Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 013/Orrie Robinson

Overview

Orrie Robinson was a white amateur fisher and farmer doing his best to feed and clothe his family during the Great Depression. He was interviewed for the Federal Writers’ Project by Jack Kytle on September 23, 1938.

Biography

Day-to-Day Life and Living Conditions

Orrie Robinson had grown up with no education. Both he and his family were not able to read or write. Because of this, Robinson did not frequent the far city of Sylacauga located twenty-two miles from the shack he and his family resided in. The family’s shack was located on an extremely remote location near a forest, small farming ground, and body of water in Alabama’s Coosa County. The shack was so remote it could only be reached through boat, horse, or buggy. Additionally, it was old and had wooden panes nailed to cover the windows, providing no real insulation. These living conditions made it hard in the winter and, in summer months, gave the whole family malaria. Robinson’s farmland provided cotton and corn for the family, through the rare crops that grew from the poor soil. Most meals they were able to eat consisted of fish, corn mush, and, if they were lucky, “evil-tasting” bread. He and his family would go days without sufficient food to eat. In Robinson’s interview with Jack Kytle, he equivalated great wealth with “a table at which he could sit down and ‘eat a bait.’’’

Work Experience

Living in possibly the most remote location in the state of Alabama, Orrie Robinson had struggled to earn a monetary living. After living some years on his land, Robinson realized the surrounding forests and river could give him more food than the cropland of poor soil. Robinson knew the key to surviving was taking advantage of the surrounding natural resources he had, so he put multiple trotlines in the river and went to collect food from the forests as often as he could.

In the rare times Orrie Robinson worked for money, he worked in construction and selling whiskey. During the road construction in a community south of the mountains, called Marble Valley, Robinson helped for the week in return for monetary compensation. Ever since then, he had not had a pay-day job. Sometime after this, he made moonshine whiskey and began selling it to nearby isolated valleys near Cohagie Creek. This went on until he was caught by the Rockford County Police. Because he dug fishing bait for the county judge, Robinson was put on probation instead of jail time. Robinson shared his fear of jail in his interview when he said he would “die plumb dead if I had t’ stay long in jail.” Sometime between his work ventures, Orrie Robinson claimed one of the reasons for his indigence was the prostitute that got him drunk and stole all his money. After these events combined with his remote living conditions, he decided to concentrate on feeding and clothing his family.

Family Relations

Orrie Robinson carried a heavy burden. Not only did he have to feed and clothe himself, but he also had to feed and clothe the other four members in his family. Orrie Robinson lived with his two sisters, June and Nora, and both his parents. His mother had rheumatism, a disease that inflames the joints, muscles, and fibrous tissue and causes pain. This made it hard for her to move around the house and help in the fields. Robinson’s father helped in the farming when Robinson tended to the fishing. Robinson thought his two sisters would bring money into the family through marrying, but later gave up hope when he realized “Nora, she’s got pellagra, an’ she’s scrawny as sin. Don’t know man want a woman like that... [June’s] worked in th’ fields like a man so long that I think sometimes she’s half man now.”

Social, Political and Cultural Context

Poor White of the South

Poor White was a term representing the white people whose level of poverty had stooped to the point of mere survival. This population oftentimes had very limited food, dressed in rags, and had insufficient shelter. Every day was a fight to survive. The poor whites were seen as a “source of discomfort and distaste to the middle classes.” High and middle classes believed that the poor white would drag down the white position of dominance, but at the same time, the idea of poor-whitism was used by higher classes to manipulate their fundamental interests.

The Carnegie Commission of 1929 attempted to create a nonpolitical and non-partisan five-part study on addressing this national social problem. The report caused major press and public agitation. The negative response was a sign that the upper classes wished to keep the poor whites as a population they could use for political manipulation. Upper classes stood as obstacles for poor whites to grow into healthy, middle class families. Tayler justifies this by stating, “the clearest indication that the Poor White question was exploited as a political issue lies in the fact that nationalist propaganda concerning the miseries of the Poor Whites, escalated at the very time the population was receding.” During World War II, capitalist industrialization development brought the decrease of the poor white population. This event allowed the poor whites to cross the line to becoming sustainable, middle class whites. In addition to the World War, the “disintegration of distinguishing European cultural norms and values” was what almost eliminated the poor white stigma and white community concerns. Soon after, both education, social, and psychological rehabilitation began.

1900’s Alabama Agriculture and The Great Depression

Early 1900’s Alabama was largely rural. Many historians recently concluded that the “Great depression did not begin with the stock market crash, but with more gradual decline in key economic sectors.” The struggle in agriculture was said to begin in 1921, when the prices of commodities dropped from all-time highs caused from World War I. By the year of 1929, most agriculture workers could no longer afford to buy consumer goods. After World War I, the industries laid off many workers which rose unemployment rates. When tariffs were introduced in 1930 by the US Congress, there was a “sharp drop in international trade and economic woes for the nation’s farmers and producers.”

Even though the agriculture industry was affected through the great depression, the gradual decline of the agricultural industry began after the Civil War with the 1915 Boll Weevil infection. Boll Weevil, a cotton pest beetle that damaged cotton crops all over the state, largely influenced the economy shift. This cotton pest is also known to “have caused crop losses of 30 to 50 percent in infested areas.” In addition to this tremendous loss by the cotton pest, the Great Depression economic crash made the agriculture industry decline further. Those who depended on agriculture, started to find jobs at factories and other workplaces. Most agricultural workers and farm families lived “on the bring of starvation and bankruptcy during good years, so the Depression forced those on the land to focus on long-term survival.” Because of this, many farm workers gave up trying to make money, and instead changed to a survival mentality.

Bibliography

Kytle, Jack. Orrie Robinson: I’m Allus Hongry. The Federal Writers Project. August, 8, 1938. https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/03709/id/975/rec/1

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Boll Weevil.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., November 7, 2016. https://www.britannica.com/animal/boll-weevil.

Flynt, Wayne. Poor But Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites. United Kingdom: University of Alabama Press, 2001.

“Great Depression in Alabama.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. Accessed July 8, 2020. http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3608.

Hirsch, Jerrold. “Grassroots Environmental History: The Southern Federal Writers' Project Life Histories as a Source.” Southern Cultures 2, no. 1 (1995): 129–36. https://doi.org/10.1353/scu.1995.0014.

“I've Had a Bait of It.” I've had a bait of it - phrase meaning and origin. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/42/messages/512.html.

Jennifer. “What Most Small Towns In Alabama Had During The 1930s. It Was A Simpler Time.” OnlyInYourState, January 12, 2016. https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/alabama/small-towns-1930s-al/.

Norrell, Robert J., and Charles Goode Gomillion. “The Civil War and Its Aftermath.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., April 9, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/place/Alabama-state/The-Civil-War-and-its-aftermath.

Tayler, Judith. “‘Our Poor’: the Politicisation of the Poor White Problem, 1932–1942.” Kleio 24, no. 1 (1992): 40–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/00232089285310061.