Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105/Section 061/Neely Grant

Neely "The Widow" Grant

Born	Fayetteville, Alabama Year Unknown
Died	Unknown
Occupation	None
Spouses	Mr. Baxley (deceased), Mr. Williams

Overview

Neely Grant was an impoverished widow living beside the Coosa River in Fayetteville, Alabama. She had no job and no husband to support her six children and herself and therefore was left to beg for food and rely on donations from neighbors to survive and provide for her family. Her age is unknown, but she was likely in her mid-forties in 1938 which is the time of the Great Depression.

Biography

The Grant family lived an extremely underprivileged life in a two-room shack by the river. Grant had been married twice in her life, one husband, Baxley, died and the other, Williams, left her with the children. With no job and six children, Grant’s neighbors did not believe she was entirely fit to be a parent and two of her older daughters were taken by countrymen to Birmingham to go to school and have a better life. Though many of her neighbors said Grant had made plans for her daughters to follow in her early footsteps and take good care of them, others still believed they would be better off without her. Grant’s Oldest son is named Ranny, he is a bit of an alcoholic and though he is old enough and capable, he will not find a job or do anything to support the family. The Grant family has to heavily rely on their neighbors to donate clothing and food, especially during the colder months, to make sure they can make it through. While people are kind to the family, it is rather obvious that Grant does not have a ton of respect from others in the community. She appears to be a woman who is very stuck in her ways and unwilling or unable to change and therefore struggles a lot to adjust to the economically challenging era of the Great Depression. Grant’s life was probably somewhat typical of people in rural Alabama during the depression. There were not many jobs to go around in the countryside and probably not a lot of opportunity for farming so a family could provide for themselves. The economy crashing led to a skyrocketing unemployment rate with many families finding themselves in a similar situation. The lack of a present male figure was common in many homes of this socio-economic subset, as many fathers left their homes to pursue jobs in the West, some never returning.

Alabama in the 1930s

The Great Depression

Many Americans in the Great Depression were starving and needed extra help from the community to provide them with food, which usually came from people volunteering and donating to local soup kitchens and breadlines. During President Herbert Hoover’s term, the poor were not able to survive off of relief efforts he put into place and they would have to take turns eating each day or not get out of bed to save their energy. Families would also have to share their clothes, like their church dresses, and to stay warm would have to search for pieces of wood to burn in a furnace.

Agriculture and Cotton

While Alabama and other southern states were not directly affected by the Dust Bowl, it faced similar agricultural problems and similar economic effects that Dust Bowl states also suffered. Because of the disasters in the economy and environment in the Plains states, many people began to migrate towards southern states. These states typically relied on cotton as a cash crop and the people farming the land did not care much about maintain the soil and prevent erosion leaving a lot of land unusable. Even more, the stock market crash of 1929 caused the price of cotton to fall five cents per pound meaning it was more expensive to produce than it was selling for. This left rural families unable to make a living off of cotton farms like they had been able to in the past and they could no longer support themselves and many families tried to leave the countryside to find work in the cities. However, the number of full-time employees in big cities like Birmingham decreased by almost 85 percent, so conditions there were not much better.

There were also issues with some of the programs put into place during the New Deal following the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Many of these programs in the agricultural sector benefitted the planter class more so than the laborers themselves. Specifically, the Agricultural Adjustment Act benefitted large producers who were incentivized to produce fewer crops so that the price of the crops would increase. The laborers were paid less because they were not working as much as before.

Social Issues

In the rural south during the depression, it was common for communities to have large populations of impoverished citizens. These people had a lot of anger towards the government because of the low quality of their lives and even more frustration with the media for exploiting them and their stories. In Hale County, Alabama, many historians and documentarians have commented on the struggle of its citizens over how it is depicted. The people being studied would often sabotage pictures and refuse to answer any questions from interviewers because they felt they were being over analyzed and, in a sense, taken advantage of for public consumption. People in these places never turned to violence, but they essentially protested the view of them as portrayed by the media and tried to take control of the story by offering their interpretations of pictures of them and stories about them.

However, many people in the south turned to religion as a way to find positivity and hope in their everyday lives amongst their struggles. This allowed the church to become one of the most influential institutions in these rural communities. Women especially became attached to the feeling of closeness provided by the community in the church. People relied on kindness and charity from their neighbors and emotional support that was extended to them through the church. Religion in the south became one of the main ways that people maintained a sense of well-being and personal hope that their lives would get better.