Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105i/Section 026/Alma Kingsland

Overview

Alma Kingsland, otherwise known as Eva Truelove, was a waitress working double shifts at Gordon’s Restaurant. She lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was interviewed by Mary A. Hicks on behalf of the Federal Writer’s Project on January 9, 1939. At the time of the interview, Kingsland was 27.

Biography

Early Life

It is estimated that Kingsland was born in 1912 in Harnett County, North Carolina. She lived on a farm, working with her siblings to support their family. After a period of financial misfortune, her family lost their land and moved to a dairy farm. The family’s primary income source was milk until they followed their father to a new job at Camp Polk prison farm. It was here in 1927, after a year battling pellagra, that Kingsland’s mother passed away. She grew up among 12 brothers and sisters and only her oldest brother finished high school. In addition, the family survived on $45 a year, leaving almost all of her siblings with pellagra and malnutrition.

Adulthood and Career

Up until her interview for the Federal Writer’s Project, Kingsland worked as a waitress. She lived with her sister, Elsie, in a flat for 2$ a week. She and her family all voted for Democratic candidates and supported the Works Progress Administration, the WPA, and the New Deal. Kingsland herself tried to apply to the program but was unable to qualify due to her elementary education. She was a member of Missionary Baptist Church and tried to attend when she could. Her experiences in the South left her frustrated with her parents, and disappointed that she was unable to attain a good education. She left the interview to travel back to work after expressing her wish to finish her schooling and work a more clerical or skilled job.

Social Context

Pellagra in the American South

Pellagra is a severe and sometimes deadly disorder that is caused by a lack of niacin in the patient’s body. The four D’s: dementia, diarrhea, dermatitis, and death and hallmarks of the affliction. Pellagra severely affected many in the south, even after discoveries were made concerning the disease. This resulted from a rejection of the proven cause of the disease by people who suffered from it. The lack of nutrients in a typical Southern diet leads to niacin deficiency and, eventually, pellagra. “Untreated pellagra will gradually progress, eventually leading to death within 4–5 years.1,7,8 This often results due to massive malnutrition from continual diarrhea, complications caused by intercurrent infections or neurological symptoms. On the other hand, if pellagra is diagnosed and treated appropriately, the prognosis for recovery is excellent.” Treatment is often nutrition related and “can be prevented by intake of a protein-rich diet. Food sources of niacin, and/or tryptophan include nutritional yeast, eggs, bran, peanuts, meat, poultry, fish, red meat, whole-grain cereals, legumes and seeds.” Due to the lack of dependable income though, this is often impossible to obtain and is why many Southerners died early. "Poor diet might be the cause of pellagra, he reasoned, but the disease was only a symptom of a greater ill, the utter poverty, degradation and ignorance of the South’s rural poor."

Women's Rights in the 1930s

“In the 1930s, women’s equality was not as flashy an issue as in some previous and subsequent eras. The decade did, however, bring slow and steady progress, even as new challenges—especially economic and cultural ones—emerged that actually reversed some earlier advances.” Beginning with women’s entry into the workforce, this progress was made over the next decades to attempt to create a more equitable workplace and experience. Inequality was hard to combat in the beginning though, as “Many people believed that working married women were partly responsible for unemployment, and there was widespread sentiment for the firing of married teachers and government workers.” Employment opportunities were highly controversial and it made it hard for women to provide for themselves and their families with one job. Even “... under the banner of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the federal government responded on a number of levels to ease the suffering of working people, [but] women did not receive equal assistance.” In addition to the lack of assistance from government programs, “Twenty-five percent of the National Recovery Administration codes set lower minimum wages for women doing the same jobs as men. (In 1937, annual pay was $525 for women and $1.027 for men.)” Also, most social security benefits were allotted to men with dependents, leaving women-led households and single women without equal support.

References

Crabb, Mary Katherine. "An Epidemic of Pride: Pellagra and the Culture of the American South." Anthropologica 34, no. 1 (1992): 89-103. Accessed October 13, 2020. DOI:10.2307/25605634.

Hegyi, Juraj, Robert A. Schwartz, and Vladimir Hegyi. "Pellagra: dermatitis, dementia, and diarrhea." International journal of dermatology 43, no. 1 (2004): 1-5.

Lewis, Jone Johnson. "The 1930s: Women’s Shifting Rights and Roles in United States." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/womens-rights-1930s-4141164 (accessed October 13, 2020).

Rattini, Kristin Baird. “The American South's Deadly Diet.” Discover Magazine. Discover Magazine, April 17, 2020. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-american-souths-deadly-diet.

Remy, Corry. “Employment of Women in the 1930s.” Medium. The Thirties, November 19, 2015. https://medium.com/the-thirties/employment-of-women-in-the-1930s-5998fd255f5.

Rutledge, Ed. “The Knitter.” Interview by Abner, John H., Massengill, Edwin, and Sadler, W.J., December 18, 1938, Folder 280, Federal Writers Project Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill.

Strom, Sharon Hartman. "Challenging "Woman's Place": Feminism, the Left, and Industrial Unionism in the 1930s." Feminist Studies 9, no. 2 (1983): 359-86. Accessed October 13, 2020. DOI:10.2307/3177497.