Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2022/Fall/Section087/Neely "The Widow" Williams

Overview

Neely "The Widow" Williams was an older white woman from Alabama, living in deep poverty with her 5 children in a battered, poorly constructed two room shack. Interviewer Jack Kyle explores Williams' struggles of being an impoverished, unemployed mother through the Great Depression.

Biography

Housing in Alabama during the Great Depression

Personal Life

Neely “The Widow” Williams was an older white woman from Fayetteville aged anywhere between 40 and 60 years old.  She lived “in filth and poverty” with her children in a weathered down shack of two rooms. The shack, housing Williams and 5 of her children, has just two beds, a wood stove that produces enough soot to darkly stain the entire house, and no chairs, mirrors, or any other ordinary housing commodities. Williams begged for everything she eats and wears, as the family mainly lived off of food that was either stolen or donated by nearby farmers, and survived winters with old coats and shoes provided by residents in the town. Williams made a minimal income by selling whiskey from a number of heinous, drunken degenerates supplied her, but often attacked her with “evil, often nauseating” language. She had been out of that business for some time, leaving the family even deeper in poverty. Williams was insistent on keeping her life private, and was enraged when she heard her name might be in book. Living in deep poverty, her outlook on her life was generally negative, but she was content enough to not make any changes to the family’s lifestyle, claiming that they “always git along.”

Family Life

“The Widow” had seven children in total. The oldest two were taken away from her by county officials who deemed her incapable of properly caring for her kids. The oldest child that she had in custody was her 14 year old son named Ranny. He wasn’t in school and didn’t have work, but spent the majority of his time trying to get his hands on any amount of liquor he could find. Residents of the neighborhood claimed Williams was leading her children into the same life she had. She had a multitude of husbands, only 2 of which she ever lived with, but declined to name how many she had in total. She noted that although she has many struggles, she “ain’t complainin’ ‘bout not gettin’ notice from the men.” Her family eats on rare occasion, whenever they can scrape together a meal, but devours the few meals they have until they are sick. Her children constantly accompanied William's in begging nearby residents for a meal. Had it not been for the generous neighbors that supplied Williams and her family with old coats and firewood, it is likely that the family would not survive a winter.

Social Context

Poverty in Alabama

During the Great Depression, Alabama was one of the worst affected states by the economical recession and became a land of poverty and struggle in America. The Depression had drastic affects on agriculture that resulted in a large deprivation of food supply and a mass influx in poverty in Alabama. In addition, "the number of landowners fell from around 96,000 to 75,000, a decline that was harsher for white farmers than black farmers,” which specifically shows the decrease in farming that resulted in food scarcity. The Great Depression affected all citizens, but especially affected white Alabamians, as scholars claim "No other cycle in American history resulted in so sustained and extensive a downward mobility for so numerous a population." Many white folk ended up in poverty that was somehow consistently just as bad as African Americans in poverty who had just endured many years of slavery. The decrease in white land owners most explicitly depicts struggles that white people were forced to endure. Despite many negative implications that formed in this era regarding impoverished whites, “many of our stereotypes about poor whites are wildly exaggerated; few were derelicts or ‘white trash.’” Generally, their appalling circumstances were to blame for the result of widespread poverty in the white community, rather than character defects.

Great Depression

The Great Depression had extensive effects on Americans across the country, forcing many into poverty, unemployment, and homelessness. The impoverished suffered dire circumstances in these times, including limited food availability, poor living conditions, and limited access to education and health care. Food availability was an especially concerning dilemma for Americans, as "many families did without milk or meat… and there were so many accounts of people starving that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 million.” Food was so scarce that families used "to eat bullfrog; that’s a delicacy." The Depression also had extensive affects on families in America. By 1940, "1.5 million married women were living apart from their husbands. More than 200,000 vagrant children wandered the country as a result of the breakup of their families." The Great Depression had a substantial, negative impact on citizens of all ages, as children raised in poverty became subjected to generational poverty due to a lack of education and a difficult, seemingly unlivable upbringing. Breaking these patterns of poverty proved to be seemingly insurmountable as employment opportunity and education availability remained scarce for years.

Prohibition and Alcoholism

The Great Depression had notable effects on the Prohibition Era of the early 1930s. In a time where alcohol was banned from being legally sold in America, 3rd party and black market alcohol distribution increased drastically. In addition, demand for alcohol increased as “research on the Great Depression and economic downturns has suggested that self-medication with alcohol or other substances functions as one means of coping with job loss and concomitant social and psychic losses." This likely had a large contribution to impoverished citizens participation in the 3rd party alcohol distribution industry, despite being subjecting to abuse because of this business. Demand for alcohol from such distributers drastically increased due to both prohibition and the emotional distress caused by the economic recession, making this a potentially profitable business.

References

1. Downs, Matthew. “Great Depression in Alabama.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. Alabama Humanities Alliance, 2014. http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3608.
2. Flint, Wayne. Poor But Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1989.
3. Kytle, Jack. “River Widow: Portrait of Poverty.” Federal Writer’s Project. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Southern Historical Collection, 1938. https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/03709/id/981/rec/1.
4. Mintz, S., and S. McNeil. “Children in the Great Depression.” Digital History, n.d. Accessed October 9, 2022. https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/children_depression/depression_children_menu.cfm.
5. Rishman, Judith, Kathleen Rospenda, Timothy Johnson, et al. “Drinking In the Age of the Great Recession.” Journal of Addictive Diseases 31, no. 2 (2012): 158–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/10550887.2012.665692.
6. Wadler, Joyce. “Making Ends Meet in the Great Depression.” The New York Times. April 1, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/garden/02depression.html.