the depression, however, such public work became relatively highly paid Public Works Administration (PWA) jobs, and so the tasks of building roads, bridges, dams, and the like went primarily, and sometimes exclusively, to white men. (40) Former slave Peter Corn explicitly protested that "every day dey is tryin' to starve us out and give de white man a job on de state road." Corn probably exaggerated only slightly when he added, "When Highway 61 was put in from St. Louis down to Festus de colored man had a part to do. Since Roosevelt got in dey won't even let a colored man walk down de highway." (41)

The particular ways that New Deal programs hurt the black elderly have never received the attention that historians have given to black southern workers in general. As the depression deepened and New Deal policies evolved, it became clear that younger, presumably more productive people, especially those with families, would have employment advantages over those considered to be old. Within a few months of the 1935 initiation of the WPA, work relief recipients over sixty-five years old lost their jobs. There was no legal maximum age for these jobs at the time, and in 1939 Congress specified that persons over sixty-five were eligible for them. Still, on the local level where the jobs were administered, it became next to impossible for those eligible for the 1935-initiated Old Age Assistance (those at least sixty-five years of age) to gain WPA jobs. (42) Louis Lucas complained, "The relief folks gave me a labor card; then they took it away from me--said I was too old." Were it not for surplus commodities, he said he would have starved. Seventy-five-year-old F. H. Brown wanted to resume teaching during the depression, but, he lamented, public officials "say I'm too old for WPA teaching." Ambrose Douglass, from Jacksonville, Florida, worked in the phosphate mines until the year before his interview, when the company retired the oldest workers and began to pay them pensions. He thought that he, too, would get one. Instead, he received a PWA assignment, and then, "they told me I was too old for that." Despite his ninety-one years, he did not believe he was too old to work, but the new practices undoubtedly precluded his continued employment. (43)

Elderly black women did not fare much better with public work relief. The "sewing projects" of the New Deal employed more than half of all female WPA workers. Materials for the projects came from local donations, but the donors often refused to provide for black women's projects except under the threat of losing all federal funding, including the portion used to pay the wages of the white women. The husband of the only freedwoman in the narratives who clearly had received one of the sewing jobs claimed that she ultimately suffered from discrimination that favored both white women and younger women. "She sewed till they cut off all but white ladies," Charles Anderson reported. "When she got sixty-five they let her go." As a result, Anderson's wife began to work as a cook. Robert Hinton's wife, Mary, lost her WPA job the year before his interview, and she subsequently started washing clothes for white people. Seventy-seven-year-old Alice Johnson seemed to summarize the plight of the black elderly in saying: "Us old folks, they don't count us. They jus' kick us out of the way." (44)

Unable, for these various reasons, to take advantage of the new government job programs, those elders who were physically able to work depended on old skills and pursued "odd jobs." Spencer Barnett, Walter Jones, and Cornelius Holmes repaired chairs. Barnett also made mats, and Holmes made and sold baskets. Zeb Crowder washed woodwork in white people's homes, and John Hamilton did yard work. Ben Horry continued to gather oysters, though he received fifty cents a bushel for them as opposed to the seventy-five cents he had earned before the depression. George Rogers dug worms for fishermen, and Tom Rosboro operated a small truck farm. While these men had incomes, however meager, most elderly male ex-slaves who were not farmers simply reported doing "odd jobs," which could mean anything from pulling weeds to delivering mail. Most significant, it meant unreliable pay and sporadic work. (45)

Women did not have many choices during the depression beyond their usual domestic work, and, as earlier examples suggest, those who were able, continued to do it. Emma Virgel ironed for white people while leaning on her crutches as her interview took place. Neither Rosie Johnson nor Kizzie Colquitt was fully healthy, but both washed and ironed when someone needed the service and was able to pay for it. Julia White's neighbors took in washing and allowed her to do some of the ironing. And Jessie Sparrow did laundry until she became too weak to carry the clothes back and forth. Not earning enough to pay an assistant, she had to quit. (46)

A few women managed to eke out a living without doing other people's cleaning. Nely Gray, who bad ironed as many as twenty shirts in a half-day when she was younger, was still able to quilt for people during the 1930s. Charity Riddick rented out a room in her house for seventy-five cents a week, which kept her supplied with wood and lamp oil. (Her electricity had been shut off for some time.) Betty Krump sold flowers and rented out a house that she owned in a white neighborhood. Eighty-four-year-old Lula Washington was most unusual in that she still made a living as a draywoman, though at the time of the interview she was laid up in bed with a broken leg due to a recent accident. But Ann Parker, who was at least one hundred years old, had survived by begging in front of the post office, until she was robbed. Then she gained admittance to the Wake County Home in Raleigh, North Carolina. And Fanny Smith Hodges could only make ends meet by combining public assistance, work, and charity. She received a four-dollar-a-month pension, did some washing for black people, and begged. Like the men, elderly women did what they could to support themselves during this economic crisis. Although as a group they had never had the work options or the income potential that men had, they felt the sting of the depression just as sharply. Kizzie Colquitt probably spoke for many when she said, "I used to have plenty, but times is changed and now sometimes I don't have nothin' but bread, and jus' read is hard to git, heap of de time." (47)

Beyond physical limitations, work program disqualifications, and reductions in pay for whatever work was at hand, these elders also suffered simply because relief assistance in the South was inadequate or nonexistent. Many states refused or lost federal dollars in 1936 because they did not or could not match those dollars with local funds. Compounding the problems were balanced-budget provisions of state constitutions, left over from Reconstruction, that made it even less likely that sufficient relief would be available for those in need. Finally, racial discrimination in local administration of the programs kept some deserving elderly African Americans from gaining their proper share of whatever government money was at hand. (48)

It should come as no surprise, then, that the narratives indicate that men and women who were no longer able to work, or unable to get work during the 1930s, enjoyed a better quality of life when they had children or other younger relatives who were willing to help support them. However true this was for men, family support was probably more important for women, since they had not historically worked in the better paying jobs that some men had held and since women had fewer opportunities for picking up the "odd jobs" that men regularly reported performing. Suggesting the difference such accommodations with family members could make for some, Delia Garlic, who went to live with her son after the death of her husband, declared, "I'se eatin' white bread now an' havin' de best time of my life." Whether Garlic's point was literal or figurative, poor people could not afford store-bought bread. (49)

Children of diverse means regularly provided for their parents. Emma Grisham, over ninety years old and a resident of Nashville, Tennessee, lived with her daughter--a Fisk University graduate and a schoolteacher. Sara Colquitt's daughter, by working in the fields in Opelika, Alabama, supported herself and her mother and employed someone to sit with her mother during the day. Ninety-three-year-old Charles Lee Dalton lived with his son's family. The interviewer noted that Dalton was "kindly cared for by his daughter-in-law" (who was probably a washerwoman) and that he had "plenty to eat [and] wear." (50)

The presence of younger family members was especially beneficial to those elders who farmed. (51) Eighty-two-year-old Robert Toatley, who lived near Winnsboro, South Carolina, had done well financially until boll weevils and the depression wreaked havoc on his 235-acre farm. Nevertheless, a daughter, a son, a daughter-in-law, and six grandchildren lived with Toatley in his four-room house, and they continued to work the land to advantage. Although the economic crisis had forced Toatley to take a second mortgage out on his farm some time after 1929, he expected to pay it off after selling that year's (1937) cotton crop. (52)

Despite the additional debt from his mortgage, the fact that Toatley owned his own land made his situation even more advantageous. Toatley could easily have benefited from two major New Deal programs. First, he, not a landlord or lienholder, would have received the government allotments and parity bonuses for plowing under, and later for not growing, certain crops under the provisions of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Sharecroppers rarely got all of their portion of the allotment checks; many got none of it. And, second, Toatley could have qualified for the low interest loans made available through the Federal Farm Board. Sharecroppers were ineligible for these loans, and most tenant farmers had to have the approval of their landlord--the first lienholder--who often had much to gain by not approving the transaction. Only landowners (20 percent of black farmers) and cash tenants (10 percent of black farmers) could apply for the loans independently. Thus, among African American farmers, Toatley was one of the few who could have taken advantage of such New Deal programs, which, added to the labor of his resident children and grandchildren, would help make his land profitable. (53)

Young people also had more access to the New Deal work programs that were available. One program in particular was designed to support the elders as well. Seventy percent of the wages of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers went directly home to dependents--often parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Louisa Davis indicated to one Writers' Project worker that she and her daughter were well cared for because of the CCC:

   You see dis new house, de flower pots, de dog out yonder,
   de cat in de sun lyin'
   in de chair on de porch, de seven tubs under de shed,
   de two big wash pots, you
   see de pictures hangin' round de wall,
   de nice beds, all dese things is de blessin's
   of de Lord through President Roosevelt. My grandson,
   Pinckney, is a World
   War man, and he got in de CCC camp, still in it in North Carolina.

Pinckney's earnings went to buy a lot and build a house. Although the numerous washtubs and pots suggest that his mother and/or grandmother might have made a living washing clothes, they clearly enjoyed the "home of happiness" that Pinckney made for them. (54)

Local practices, legal or not, also encouraged generational interdependence. Relief administrators sometimes required young recipients to live with and assist their aging relatives in exchange for WPA jobs. Consequently, eighty-three-year-old Jake McLeod shared his home (which he owned) with his nephew: "Dey give him government job wid de understandin' he help me." The nephew earned twenty-four dollars a month. (55) It is also possible that many more younger women received WPA assignments as caregivers for former slaves than the narratives reveal. (56)

Freedpeople well understood the importance of their young relatives' contributions. Because of the difficulty of qualifying for a pension or government program and the lack of alternatives to public assistance, a common refrain in the narratives was expressed by North Carolinian Adeline Crump: "My chillun gives me what I gits." Ninety-seven-year-old Mack Taylor, who had one son in Washington, D.C., and another in Ohio, also had a son and grandson who lived with him on his ninety-seven acre farm in South Carolina. He described the grandson (who was a grown man himself) as "de main staff I lean on as I climb up to de hundred mile post of age." Celia Robinson, whose husband and two children were dead, summarized the bleakest point of view in her lament: "I wish I had had two dozen children.... If I had had two dozen maybe some would be wid me now. I am lonesome and unable to work." Still, Robinson, who lived with her grandson, did not complain of being cold, ragged, or hungry, as elderly solitaires regularly did. (57)

Some of these elders had children who were still alive but not around. The location of the absent, but living, children is not always clear in the narratives, but the reason for their absence is not a total mystery. The WPA reports thus provide important glimpses into another twentieth-century historical phenomenon--the Great Migration. Ella Kelly, for example, had thirteen children, one of whom lived with her. The others "cover de earth from Charlotte to Jacksonville, and from Frisco to Harlem, New York." She saw only three of them anymore. Jessie Sparrow had learned, just before her interview, that one of her daughters was about to come visit from Philadelphia. Another daughter had married and gone "way out west to live." Without malice, and probably referring only to the physical distance between them and to her own advanced age, Sparrow concluded, "I don' never 'spect to see [her] no more on dis side of de world." Jake McLeod, whose nephew gained a WPA job in exchange for caring for his uncle, had daughters living in New York who paid the taxes on his property. And Mississippian Anna Baker had an open invitation to move to Chicago to join the young cousin she had reared. (58)

Some of the elders, however, were not as fortunate and had lost touch with younger family members who had joined the Great Migration. Alabamian Emma Chapman had two children whose whereabouts were unknown to her. Her daughter had moved to Mobile after she married, and her son had gone to Chicago where he obtained work as a chauffeur. Chapman's last letter from him, which included twenty-five dollars, was several years old. Mississippian John Cameron, who had three children still alive as far as he knew, informed his interviewer, "One of 'em is in Memphis, 'nother'n in Detroit, an' de other'n in Chicago. I writes to 'em to he'p me, but don' never hear from 'em. I's old an' dey is forgot me, I guess." Charlie Davis's children were "scattered 'bout over de world somewhere, and dat somewhere is where I don't know. They ain't no help to me now, in my old age." (59)

Even when the elders knew the location of their migrant children, their assistance was sometimes inconsistent. Although Jake McLeod's daughters' paying the taxes on their father's property was not an isolated example, not all children could afford such generosity. (60) Reflecting a more typical relationship between migrants and their southern kin, ninety-six-year-old Matilda Pugh Daniel's relatives in Detroit sent small amounts of money to her in Alabama from time to time. Jane Anne Upperman, who lived with a daughter in North Carolina, had children in New York who sent Christmas presents most years and often Mother's Day gifts as well. But all too frequent were reports like that of eighty-nine-year-old Frank Smith, who had a forty-year-old son living in Birmingham, Alabama, who, according to Smith, "don't help me nary cent." Smith believed that his son could have helped him. (61) It was common for country people (and perhaps older people) to assume that the city dwellers (or younger people) could do, and were doing, better than their rural elderly relatives. But by the time of Smith's interview, even President Roosevelt referred to Birmingham as "the worst hit city in the country." (62) Cities were undoubtedly hit harder than the elders realized. Moreover, many younger family members were unemployed or underpaid and simply unable to help, if they were even still alive.

With sometimes sketchy impressions of their children's location and circumstances during the depression, the elders could do little more than complain. "White folks" called Ella Kelly's son "Blossom." "[B]ut," observed Kelly, "he don't bloom 'round here wid any money.... " She speculated, "[W]hen I gits my old age pension my chillun will pay me some little 'tention, thank God. Don't you know they will, sure they will." Millie Barber similarly believed that if she got her pension, "dere will be more folks playin' in my backyard than dere is today." (63)

Kelly and Barber were clearly aware of the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, designed, in part, to aid people of their generation. The act included provisions for an old-age pension from ten dollars to eighty-five dollars a month for people over sixty-five years of age (Title II) and some assistance for others (through Title I) who would not have had the opportunity to contribute to Title II's insurance program. Though these former slaves did not have much, or necessarily accurate, information about policy developments, they had enough to be hopeful. Their encounter with a Federal Writers' Project worker created a unique opportunity to learn more and to obtain some critical assistance. Minnie Davis's absolute refusal to talk until her interviewer bought her something to eat resolved her most urgent need for food. Elias Dawkins, on the other hand, sought a long-term solution for his problems. When he met with the Writers' Project worker he was very direct: "I wants de pension. Is you gwine to tell me 'bout it?" (64)

For some of the freedpeople, gaining the federal pension was crucial to survival. Even if local assistance were available, it rarely covered all of one's basic needs. Blount Baker received a mere three dollars a month. Moreover, black relief recipients often got rations--and meager rations at that--rather than money. North Carolinian Zeb Crowder figured that his were worth about eighty cents a week. He received "1/2 peck meal (corn meal), 2 lbs oat meal, 2 lbs dry skim milk, and 1 lb plate meat" a week--a list reminiscent of the old slave rations. (65) Needham Love of Little Rock might not have been aware of the fiscal condition of the state of Arkansas, which, in 1932, had the highest debt per capita of all the states and, by the time of his interview, was in default on bond loans issued for highway construction (and would not complete repayment, without interest, for another forty years). What Love did know was that his relief check was first ten dollars a month, then eight dollars, then four dollars. The last reduction, he said, "cut the breath out of me." (66) Many respondents did not think they were being treated fairly, and historians have since proved the racial disparities. Yet the federal pension could reduce or even eliminate some of the worst conditions, and so qualifying for it, which was not always easy, was of the utmost importance. Sabe Rutledge was particularly exasperated with the process and refused to accept that the WPA worker could not give him any useful information. "You can't tell me bout this pension?" he asked. "Look like to me somebody trying to smother something." (67)

It is possible that somebody was trying to smother something. It is a fact that provisions in the administration of Social Security and, before that, changes in the conceptualization of the bill, disproportionately affected the black elderly. Title II, the insurance section of the bill, explicitly excluded domestic and agricultural laborers, the overwhelming majority of African American workers. But even more important for this generation were the changes in Title I (Old Age Assistance program). The earliest drafts of the bill called for "reasonable subsistence compatible with decency and health," but the final wording allowed state officials to "furnish financial assistance, as far as practicable under the conditions in each state, to aged needy individuals." Compounding the problems for many, after 1935 the WPA included no provisions for direct relief (only work relief). As a result, if these elders were not eligible for or able to obtain Old Age Assistance, and if they could not qualify for one of the categorical assistance programs of the Social Security Act (for which very few--the blind, for example--could qualify), they became dependent upon the abilities and caprices of state and local administrators, to whom the federal government, upon the establishment of the WPA, had turned over the unemployable. This shift, in essence, from federal to state and local support for these elders who were largely physically unable to work caused stipends to drop quickly and significantly, which might have been an additional factor in the series of cuts Needham Love suffered in Arkansas. (68)

Despite all the difficulties, freedpeople remained hopeful that they would eventually receive a federal pension and consistent in their belief that they had earned one. Al Rosboro saw it as a matter of reciprocity: "I's done a heap for my country. I wants Mr. Roosevelt to hear 'bout dat; then maybe him make de country do sumpin' for me." Will Dill also insisted that people who had worked well when they were able should be supported in their old age. Seventy-five-year-old Dan Smith saw the process of gaining the pension as idiosyncratic at best, but he made it clear that he was just as deserving as anyone. He had heard that retiring Supreme Court justices received a $15,000-a-year pension when they left the bench at the age of seventy-five. Smith asked, "[I]n de name of goodness, why don't they make me quit mixing mortar when I is seventy-five years old and give me $240.00 a year? Sauce for de fat goose Supreme Court Jedge, oughta be sauce for de mortar mixer poor gander, I 'low. It look lak jestice for de rich jedge and mix more mortar for poor Dan." (69)

In spite of slavery scholars' concerns about the pressure on former slaves to answer survey questions in certain ways, some respondents obviously showed little fear in speaking their mind about what they needed and what they believed they had earned. Mack Taylor, nearly one hundred years old, was particularly assertive. He had spent his life working hard and saving his money, and he insisted that had he known his conservative lifestyle would serve him no better than it had in his old age, he would have lived differently. When his interviewer suggested that he remember his religious training, Taylor's response was neither cowering nor manipulative; it was direct. He reminded his interviewer of the biblical warning that people would reap what they sowed. Then he elaborated: "Us niggers was fetched here 'ginst our taste. Us fell de forests for corn, wheat, oats, and cotton; drained de swamps for rice; built de dirt roads and de railroads; and us old ones is got a fair right to our part of de pension." (70)

Convinced that they had a right to the newly available government support, these men and women, like Charley Williams, refused to give up. But instead of wishing to see their old masters again as Williams did, many of the freedpeople directed their thoughts toward Washington, D.C., and toward the man they believed had or would come through for them--Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (71) Chana Littlejohn prayed for him. "When he is sick," she said, "I is jist as scared as I kin be. I prays fer him ter stay well." Lizzie Baker noted, "He has saved so many lives. I think he has saved mine.... I purely love him and I feel I could do better to see him and tell him so face to face." William Scott, who also described Roosevelt as a lifesaver, insisted, "The only chance I had to hold my home wuz a chance given me through him." Mississippian Anna Baker was similarly grateful. She concluded, "I aint got nothin' lef' now 'cept a roof over my head. I wouldn' have dat 'cept for de President o' de United States.... President Roosevelt done 'tended to de roof over my head." Many former slaves came to the same conclusion. (72)

The WPA ex-slave narratives, with all their flaws, indeed hold much evidence related to life under slavery in the antebellum South. But their value as historical documents is not limited to the study of slavery or to the nineteenth century. These documents also represent a vast resource for exploring, among other topics, family history, labor history, and the general history of southern race relations from the early nineteenth century well into the twentieth. And evidence about the depression-era circumstances of several generations of African Americans is almost as plentiful in these narratives as information about life under slavery.

In particular, the narratives are an impressive and extensive source for studying the impact of the Great Depression on elderly African Americans, especially in the South. The narratives not only indicate what these elders had to eat, how they obtained it, and how often they got it, but they also provide insight on physical living conditions. They suggest differences and similarities in how men and women, northerners and southerners, and urban and rural dwellers experienced the economic crisis. They tell us about the relationship of land tenure, household composition, and family structure to survival. And they illustrate the particular effect of New Deal programs on the black elderly not merely as old people, but also as workers. The narratives suggest much more that we can begin to report if we look more closely and more systematically at them.

For example, the narratives offer a way of looking at the Great Migration as an integral part of the impact of the Great Depression. Between 1914 and 1930, more than a million black people left the South for northern destinations. The young left in numbers disproportionate to their population. Historian Peter Gottlieb has determined that 76 percent of black male migrants to Pittsburgh in 1917 were between eighteen and forty years old--almost twice their percentage in the southern black male population. (73) Although the disparity might not have been as great in other years or other cities, the most able-bodied were always in the best position to take advantage of whatever opportunities the North had to offer. We have numerous, and good, scholarly examinations of the lives of those who "quit" the South and headed north or west for the better opportunities they hoped to find. While we know much, if not enough, about how the migrants fared after they reached new destinations, there is an aspect of their relocation about which we know precious little. The migrants represented more than a new social, economic, and political force in the North, and more than a lost labor force for the South. They also represented branches of families rooted, and sometimes remaining, in the South. The Great Migration has always been considered a major turning point in African American history. The WPA ex-slave narratives provide a way of connecting the Great Migration to the Great Depression through the people whose fate kept them from leaving the southland. (74)

There is in fact in these narratives a multilayered story, only briefly touched upon here, about intergenerational relations. The narratives document how New Deal-era programs and practices encouraged intergenerational connections and how economic conditions practically demanded them. Yet the narratives also suggest that the migration of able-bodied black men and women during and after the First World War left some elderly black southerners without even the possibility of traditional family support to cushion or ameliorate conditions for them. The issue becomes more complex, still, when one considers that by the onset of the depression, the larger American society had been moving away from direct intergenerational support for a generation or more. Veterans' bonuses, company-funded pensions, insurance, and the growth of personal savings as a consequence of higher industrial wages increasingly made it possible for many Americans to support themselves in their old age. (75) But elderly black southerners had not generally had the work or military opportunities of white Americans and consequently had little chance to generate or to retrieve such funds. Stuck in menial and agricultural labor, even as the mid-twentieth century approached, direct intergenerational support--the presence, employment, and generosity of children, grandchildren, and other younger relatives--was still a critical factor in the survival of the black southern elderly. (76)

In spite of the wealth of twentieth-century evidence provided by the WPA ex-slave narratives, they remain primarily a source for studying the nineteenth century. In that context, they sometimes generate as many questions as they answer. Some of the questions can be answered through closer examination of the internal evidence. Others will require going beyond these narratives to plantation and public records. And, as is the case for all documentary evidence, some questions will simply forever haunt us. Historians must continue to develop new avenues for answering all of the old questions, but we must also ask new questions of the old material. The WPA ex-slave narratives, despite their controversial nature, are an ideal resource for both endeavors. They undoubtedly remain a treasure trove for thinking about the experiences of slaves. But because most of the interviews took place between 1936 and 1939, they can also teach us much about African American life during the Great Depression. It is at least a logical place to start.

(1) The Works Progress Administration's Federal Project Number One (known as the Federal Arts Project) established programs in art, writing, music, theater, and historical records; it was created in 1935 and ended in 1939. Some states, however, continued to support the Federal Writers' Project until 1943. For a detailed history of the Federal Arts Project see William F. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts: The Origins and Administrative History of the Arts Projects of the Works Progress Administration (Columbus, Ohio, 1969). On the Writers' Project specifically see Jerre Mangione, The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers' Project, 1935-1943 (Boston and Toronto, 1972). I wish to thank Kenneth Hamilton for encouraging me to pursue this topic; Lydia Lindsey, Carlton Wilson, and Joe William Trotter Jr. for commenting on a very early draft; Kenneth Goings for commenting on numerous drafts; and Kenneth Andrien for providing especially important advice at a critical point in the production of this essay. Thanks also to librarians Bennie Daye and Debra Hazel for all of their help, to my colleagues Michael Les Benedict, John C. Burnham, Susan M. Hartmann, and Randolph Roth, and to Raymond Wolters and the four anonymous Journal readers for their comments. This article benefited from questions raised during presentations at North Carolina Central University, the University of Michigan, Brown University, Duke University, Ohio State University, and the 1997 meeting of the Collegium for African American Research. I began a systematic study of the narratives while a Fellow at the National Humanities Center and on a sabbatical from Ohio State University (1995-96). I am grateful to both institutions for their support.

(2) Early published studies in folklore, based on the ex-slave narratives alone, include B. A. Botkin, ed., Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery (Chicago, 1945); and Lyle Saxon, Edward Dreyer, and Robert Tallant, comps., Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales (Boston, 1945). Important recent works in folklore that utilize these narratives include Gladys-Marie Fry, Night Riders in Black Folk History (Knoxville, 1975); Roger D. Abrahams, Singing the Master: The Emergence of African American Culture in the Plantation South (New York, 1992); and Ronald L. Baker, Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless: The WPA Interviews with Former Slaves Living in Indiana (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2000). Zora Neale Hurston, although trained as an anthropologist during the 1920s and well published by the mid-1930s, undoubtedly benefited from her experience as one of the Florida WPA workers assigned to interview former slaves. Hurston, who had collected folklore among black southerners during the 1920s, joined the Writers' Project in 1938. That year, she published Tell My Horse (Philadelphia and New York, 1938). She followed this work with Moses, Man of the Mountain (Philadelphia and New York, 1939), and in 1941 she wrote Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (Philadelphia and New York, 1942). See Robert E. Hemenway, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography (Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1977), esp. 21, 231, 251-53, 256. Theologian Lewis V. Baldwin uses the narratives in "'A Home in Dat Rock': Afro-American Folk Sources and Slave Visions of Heaven and Hell," Journal of Religious Thought, 41 (Spring- Summer 1984), 38-57. A clothing and textile (human ecology) study based on the narratives is Barbara M. Starke, "Slave Narratives: Accounts of What They Wore," in Barbara M. Starke, Lillian O. Holloman, and Barbara K. Nordquist, eds., African American Dress and Adornment: A Cultural Perspective (Dubuque, Iowa, 1990), 68-80.

(3) Works on slavery utilizing the WPA narratives are extensive. Along with those cited in n. 4 (excluding Blassingame and Johnson), see Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (New York, 1976); Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York, 1976); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill and London, 1988); Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill and London, 1998); John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York and Oxford. 1999); and Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2000). Ted Ownby's American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers. Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998 (Chapel Hill and London, 1999) includes chapters on slave consumption based partly on the WPA narratives.

(4) John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York and other cities, 1972); Blassingame, "Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems," Journal of Southern History, 41 (November 1975), 473-92. Walter Johnson also decided against using the ex-slave narratives for his work Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1999); see esp. 226 n. 24. Among those who have used the narratives, while discussing their strengths and weaknesses as sources, are George P. Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community (Westport, Conn., 1972); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974), esp. 675-78; Paul D. Escott, Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives (Chapel Hill, 1979), esp. 6-16; and Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana and Chicago, 1984), esp. xv-xxii. One might also point to the less direct but equally useful discussion of the sources in Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1977), xii-xiii. Michael A. Gomez's Exchanging Our Country Marks, by focusing on evidence of identity formation, demonstrates very creative and effective use of the narratives in ways that get around the problems that haunt studies of "day-to-day" life under slavery.

(5) Donna J. Spindel, "Assessing Memory: Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives Reconsidered, "Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 27 (Autumn 1996), 247-61.

(6) Essays on the narratives as historical sources include Benjamin A. Botkin, "The Slave as His Own Interpreter," Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions, 2 (November 1944), 37-3; Norman R. Yetman, "The Background of the Slave Narrative Collection," American Quarterly, 19 (Fall 1967), 534-53; C. Vann Woodward, "History from Slave Sources: A Review Article, "American Historical Review, 79 (April 1974), 470-81; Blassingame, "Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves," 473-92; Paul D. Escott, "The Art and Science of Reading WPA Slave Narratives, "in Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds., The Slave's Narrative (Oxford and New York, 1985), 40-48; and Stephen C. Crawford, "Problems in the Quantitative Analysis of the Data Contained in the WPA and Fisk University Narratives of Ex-Slaves," in Robert W. Fogel, Ralph A. Galantine, and Richard L. Manning, eds., Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, Evidence and Methods (New York and London, 1992), 331-71. The earlier authors were writing about the approximately 2,200 WPA ex-slave narratives made available for scholarly use by the Library of Congress during the early 1940s. The later essays refer to George P. Rawick, ed, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (19 vols.; Westport, Conn., 1972). Sixteen of these nineteen volumes are the WPA narratives. The conclusions in this essay are based on the 2,200 narratives included in these sixteen volumes. Two supplementary series (published in 1977 and 1979), composed of narratives from state libraries and archives that did not reach the Library of Congress by the early 1940s, bring the total number of narrative volumes to forty and the number of narratives to more than 3,000, or about 3 percent of all living former slaves. Both figures actually represent a very substantial database.

(7) George Bollinger is one former slave who was interviewed by the granddaughter of his former owner or employer. Rawick, ed., American Slave. Vol. XI: Arkansas Narratives, Part 7, and Missouri Narratives, 43 (Mo.). And Thomas Jefferson was interviewed by the granddaughter of the woman to whom he was given (as a child) as a wedding present. All subsequent references to the Rawick edition of the published WPA ex-slave narratives will be cited thus: Thomas Jefferson interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 3, pp. 20-22.

(8) Woodward, "History from Slave Sources," 474; Blassingame, "Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves," 482-83; Escott, "Art and Science of Reading WPA Slave Narratives, "41-42; Joyner, Down by the Riverside, xv.

(9) Set in the context of the depression but actually focusing on the New Deal is Raymond Wolters's excellent study, Negroes and the Great Depression: The Problem of Economic Recovery (Westport, Conn., 1970). One of the few studies produced during the depression that details conditions under which blacks lived is Arthur F. Raper, Preface to Peasantry: A Tale of Two Black Belt Counties (Chapel Hill, 1936). Although many studies exist that include information about black life during the Great Depression, few focus on the phenomenon. Among the latter are Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill and London, 1990); Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, "Or Does It Explode?" Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York and Oxford, 1991); Charles Pete T. Banner-Haley, To Do Good and To Do Well: Middle-Class Blacks and the Depression, Philadelphia, 1929-1941 (New York and London, 1993); and Brenda Clegg Gray, Black Female Domestics during the Depression in New York City, 1930-1940 (New York and London, 1993).

(10) See, for example, Ira De A. Reid, Preston Valien, Charles S. Johnson, and Robert C. Weaver, The Urban Negro Worker in the United States, 1925-1936: An Analysis of the Training, Types, and Conditions (2 vols.; Washington, D.C., 1938-1939); Bruce L. Melvin and Elna Smith, Rural Youth: Their Situation and Prospects (Washington, D.C., 1938); and T. J. Woofter Jr., Landlord and Tenant on the Cotton Plantation (Washington, D.C., 1936). The last provides a good mix of useful statistics and analysis.

(11) Examples include Charles S. Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation (Chicago, 1934); John Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (New Haven, 1937); Hortense Powdermaker, After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South (New York, 1939); and Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R. Gardner, Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class (Chicago, 1941). Also see Raper, Preface to Peasantry, for another contemporary study.

(12) The narratives from Louisiana are not published in the American Slave series. See instead Ronnie W. Clayton, Mother Wit: The Ex-Slave Narratives of the Louisiana Writers' Project (New York and other cities, 1990).

(13) Charley Williams interview, American Slave, VII (Okla.), 330.

(14) See Charles L. Perdue Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Phillips, comps, and eds., Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves (Charlottesville, 1976), xxxv-xxxvi. For the entire list of questions see pp. 367-76. The questionnaire contained at least two options for addressing this issue: "Are times as good now or better compared with slave days?" and "Have you been happier in slavery or free?" (p. 372).

(15) Henri Necaise interview, American Slave, VII (Miss.), 124; Parker Pool interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 190-91; Andrew Boone interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 137.

(16) The importance of paying close attention to the internal evidence of the narratives is suggested by Gerald Jaynes, who gives an example of a slave saying, "Boss, it was heap more better to be a slave nigger dan er free un. An' it was really er heavenly day when de freedom come for de race." Jaynes argues that these sentences are not contradictory; moreover, the first sentence is not an attempt to appease the white interviewer. Jaynes urges scholars to consider not only the transition from slavery to freedom but also contextual transitions: "It was, when the overwhelming majority of blacks were slaves, better to be a slave in a social system which was based upon the enslavement of blacks. It was, however, quite different to be free when the entire race was also free." Jaynes, "Plantation Factories and the Slave Work Ethic," in Davis and Gates, eds., Slave's Narrative, 98-112 (first quotation on p. 100; second quotation on p. 101).

(17) Examples of those who thought the postemancipation period was worse than the depression are Liney Chambers interview, American Slave, VIII (Ark.), Pt. 2, p. 6; and Jesse Rice interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 13.

(18) Among those who suffered much less during the depression than most others (even if their incomes declined significantly) were those who owned income-earning property. See Betty Krump interview, American Slave, IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, pp. 218-19; Edward Taylor interview, ibid., XI (Mo.), 341; Mattie Fannen interview, ibid., VIII (Ark.), Pt. 2, p. 268; and Henry Maxwell interview, ibid., XVII (Fla.), 219. Maxwell, an orange grower, was reputedly worth a quarter of a million dollars during the 1930s. Besides those living with able-bodied, employed children (discussed below), the only other obvious group consistently and adequately provided for were military pensioners, especially those who served the Union side, and retired federal government workers. See William Baltimore interview, ibid., VIII (Ark.), Pt. 1, p. 99; Alex Huggins interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 451-52; Henry H. Butler interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 1, p. 181; William H. Harrison interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 3, p. 188; Solomon Lambert interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 234; and Henry Long interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, pp.288-89. Men who served the Confederacy were not as well rewarded. See Ransom Simmons interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 91.

(19) Although social scientists in the 1930s paid a great deal of attention to the obvious poverty in the towns they studied, that notice rarely resulted in specific attention to nutrition--a basic factor of survival. Charles S. Johnson's Shadow of the Plantation includes two pages on diet (pp.100-102); Powdermaker, in After Freedom, wrote one page (pp. 79-80); and Dollard's Caste and Class in a Southern Town included no discussion of diet or nutrition. Davis, Gardner, and Gardner's Deep South includes a very useful and relatively lengthy discussion of the seasonal fluctuations that affected diet (pp. 379-87).

(20) Julia Brown stopped her interview because she was too hungry to continue. The interviewer subsequently sent groceries to her. Minnie Davis made her interviewer's buying her something to eat a condition of her granting the interview. Julia Brown interview, American Slave, XII (Ga.), Pt. 1, pp. 148-49; Minnie Davis interview, ibid., XII (Ga.), Pt. 1, p. 253. Mintie Gilbert Wood took her breakfast around seven o'clock each day and had dinner during the early afternoon. "The rest of the time," she noted, "I drink plenty water all day and all through the night." Wood interview, ibid., XI (Mo.), 376. The narratives include many examples of others able to eat only once a day and many for whom even a single daily meal was not guaranteed.

(21) Jesse Davis interview, American Slave, II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 263; Elias Dawkins interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 318; Gable Locklier interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 116; Andrew Boone interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 131. Dawkins's exact comment was, "Dis de truth, I is took a chip fer food." Because he was attempting to convey the desperateness of his situation, I assume he was referring to cow chips or some other animal waste.

(22) Andrew Goodman interview, American Slave, IV (Tex.), Pt. 2, p. 74; Harry Johnson interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 2, p. 215; Gus Clark interview, ibid., VII (Miss.), 24; Henri Necaise interview, ibid., VII (Miss.), 120. South Carolinians seemed most adamant about how much better they had eaten as slaves, perhaps indicating, as others have noted, how bad the situation was for them in the 1930s. See Gus Feaster interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 2, p. 61; Madison Griffin interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 2, p. 214; Sallie Paul interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 233; Anne Bell interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 52; and Bill Young interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p.272.

(23) While slaves generally had food to eat, slave diets were often nutritionally unsound. Samuel Boulware recognized that not having been hungry did not mean he had been well fed. He pointed out, "Us had plenty to eat in slavery time. It wasn't de best but it filled us up and give us strength "nough to work." Boulware interview, American Slave, II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 67. Historian Kenneth M. Stampp suggested that bad nutrition was as likely a consequence of poor knowledge about nutrition as dereliction. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York, 1956), 282. A rather heated debate about the diet of slaves began after the publication of Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Eronomics of American Negro Slavery (Boston and Toronto, 1974), 109-15, in which the authors concluded that "the slave diet was not only adequate, it actually exceeded modern (1964) recommended daily levels of the chief nutrients" (p. 115). Most of the others who took up the issue came to different conclusions about both caloric intake and nutritional value. They also attributed many slave ailments, reports of disease, and even management problems to these deficiencies. See Stampp, Peculiar Institution, 282-87, 304; Owens, This Species of Property, 50-69; Kenneth F. and Virginia H. Kiple, "Black Tongue and Black Men: Pellagra and Slavery in the Antebellum South," Journal of Southern History, 43 (August 1977), 411-28; Kenneth F. Kiple and Virginia Himmelsteib King, Another Dimension to the Black Diaspora: Diet, Disease, and Racism (Cambridge, Eng., and New York, 1981), 79-95; Todd L. Savitt, Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia (Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1978), 86-103; Todd L. Savitt, "Slave Health and Southern Distinctiveness," in Savitt and James Harvey Young, eds., Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South (Knoxville, 1988), esp. 136-37; Robert A. Margo and Richard H. Steckel, "The Heights of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health," Social Science History, 6 (Fall 1982), 516-38; and Richard H. Steckel, "A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity," Journal of Economic History, 46 (September 1986), 721-41. The most direct response to Fogel and Engerman on the question of slave diet and nutrition is Richard Sutch, "The Care and Feeding of Slaves," in Paul A. David et al., Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery (New York, 1976), 231-301. Fogel and Engerman subsequently revised and supported more detailed examinations of their original conclusions in Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989); and Fogel and Engerman, eds., Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery--Technical Papers (2 vols.; New York, 1992).

(24) Gus Clark interview, American Slave, VII (Miss.), 22-25; Harry Johnson interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 2, pp. 212-15; Andrew Goodman interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 2, pp. 74-80; Henri Necaise interview, ibid., VII (Miss.), 120-22.

(25) Donaville Broussard interview, American Slave, IV (Tex.), Pt. 1, p. 153; Henry Wright interview, ibid., XIII (Ga.), Pt. 4, p. 204; Andrew Boone interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 137. Similarly, note the careful words of Aaron Russel of Fort Worth: "Times lately I's wish I's back with de massa, 'cause I has plenty rations dare. It hard to be hongry and dat I's been many times lately." Although he might have wished to be with his old master, he clearly did not wish for a return to slavery. Madison Griffin answered, "O' course I rather it not be slavery time, but I got more ter eat den dan now." Just as important, however, are the many examples like that provided by Dorcas Griffeth (and Andrew Boone), who made it clear that the suffering during slavery and the depression were equally bad. Griffeth insisted, "De food dey give us wus mighty nigh nuthin'. Our clothes wus bad and our sleepin' places wus not nothin' at all.... We had a hard time then and we are havin' a hard time now." Aaron Russel interview, ibid., V (Tex.), Pt. 3, p. 273; Madison Griffin interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 2, p. 214; Dorcas Griffeth interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 347. It is also important to note that those who were emancipated as children could have correctly remembered a life of more pleasure than pain, given the child-centered nature of the slave community and given the burdens that normally came later with adulthood, whether slave or free.

(26) Charley Williams interview, American Slave, VII (Okla.), 330; Laura Clark interview, ibid., VI (Ala.), 74; Andrew Boone interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 131; Jessie Sparrow interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 141. Gus Clark reported living with his wife in an "old mill cabin" that was falling down. Clark interview, ibid., VII (Miss.), 22. Caroline Richardson pointed out that "de top [of the house] has come ter pieces an' de steps has fell down," but she did at least own it (though she expected it would be taken from her for back taxes). Richardson interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 202. In most narratives, however, comments about the former slaves' houses and their contents are provided by the interviewers.

(27) Jessie Sparrow interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 4, pp. 130 (quotation), 141; Tillie's interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 358.

(28) William Hamilton, who received a ten-dollar-a-month state pension, noted: "De white folks lets me live in dis shack for mowin' de lawn, but I worries 'bout when I can't do no more work." Elijah Green, who had been a janitor at several black colleges, lost his savings when the local banks collapsed. At the time of his interview, he collected rents for his landlord in exchange for a room. Texan Wash Ingram worked for food, clothes, and housing. (It is not clear that Ingram worked for white people, however. It does seem that he lived with black friends.) Al Rosboro's interviewer said he lived for free with his wife, daughter, and six grandchildren, but the younger family members undoubtedly worked the four acres on which they lived, and the crop belonged to the landowner, Mr. Brice. Even though there is no evidence that the family paid rent, neither is there any evidence that anyone received pay for that work. William Hamilton interview, American Slave, IV (Tex.), Pt. 2, p. 108; Elijah Green interview, ibid., 11 (S.C.), Pt. 2, p. 199; Wash Ingram interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 2, p. 179; A1 Rosboro interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 38.

(29) William Baltimore interview, American Slave, VIII (Ark.), Pt. 1, p. 99; Frankie Goole interview, ibid., XVI (Tenn.), 22; Cheney Cross interview, ibid., VI (Ala.), 96-97. White people also helped eighty-nine-year-old Solomon Lambert of Holly Grove, Arkansas, get his "Federal soldier's pension." Lambert interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 234. Eli Harrison needed an affidavit signed attesting to his age in order to complete his pension application. He located a WPA worker with whom he had played when the worker was a child (perhaps Harrison was the worker's former caretaker/nurse). Harrison reminded the worker of as many details as he could recall, and once the interviewer acknowledged the same memories, Harrison cut the interview off in order to return the signed form to the people handling pension applications. Harrison interview. ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 2, pp. 244-46. Those former slaves who were Catholics were more likely to have had the benefit of birth or baptismal records in the church. One example of a former slave calling on the Catholic Church to verify his qualifications for assistance was Kentucky-born John Rudd. See Rudd interview, ibid., VI (Ind.), 172.

(30) Eighty-seven-year-old Eliza Scantling from Scotia, South Carolina, received wood from "Miss Maggie," and Cheney Cross, who had just taken a meal at her employer's home when she met with the interviewer, realized how tenuous such support was. "My white folks is sp'ilin' [spoiling] me here today," Cross said. "I'll be lookin' for it tomorrow, too, an' I won't be gittin' it." Eliza Scantling interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 78; Cheney Cross interview, ibid., VI (Ala.), 95-96. Years of loyal labor rewarded Walter Jones: when he could no longer pay his rent, "Mr. Ashly" allowed him to stay on. Millie Barber noted that several elderly people on the farm where she lived (and probably previously had worked) paid no rent. And while Mafia Clemments did not pay rent, her new landlord had recently purchased her home when she could not pay the mortgage, permitting her to stay. Walter Jones interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 172; Millie Barber interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 38; Maria Clemments interview, ibid., VIII (Ark.), Pt. 2, p. 19. Also see Amos Clark interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 1, p. 222; and Alice Bradley interview, ibid., XII (Ga.), Pt. l, p. 122.

(31) Ransom Simmons interview, American Slave. III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 91: Alex Huggins interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 451-52; Henry H. Butler interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), 181 ; Thomas Dixon interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, pp. 324-25.

(32) Page Harris interview, American Slave, XVI (Md.), 24. The narratives do not generally depict women having purchased land independently; rather, women landowners tended to have acquired the land with their husbands when they were younger. See Lizzie Hughes interview, ibid.. IV (Tex.), Pt. 2. p. 168; and Hannah Allen interview, ibid., XI (Mo.), 11. Patsy Southwell lived with her husband on land purchased by her father before they purchased their own farm. Southwell interview, ibid., V (Tex.), Pt. 4, p. 56.

(33) Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression, 7. On the lack of choice for many farmers, Hortense Powdermaker, in After Freedom, quoted a local schoolteacher in the 1930s as saying, "Just a few years ago a tenant was compelled to plant cotton up to his doorstep and was not permitted to have his own vegetable patch" (pp. 79-80). Roger Biles, in The South and the New Deal (Lexington, Ky., 1994), notes that some commissaries operated by landlords charged 10 to 60 percent interest on goods sold on credit, and the landlords often paid the workers in tender that was negotiable only in the commissary (p. 37). For a good discussion of the many problems black farmers faced under these circumstances, see Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression, 21-38.

(34) On regional differences in qualifying for aid see Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue. Vol. I: The Depression Decade (New York, 1978), 36-37. For an excellent but brief discussion of the decline of black representation in the skilled trades in the South after emancipation, see Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana and Chicago, 1989), 164-66. The segregation of labor unions also worked against black employment in the South. On efforts to open unions to black southerners see Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression, esp. 169-92. Although there are numerous, excellent recent works that examine black workers in specific locales, trades, or unions, the best general studies that cover this phenomenon remain Herbert R. Northrop, Organized Labor and the Negro (New York and London, 1944); Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1973 (New York and London, 1974); and William H. Harris, The Harder We Run: Black Workers since the Civil War (New York and Oxford, 1982).

(35) David A. Hall interview, American Slave, XVI (Ohio), 41.

(36) Robert Bryant interview, American Slave, XI (Mo.), 67; Lewis Mundy interview, ibid., XI (Mo.), 259; Giles Smith interview, ibid., V (Tex.), Pt. 4, p. 30; James Davis interview, ibid., VIII (Ark.), Pt. 2, p. 112. Some of these men did receive financial support from the state. Only Davis had no visible means of support. He reported that (even at ninety-six years of age) he worked every day, mostly at odd jobs. While Davis did not receive a railroad pension, railroad companies were among the first to initiate employer-funded pension plans. Wesley Graves of Arkansas was one of the very few (perhaps the only) southern railroad workers among these former slaves to report receiving a railroad pension. He spent forty-four of his forty-nine years on the railroad in the dangerous job of brakeman. Graves interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 3, p. 75. Finally, although it is true that most Americans could only begin to think of "retirement" because of New Deal programs, it is also true that most Americans were probably aware of retirement programs and perhaps even knew retired people. Only 15 percent of the American public could claim to be retired and receiving pensions before the passage of the Social Security Act, but as early as 1905, approximately 35 percent of former railroad workers received company pensions. Police and fire departments across the country began to institute retirement programs just before the turn of the century, and many city- and state-employed schoolteachers enjoyed retirement benefits before the depression as well. The Civil Service Retirement Act of 1920 established a retirement program for federal government workers, and the Railroad Retirement Act (passed in 1934 but declared unconstitutional in 1935) instituted retirement programs for workers in interstate commerce. See Roger L. Ransom, Richard Sutch, and Samuel H. Williamson, "Inventing Pensions: The Origins of the Company-Provided Pensions in the United States, 1900-1940," in K. Warner Schaie and W. Andrew Achenbaum, eds., Societal Impact on Aging: Historical Perspectives (New York, 1993), 2; W. Andrew Achenbaum, Social Security: Visions and Revisions--A Twentieth Century Fund Study (Cambridge, Eng., and other cities, 1986), 15; and William Graebner, A History of Retirement: The Meaning and Function of an American Institution, 1885-1978 (New Haven and London, 1980), esp. 57-180.

(37) Gus Clark interview, American Slave, VII (Miss.), 22; Aleck Trimble interview, ibid., V (Tex.), Pt. 4, p. 115; Louis Lucas interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 302.

(38) The standard account of "the clash between social insurance goals and the ideology and institutions of votuntarism" (p. 4) before the passage of the Social Security Act is Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900-1935 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).

(39) Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression, 98-168. Wolters explains government policy regarding race, wages, and the NRA in terms of "permitting [job] classifications that applied disproportionately to blacks but refusing to allow a specifically racial differential" in "The New Deal and the Negro," in John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, and David Brody, eds., The New Deal. Vol. I: The National Level (Columbus, Ohio, 1975), 182. And see Harvard Sitkoff, "The Impact of the New Deal on Black Southerners," in James C. Cobb and Michael V. Namorato, eds., The New Deal and the South (Jackson, Miss., 1984), 120-21.

(40) For a dramatic example of this shift see Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression, which reports that in 1932 none of the three thousand workers engaged to build what was then called Boulder Dam (today's Hoover Dam) were black. In 1933 eleven workers of four thousand were black. And by 1934, there were fifteen African Americans drawing a total of $61 a day in wages out of a daily payroll of $21,674 (pp. 199-200).

(41) Peter Corn interview, American Slave, XI (Mo.), 94-95.

(42) See Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York, 1943), 271-77.

(43) Louis Lucas interview, American Slave, IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 302; F. H. Brown interview, ibid., VIII (Ark.), Pt. 1, p. 280; Ambrose Hilliard Douglass interview, ibid., XVII (Fla.), 103-4 (quotation on p, 104).

(44) Charles Anderson interview, American Slave, VIII (Ark.), Pt. 1, p. 48; Robert Hinton interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 437; Alice Johnson interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 60. The sewing projects were "the largest WPA project for women," according to Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Women of the Depression: Caste and Culture in San Antonio, 1929-1939 (College Station, Tex., 1984), 110. The discrimination in supplying materials is discussed in Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York, 1985), 217-18; and Nancy E. Rose, Put to Work: Relief Programs in the Great Depression (New York, 1994), 102-3, 108.

(45) Spencer Barnett interview, American Slave, VIII (Ark.), Pt. 1, p. 118; Walter Jones interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 172; Cornelius Holmes interview, ibid.,II (S.C.), Pt. 2, p. 294; Zeb Crowder interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 197; John Hamilton interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 2, p. 222; Ben Horry interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 2, p. 314; George Rogers interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 225; Tom Rosboro interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 44. Some of those who used the expression "odd jobs" without indicating clearly what it meant are Samuel Boulware interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 65; Frank Smith interview, ibid., VI (Ala.), 347; and Elige Davison interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 1, p. 301.

(46) Emma Virgel interview, American Slave, XIII (Ga.), Pt. 4, p, 116; Rosie Johnson interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 126; Kizzie Colquitt interview, ibid., XII (Ga.), Pt. 1. p. 124; Julia A. White interview, ibid., XI (Ark.), Pt. 7, p. 116; Jessie Sparrow interview, ibid., Ill (S.C.), Pt. 4, pp. 142-43.

(47) Nely Gray interview, American Slave, IX (Ark.), Pt. 3. pp. 85-86; Charity Riddick interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 205; Betty Krump interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, pp. 218-19; Lula Washington interview, ibid., XIII (Ga.), Pt. 4, p. 134; Ann Parker interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), Pt. 2, p. 157; Fanny Smith Hodges interview, ibid., VII (Miss.), 71; Kizzie Colquitt interview, ibid., XII (Ga.), Pt. 1, p. 124.

(48) Roger Biles, "The Urban South in the Great Depression," Journal of Southern History, 56 (February 1990), 80-87, 97-98; Biles, South and the New Deal, 22, 24-25; Rose, Put to Work, 33-34; Sitkoff, "Impact of the New Deal on Black Southerners," 118-20. For one example of the racial disparity, Roger Biles shows that in 1935 Atlanta officials gave whites an average monthly relief stipend of $32.65, while black people received an average of $19.29. Most of the former slaves received between three and ten dollars a month, if they received anything, and a few men received ten to thirteen dollars. The levels of financial assistance reported in the narratives come closer to the amounts reported by Nancy Rose, whose numbers are based on a study of whole counties rather than cities. She reports that white families received an average of $12.65 a month, while black families averaged $8.31 per month. Biles's conclusion that some local administrators assisted black citizens only after providing assistance to whites helps to explain the number of former slaves reporting having applied for and being eligible for but still having received no assistance, Biles, "Urban South in the Great Depression," 98; Rose, Put to Work, 33.

(49) Delia Garlic interview, American Slave, VI (Ala.), 132. Garlic's metaphor might have referred even more broadly to the general improvement in her quality of life, including but not limited to economic factors.

(50) Emma Grisham interview, American Slave, XVI (Tenn.), 28-29; Sara Colquitt interview, ibid., VI (Ala.), 87; Charles Lee Dalton interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 226-28 (first quotation on p. 227; second quotation on p. 228). Overwhelmingly, the former slaves' most consistent support came from younger family members. Many of the elders simply reported living with their children; we can infer that they were at least partially supported by those children. Others provided more extensive detail and illustrate a variety of caring kin. Jane Johnson gained some pleasure from living with her niece. Annie Stephenson alternated living among her six children; Robert Falls spent "his declining years in contentment" because he resided with his daughter; Josephine Stewart lived with the widower of her niece; and Tom Rosboro reported having "a happy family" to which he contributed by operating a small truck farm on the half-acre surrounding the house of the daughter (a laundress) with whom he lived. Sarah Allen was taken care of by two sons who also lived in the same city. Many, many more described having "good" children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and relatives by marriage, meaning these youngsters provided for the elders as best they could. Jane Johnson interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 52; Annie Stephenson interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 315; Robert Falls interview, ibid., XVI (Tenn.), 12; Josephine Stewart interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 151; Tom Rosboro interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, pp.42-44 (quotation on p. 44); Sarah Allen interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 1, p. 13.

(51) Eighty-one-year-old Nelson Cameron, his wife, widowed daughter, and six grandchildren, for example, farmed eighty acres. Mack Taylor owned ninety-seven acres, which his son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren helped to cultivate. Lizzie Hughes and her husband had purchased a farm when they were younger. During the depression, she, her daughter, and son-in-law worked it. Nelson Cameron interview, American Slave, II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 172; Mack Taylor interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, pp. 157, 159; Lizzie Hughes interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 2, p. 168.

(52) Robert Toatley interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 163.

(53) The Agricultural Marketing Act (1929) established the Federal Farm Board and a federal farm loan system. Another source for Toatley's loan might have been Title II of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933)--the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act--which allowed many landowners to refinance farm mortgages at reduced rates and with no repayment due on the principal for five years. Title I of the 1933 act legislated crop production and reduction, among other issues. Direct financial assistance for tenant farmers became available after the 1937 creation of the Farm Security Administration. See David E. Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal: American Farm Policy from Hoover to Roosevelt, 1928-1933 (Chapel Hill and London, 1991), 26- 49, 230-31; Murray R. Benedict, Farm Policies of the United States, 1790-1950: A Study of Their Origins and Development (New York, 1953), 281-83; Harvard Sitkoff, "The New Deal and Race Relations," in Sitkoff, ed., Fifty Years Later: The New Deal Evaluated (Philadelphia, 1985), 98-99; Frederick E. Hosen, The Great Depression and the New Deal: Legislative Acts in Their Entirety (1932-33) and Statistical Economic Data (1926-1946) (Jefferson, N.C., and London, 1992), 61-88; Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression, 7, 10-16, 21-34, 60-73; and Rose, Put to Work, 27.

(54) Louisa Davis interview, American Slave, II (S.C.), Pt. 1, pp. 302 (first quotation), 303 (second quotation). On the surface, it may seem that Pinckney's status as a CCC worker, or his grandmother's comprehension of his status, is questionable. The Civilian Conservation Corps was designed to provide work for single men between eighteen and twenty-five years of age (and Pinckney, a World War I veteran, should have been close to forty). However, after a second "Bonus Army" march on Washington in 1933, Executive Order No. 6129 allowed the enrollment of 25,000 veterans in the CCC without regard to age or marital status. Davis's interview explicitly mentions Pinckney's Bonus money. CCC workers earned thirty dollars a month and sent twenty-two to twenty-five dollars home. Historian Harvard Sitkoff reports that by 1938, black enrollees (11 percent of the CCC) were sending home $700,000 a month. John A. Salmond, The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942: A New Deal Case Study (Durham, N.C., 1967), 30-31, 35-36; Sitkoff, "New Deal and Race Relations," 98. Sol Walton, an eighty-eight-year-old former railroad worker in Texas, was also supported by a son in the CCC. Walton interview, American Slave, V (Tex.), Pt. 4, p. 130.

(55) Jake McLeod interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 163. Susan Davis Rhodes did not say her nephew was required to assist her and his mother, but she did note that his public works job allowed him to help them. Rhodes interview, ibid., XI (Mo.), 287.

(56) The woman assigned to help Julia Brown cleaned the house and did the laundry. Brown had only one living child--a son in his sixties who was sick himself and unable to work. See Julia Brown interview, American Slave, XII (Ga.), Pt. 1, pp. 150-51. Even though this kind of placement allowed local officials to assist two needy clients at one time, younger black women nevertheless reported that it was difficult to get WPA jobs because local white administrators insisted they take private employment as domestic workers (in white homes) instead. As an extreme (perhaps) example, the Birmingham News reported that 150 black women lost their WPA jobs in January 1937 because of an increase in local, private demand for domestic workers. Rose, Put to Work, 103-4.

(57) Adeline Crump interview, American Slave, XIV (N.C.), 206; Mack Taylor interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 159; Celia Robinson interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 219. Living a much more precarious existence than Robinson, Bob Jones's wife. brothers, sisters, an children were all dead at the time of his interview, and he was living in the Wake County Home in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was hoping to receive a pension so that his niece could afford to have him live with her. There was no indication that he saw her offer as a form of extortion. See Bob Jones interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 25-26.

(58) Ella Kelly interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 3, pp. 81-82 (quotation on p. 82); Jessie Sparrow interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 138; Jake McLeod interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 163; Anna Baker interview, ibid., VII (Miss.), 16. Rosie Johnson had eight living children, she said, "scattered 'bout up North." Julia Blanks's children lived in California and Arizona and worked as fruit pickers, miners, and domestics. Mary Anne Patterson had two children still in Texas, two in California, one in Oklahoma, and one in Kansas. Frank William Glenn's daughter still lived in Arkansas, but his two sons lived in Chicago. Rosie Johnson interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 126; Julia Blanks interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 1, p. 105; Mary Anne Patterson interview, ibid., V (Tex.), Pt. 3, p. 172; Frank Glenn interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 3, p. 42. At least one elderly man followed his sons in the Great Migration. Two of the Reverend Wamble's sons went to Gary, Indiana, in 1924, where they obtained work in the post office. Their father joined them in 1926 and worked in a coke plant until the depression hit the industry. Wamble's youngest daughter was a New York City schoolteacher. It is possible that women followed their children as well. Nancy East, who lived in Ohio, kept house for her sons who worked for the American Rolling Mill Corporation. Rev. Wamble interview, ibid., VI (Ind.), 205; Nancy East interview, ibid., XVI (Ohio), 35.

(59) Emma Chapman interview, American Slave, VI (Ala.), 65; John Cameron interview, ibid., VII (Miss.), 20-21 (quotation on p. 21); Charlie Davis interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 252. North Carolinian Alex Huggins, who was comfortable with his seventy-five-dollar-a-month (military?) pension, had a son who might have been living in Baltimore, but, he said, "I ain't heard from him in a long time. He don't keer nothin' about me." Huggins interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 452. Other examples of those who were not certain of some or all of their children's whereabouts include Scott Hooper interview, ibid., IV (Tex.), Pt. 2, p. 157; Mandy Morrow interview, ibid., V (Tex.), Pt. 3, pp. 140-41; Philles and William Thomas interviews, ibid., V (Tex.), Pt. 4, pp. 93, 99; and Acie Thomas interview, ibid., XVII (Fla.), 333.

(60) Jake McLeod interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 163. Similarly, Ellen Campbell, who had no living children, deeded her house to a niece who lived "out north" and who paid the taxes and insurance on the home while Campbell lived there. Campbell interview, ibid., XIII (Ga.), Pt. 4, p. 221. Hagar Lewis was a widow with two sons. One, an electrical engineer employed by the U.S. government, lived in New York City and paid all her living expenses. Lewis interview, ibid., V (Tex.), Pt. 3, p. 4.

(61) Matilda Pugh Daniel interview, American Slave, VI (Ala.), 104; Jane Anne Privette Upperman interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 370; Frank Smith interview, ibid., VI (Ala.), 347.

(62) Roosevelt quoted in Biles, South and the New Deal, 20. A detailed discussion about Birmingham during the depression is provided in Edward Shannon LaMonte, Politics and Welfare in Birmingham, 1900-1975 (Tuscaloosa, 1995), 88-132.

(63) Ella Kelly interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 82; Millie Barber interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 41. Although more than a few elders reported receiving no assistance from their children who had moved away, in one rare example a woman reported being exploited by her daughter. The daughter had sold her mother's house but took the money for herself. Sallie Crane interview, ibid., VIII (Ark.), Pt. 2, p. 56.

(64) Minnie Davis interview, American Slave, XII (Ga.), Pt. 1, p. 253; Elias Dawkins interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 318; Achenbaum, Social Security, 22-23, 203 n. 39. The questions in scholarly discussions about power dynamics during the WPA interviews take on a different cast here. While whites held the balance of power in southern society, many former slaves created room to negotiate, trading the information the interviewer wanted from them for something they wanted.

(65) Blount Baker interview, American Slave, XIV (N.C.), 65; Zeb Crowder interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 197. Dorcas Griffeth received a pound of meat, cornmeal, oatmeal, canned juice, and coffee each week. She made a point of saying she received no sugar, lard, or flour--basic staples. William Smith of North Carolina received "[o]ne half peck meal, 1 pound powdered milk, two cans grape fruit juice, one half pound coffee per week," also worth about eighty cents. Arkansas resident Hannah Hancock received prunes, rice, and dried milk. Fortunately, she also received eight dollars a month, which she used to buy additional food. Sara Brown's rations were limited to dry milk, oatmeal, and potatoes. Dorcas Griffeth interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), Pt. l, 347-48; William Smith interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 294; Hannah Hancock interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 3, p. 146; Sara Brown interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 144.

(66) Biles, South and the New Deal, 31; Needham Love interview, American Slave, IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 295.

(67) Sabe Rutledge interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 67. Charlie Davis also believed there were shenanigans involved in the administration of the stipend. He asked, "Is us gwine to get dis new pension what is gwine 'bout, or is dat other somebody gwine to think he needs it worser than us does?" Emma Jeter, who also asked for help from her interviewer, concluded that "us all gwine to be daed [sic] 'fo it even come out. You ain't gwine to even sho' dat to no Gov'ment man; no Lawd, ain't never thought I's gwine to git it." Sena Moore ended her interview with a revealing benediction: "De Lord take a lakin' to you, and you to me! May you git to heaven when you die and I git dat pension befo' I die. Amen!" Charlie Davis interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 253; Emma Jeter interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 34; Sena Moore interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 212.

(68) Gareth Davies and Martha Derthick, "Race and Social Welfare Policy: The Social Security Act of 1935," Political Science Quarterly, 112 (Summer 1997), 227 (first quotation); U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. XLIX, Pt. 1 (1936), 620 (second quotation). See also W. Andrew Achenbaum, Old Age in the New Land: The American Experience since 1790 (Baltimore and London, 1978), 133-38; Achenbaum, Social Security, 21-22; Rose, Put to Work, 90-96; and Sitkoff, "Impact of the New Deal on Black Southerners," 118-21. Scholars tend to see the Social Security Act, specifically, and New Deal legislation, generally, as solidifying the social, political, and economic gulf that already existed between blacks and whites. See Mimi Abramovitz, Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (Boston, 1988); Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (New York and other cities, 1994); and Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York and Oxford, 1994). Until recently, scholars have placed emphasis on the influence of southern legislators and business owners in having the wording of the Social Security Bill changed. The suggestion (and sometimes the explicit conclusion) was that the policy was based in racism. Arguing that economics had a greater impact than racism on the final Social Security Bill, however, is Davies and Derthick, "Race and Social Welfare Policy," 217-35.

(69) Al Rosboro interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 41; Will Dill interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 322; Dan Smith interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, pp. 98-99. Eighty-seven-year-old Henry Lee believed he got no assistance from the government because his grandson helped him a little. Nevertheless, he said, "I need it and I think I ought to git it. I worked hard, bought this house, paid my taxes--still trying. Still they don't aid me now and I passed aiding my own self. I think I oughten to git lef' out 'cause I help myself when I could. I sure is left out. Been left out." Lee interview, ibid., IX (Ark.), Pt. 4, p. 249.

(70) Mack Taylor interview, American Slave, III (S.C.), Pt. 4, pp. 157-58. For other examples of just how boldly some of these former slaves handled their interviewers, see Ellen Brass interview, ibid., VIII (Ark.), Pt. l, p. 248. Brass argued, "The white folks ain't got no reason to mistreat the colored people. They need us all the time. They don't want no food unless a nigger cooks it. They want niggers to do all their washing and ironing. They want niggers to do their sweeping and cleaning and everything around their houses. The niggers handle everything they wears and hands them everything they eat and drink. Ain't nobody can get closer to a white person than a colored person. If we'd a wanted to kill 'em, they'd a all done been dead. They ain't no reason for white people mistreating colored people." Lula Chambers acknowledged that her salvation was in jeopardy because she could not love white people. Her minister had counseled her, but she concluded that changing her attitude would take the rest of her life, and it would still be difficult. Chambers interview, ibid., XI (Mo.), 83. Carrie Nancy Fryer was simply too busy to talk to her interviewer on the woman's first attempt. Subsequently, after the WPA worker had succeeded in starting the interview, Fryer simply left the interviewer sitting while she spoke with a passerby. During this particularly long interruption, the interviewer finally excused herself and left. Fryer interview, ibid., XII (Ga.), Pt. 1, pp. 333-35.

(71) Relatively few former slaves noted that if their old masters were living they, themselves, would not be suffering as they were. But some reportedly did say exactly that. See, for example, Andrew Goodman interview, American Slave, IV (Tex.), Pt. 2, p. 80; Prince Johnson interview, ibid., VII (Miss.), 83; and Angie Garrett interview, ibid., VI (Ala.), 136.

(72) Chana Littlejohn interview, American Slave, XV (N.C.), 59; Lizzie Baker interview, ibid., XIV (N.C.), 69; William Scott interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 264; Anna Baker interview, ibid., VII (Miss.), 16-17. For other favorable comments about Roosevelt see Jane Johnson interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 3, p. 51; Frank Adamson interview, ibid., II (S.C.), Pt. 1, p. 15; Ned Walker interview, ibid., III (S.C.), Pt. 4, p. 178; Parker Pool interview, ibid., XV (N.C.), 191; and Mary Minus Biddle interview, ibid., XVII (Fla.), 38. Jeff Bailey expressed his approval of the president thus: "I hope he'll be dictator. I hope he'll be king." Bailey interview, ibid., VIII (Ark.), Pt. 1, p. 89.

(73) Peter Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks' Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916-30 (Urbana and Chicago, 1987), 29.

(74) Many of the narratives contain the names of the ex-slaves' children and where they lived as far as their parents knew. With these names and locations, the children might be found in manuscript censuses and city directories. It would be useful to relate available information about these children's circumstances to that of their elders in the South. Recent studies of the Great Migration include Carole Marks, Farewell-We're Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989); Joe William Trotter Jr., ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991); and Kimberley L. Phillips, AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45 (Urbana and Chicago, 1999). A very different kind of impact study of the Great Migration is Stewart E. Tolnay, Elena Vesselinov, and Kyle D. Crowder, "The Collective Impact of Southern Migrants on the Economic Well-Being of Northern-Born Black Males, 1970," Social Science Quarterly, 80 (December 1999), 666-86.

(75) See especially Ransom, Sutch, and Williamson, "Inventing Pensions," 1-38; and Brian Gratton, "The Creation of Retirement: Families, Individuals, and the Social Security Movement," in Schaie and Achenbaum, eds., Societal Impact on Aging, 45-73. For a history of "social security" before the New Deal see Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security.

(76) In Vern L. Bengtson and W. Andrew Achenbaum, eds., The Changing Contract across Generations (New York, 1993), the authors discuss the "intergenerational contract" in historical, contemporary, and crosscultural contexts.

Ms. SHAW is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University.