Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2022/Fall/Section087/Julia Campbell Buggs

Overview

Julia Campbell Buggs was an impoverished elderly Black woman interviewed by Sadie B. Hornsby as part of the Federal Writers Project. Julia Campbell Buggs is referred to as Jane Brown and Jane Smith within her interview. It is not clear as to which names are nicknames and which is her legal name.

Biography

Early Life

Jane Brown was born in Georgia on the plantation of her father's former master, Barney Maxey, two years after the end of the Civil War. Although, they were free, Brown and her family remained on Maxey's plantation for about seventeen years at which point they moved to the plantation of her mother's former master. As a child Brown began to work the field, picking cotton, along with her father and her two younger sisters. As she got older, Brown began to make and sell clothes baskets with materials her father would provide.

Adult Life

After the death of her father, Brown married and moved to Athens, Georgia with her husband. She found work as a laundress and together with her husband, bought a house. She recalls that at the time, she had been paid well enough as a laundress that she and her husband could afford the house. After her husband died, her house was foreclosed and she was forced to move in with her sisters who had been living in the house next door. While living with her sisters, Brown continued to launder while also selling various crochet items she would make. At the time of the interview Brown was seventy-three years old and still continued to launder. She noted that as time went on she was being paid less as a laundress and had been denied social security. Despite living in poverty, Brown persevered through her situation through grit, she remarked “It’s a tough old go, but we can't die ' til our time comes so we might as well keep right on.”

Social Context

Reconstruction

The Reconstruction era was the period of time directly following the Civil War and is best characterized as an era of racial and political progress. The 13th amendment had abolished slavery, the 14th amendment guaranteed citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. regardless of race, and the 15th amendment established Black Americans’ right to vote. This was a time period when Black Americans experienced major progress in their civil and political rights. They could vote, participate in government, and gain access to an education. For example, “Former slaves of every age took advantage of the opportunity to become literate. Grandfathers and their grandchildren sat together in classrooms seeking to obtain the tools of freedom”. However, despite ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, Black Americans still faced opposition from southern, white populations. The economic advancement of Black Americans was stunted by opposition from white populations. A clear example of this economic oppression was Black women being restricted to domestic service jobs. However, despite their oppression “The majority of the black population remained very optimistic” because “they felt the conditions and nature of their employment were now solely under their control for the first time”. Although, Black Americans still faced some oppression during Reconstruction it was still an era that held so much hope and promise for Black Americans.

Jim Crow

The Role of Black Women

The role of Black women during the time of Jim Crow had been directly influenced by the Reconstruction era. The political and racial progress of the Reconstruction era allowed for the creation of a population of educated Black women. These would've been women who had be born out of slavery and came to age before or early into the Jim Crow era. In certain cases Black women would've had more education opportunities available than southern White women. This is because during era of Jim Crow "most white women could not gain access to a classical education at all" on the basics that such an education was outside the "confines of southern [white] ladyhood" on the contrary not only were Black women not placed into these confines but they could also gain access to these such an education though coeducation opportunities available at African American colleges. These educated black women became "leaders in the African-American community", they created organizations and became teachers with the goal of elevating Black communities. As Black men were disenfranchised, the Black community lost political advocacy and access to governmental services, "this necessitated a new role for African-American women." Black women had to assume the role of political advocates for African American communities. As White women's clubs in the south began to work for social reform, they started work together with Black women's clubs. Through this interracial relationship forged by Black women's clubs, Black women began to serve as diplomates for their communities becoming political advocates.

Social Security

Further information: History of Social Security in the United States and History of health care reform in the United States

President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935.

In 1935, in order to promote the general welfare the first social security act was passed, this lead to the creation of the Social Security Program- a system of federal benefits for the elderly, disabled, and unemployed. The original coverage of the act, however, only extended to commerce and industry workers. This means that workers in the agricultural and the domestic service industries, two occupational group were made up of a disproportionally larger number of Black Americans, would be excluded from any governmental assistance the act would provide. There are two interpretations of the exclusion of the agricultural and the domestic service workers. One interpretation is that during the time of Jim Crow, the social security act was used by White southern congressmen to further marginalize the Black community, by excluding predominately black occupations. Other evidence, however, also shows that the exclusions of these two industries could have been fully driven by economical motives rather than racial animosity. The "American Farm Bureau—the largest lobbying group representing farmers—continuously opposed the coverage of farmers, not only under the 1935 law, but all the way through 1954" in order to have their employees avoid paying taxes for the new Social Security system. Additionally, of the total population of workers excluded from coverage 74% were White and 23% Black. A definite motive behind the exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers is not fully clear, however, it can be definatively established that the exclusion of these two industries meant that a large population of Black Americans were denied governmental assistance.

References

DeWitt, Larry. "The decision to exclude agricultural and domestic workers from the 1935 Social Security Act." Soc. Sec. Bull. 70 (2010): 49.

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. 1992. Gender and jim crow: Women and the politics of white supremacy in north carolina, 1896-1920. Ph.D. diss., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/gender-jim-crow-women-politics-white-supremacy/docview/304002752/se-2 (accessed October 26, 2022).

“Jim Crow Laws.” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service. Accessed October 11, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/.

Nast, Thomas, Alfred R. Waud, Henry L. Stephens, James E. Taylor, J. Hoover, George F. Crane, and Elizabeth White. “The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship Reconstruction and Its Aftermath.” Library of Congress, February 9, 1998. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/reconstruction.html.

Small, Kathryn, "African American Women in the Domestic Service Industry during Reconstruction. An Intersectional Analysis" (2020). MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference. 1. https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/madrush/2020/women/1

"The Three Sisters" Interview by Hornsby, Hall, Booth, April 5, 1939, Folder 182 in the Federal Writers' Project papers #3709, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/03709/id/823/rec/1