Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2022/Fall/Section087/Carrie Godbold

Biography

Carrie Godbold was an American houseworker and nurse from Marion, South Carolina. She was interviewed by Annie Ruth Davis for the United States Federal Writers' Project on March 7, 1939 in Marion County. Mrs. Carrie Godbold is referred to as Lula Demry throughout the interview.

Location of Marion County in South Carolina

Early Life

Demry was born in 1861 in the Wahee section of Marion County. Her father was a highly successful farmer and growing up, she did not have to work or provide for herself as she was taken care of financially. After she got married, she was financially supported by her husband although she did work very hard as well.

Later Life

However, in 1919 she was left a widow as her husband sadly passed away. Since then, she has been forced to support herself through her work, mainly by pick-up jobs in nursing and other housework. She has one daughter, Maggie Wallace, who she currently lives with as she is too sick to work anymore. Demry is very ill with high blood pressure, kidney problems, and the old malaria fever. Maggie, also a dependent widow, works at the W. P. A. Sewing Room and manages to provide for her family of 6. Lula tries to help around Maggie’s house by performing a few household duties and preparing lunch when Maggie is at work. Lula receives an old age pension from the government, which she uses to buy groceries, medicine, and pay rent for herself.

Historical Context

Woman Housewife in the 1930s

Women's Roles in Workforce

Women faced several challenges regarding their ability to make money and enter the workforce as a middle-aged widow. With the return of women to the workplace, men felt threatened that their jobs were being taken from them, resulting in immense political tension. In fact, 26 states actually had laws against married women being allowed to work. This made it significantly more difficult to find work, and even when women could find a job, they were restricted to highly gendered professions as “working women in the 1930s were taking on jobs, that at the time, were socially acceptable for women. Some examples of jobs that they took include nurses, school teachers, beauticians, maids, cooks, secretaries, and manufacturing jobs- such as sewing.” Women specifically suffered financially as “one of the main reasons women were hired for many of these new jobs that resulted from emerging technology was that they could be paid considerably less than men.” The wage gap began to grow further at this time period, making it substantially harder for women to provide for their families, especially if they were single mothers.

Concentration of Malaria Deaths in the US following the Civil War

Malaria and Healthcare Accessibility

Living in rural South Carolina, malaria was running rampant. “Moreover, following the Civil War the southern states were largely exhausted of manpower and resources, the Negroes who had worked the field had been freed, so that much of the farmland was uncultivated, and malaria became more firmly established than ever before”. The southern states particularly struggled as “many epidemiologic factors were favorable for the rapid increase of malaria throughout the country, and these account for the excessive amount of malaria, which reached its climax between 1933 and 1936.” The South also had limited resources to combat the spread of Malaria as “Public health department budgets in the South were threadbare and could afford to supply little in the way of insecticides or quinine”. Additionally, since the 1930s saw several factors of distress including economic depression, and fears of social collapse, medicine had a relatively low social response. With an extreme amount of malaria circulating through the South with no organized attempts to control it or provide healthcare access for those struggling, many Americans were left ill with almost no options.

References

Faust, Ernest Carroll. “The History of Malaria in the United States.” JSTOR, American Scientist, Jan. 1951, www.jstor.org/stable/27826354. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.

Fee, Elizabeth, and Theodore M. Brown. “Depression-Era Malaria Control in the South.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 94, no. 10, 1 Oct. 2004, p. 1694, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448518/, 10.2105/ajph.94.10.1694. Accessed 11 Oct. 2022.

Jone Johnson Lewis. “The 1930s: Women’s Shifting Rights and Roles in United States.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 1 June 2017, www.thoughtco.com/womens-rights-1930s-4141164. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.

Maggie. “1930s Housewife: Life during the Great Depression.” Vintage Homestead Life, 6 Oct. 2021, vintagehomesteadlife.com/1930s-housewife-life-during-the-great-depression/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.

Silver GK. The Health Left in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. International Journal of Health Services. 1995;25(1):173-180. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/LNL2-NCQH-NH0H-1Y83, doi:10.2190/LNL2-NCQH-NH0H-1Y83. Accessed 24 Oct. 2022.