Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105/Section071/Lucy Thomas

Lucy Thomas

Biography

Early Life

Lucy Baldwin Thomas was an ex-slave born in Harrison County, Texas. She was owned by the Baldwin family, as were her parents. Lucy started to work in the fields when she was a mere nine years old and continued this for many years. Her mother, Nancy, was bought from a slave market in New Orleans for $1,100 by the Baldwins, and her father, Ike, was bought in Alabama by the Baldwins. She stated that Marse Baldwin would keep whiskey on the front porch for the slaves to get a drink before their work started in the fields.

Later Life

Lucy stayed with her masters until 1868. She quit work in the fields to go to school run by a man named “Old Man Millis.” She only stayed for three months in this school. Then she married a man named Anthony Thomas on February 12, 1869. They stayed together for fifty-five years, during which they raised seven children. She continued to farm after her husband died. Lucy then went to live on land with her son and was given $10 a month from the government.

Social Context

Child Labor

Child labor is still such a prominent issue today as it was decades ago. During the 1800’s, child labor was an extreme issue which caused mental and physical trauma. Many children were forced to partake in hard manual labor which had little to no pay whatsoever. Many black children were forced to start working in the fields at such a young age. The need for industrial workers also impacted the opportunity for many black children to go to school. Industrial employers would sometimes depress the opportunity for black children to go to school if they saw them as potential industrial workers.

During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” enforced new guidelines for increasing federal oversight in a workplace and also giving out jobs to unemployed adults in an attempt to decrease child labor. These laws and codes prohibited children under the age of 16 to work in mines and industrial settings.

Even today, in 2020, child labor is still something that is happening. Because of COVID-19, many families are out of jobs and children are out of school. This is causing many children to be forced on the streets to work to bring in a small income for their family. In some cases, these children are forced to look on the streets and dig through trash to find recyclable plastic. Doing this only brings in a few cents per hour, and on top of that, they usually are not wearing gloves or face coverings.

Hardships of Single Black Women in Slavery/ Post Slavery

Women also had a very different experience than men in slavery. Many times, the men masters would take advantage of the women’s sexuality. The slave masters felt as if they held the power to engage in sexual actions with the women, because they saw them as “hyper-sexual” whereas they saw white women as “pure.” These events caused lasting mental and physical trauma on the victims. If these women had children, sometimes they would partake in their masters fantasies as a last hope that this would free their children.

After the Civil Rights Movement, there was little help for single/widowed black women to get on their feet. Finding jobs during the Great Depression was also an extremely difficult task. Many jobs were very unstable and had little to no benefits, and many single women were let go time after time. Many times, wages would fall drastically and leave these women with almost no income. Sometimes these women had to barter their hard manual labor in return for daily meals, water bills, etc.

Today, black women still face extreme hardships. The rate of sexual assault among black women is 3.5 times higher than any other group in the country. These women usually go without reporting the cases and stay silent for years. Racism is still such a relevant issue that these women experience first hand in their everyday lives. Anxiety is a common mental disorder among these women due to the hardships they encounter on a day to day basis. Data shows that the symptoms of black women are more intense than that of white women.

References

Hembold, Lois R. “Downward Occupational Mobility in the Great Depression: Urban Black and White Working Class Women.” Labor History 29, no. 2 (February 28, 2007): 135–72. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00236568800890091.

Marable, Manning, and Leith Mullings. “The Divided Mind of Black America: Race, Ideology and Politics in the Post Civil Rights Era.” Race & Class 36, no. 1 (July 1994): 61–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/030639689403600105.

Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, and David R. James. "Schooling for Some: Child Labor and School Enrollment of Black and White Children in the Early Twentieth-Century South." American Sociological Review 57, no. 5 (1992): 635-50. Accessed October 15, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2095917.

Gettleman, Jeffrey, and Suhasini Raj. “As Covid-19 Closes Schools, the World's Children Go to Work.” The New York Times. The New York Times, September 27, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/world/asia/covid-19-india-children-school-education-labor.html

Hallam, Jennifer. “Slavery and the Making of America . The Slave Experience: Men, Women & Gender: PBS.” Slavery and the Making of America . The Slave Experience: Men, Women & Gender | PBS, 2004. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/gender/history2.html.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35381/35381-h/35381-h.html#lucy-thomas

https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/child-labor#section_5

https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/be-female-anxious-and-black