Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2023/Fall/Section18/Alice "Allie" Smith

Alice "Allie" Smith - Basket Weaver

Biography

Family

Map depicting the roads and railroads of North Carolina in 1854.

Alice “Allie” Smith was born in Mill Spring, North Carolina around 1861-62 in a cabin built by her grandfather around 1818 in which she lived for her whole life, weaving baskets for over 60 years. She had two brothers (George and unnamed), a father, and a self-described ‘invalid’ mother whom she cared for after the death of her father early on and, later, the marriages of her two brothers. Her unnamed brother had at least one child (Adyleen G Merrick), who interviewed her for the Federal Writer’s Project calling her “Aunt Allie”.

Adult Life

Smith wanted to pursue an education, potentially in art, but was never able to, nor did she marry, though expressed interest. She wanted children but did not have them, and often helped with family and neighbors’ families. At 76, she continued to craft baskets and frequented the Blue Ridge Weaver Arts and Crafts Shop. She did not venture into the town of Columbus often but was very interactive with her community and neighbors. She was self-sufficient and worked the small family farm for survival, eating mainly homegrown food that she cultivated and stored.

Social Context

Home Care and Caretakers of the 1930s

During the 1930s, home care was very common, especially for women. Caring for the chronically ill and disabled was commonly a family burden often falling to unmarried women (CITE). During the period between World War 1 and World War 2, chronic illness and disabilities rose in number, and it was viewed as better for the patient to be at home due to a lack of facilities. “The prevailing view was that the demands of the chronically ill were compromising the capacity of hospitals,” (Benjamin 1993, 132) and “In the 1930s and 1940s…home care became defined as a less expensive alternative to hospitalization, as well as a means to other positive outcomes” (Benjamin 1993, 132). If someone had family, they would often be cared for by them, possibly sacrificing personal ambitions to do so. The responsibility of taking care of family often fell on women of the family, especially those unmarried.

Working Class and Single Women's Lives and Rights During the Great Depression Era

Many women during the era of the Great Depression were confined to the home, taking care of family. Others supported themselves through miscellaneous work, often domestic or receiving help from family, children, and government relief in some cases. Catherine T., a subject of Hembold's “Beyond the Family Economy: Black and White Working-Class Women during the Great Depression”,lived in Chicago and, for a period of the depression, took responsibility for her “invalid” mother. She took care of her expenses and health until she ran out of financial resources and moved in with her married sister who took over her mother’s expenses while Catherine paid room and board. Unmarried women of the time were often forced into the role of caretaker for their family if their other siblings were married. In addition, the culture surrounding the treatment of unmarried women was often harsh “Her sister, however demanded $150 for the assistance she claimed she had provided Catherine, a paying boarder…” (Helmbold 1987, 630). Women of the great depression era were often left to care for family alone and relied on themselves for money and survival.

Many disconnected or single women were forced to be self-reliant during the depression. Women who did not have homes that they owned were often forced to move, especially in urban areas. Women without men to support them or who were disconnected from a family network often struggled financially and lacked stable housing. and “…with the exception of many African Americans, [people] were often without rural roots. For some women, home protection had already failed” (Abelson 2003, 113). Urban women often struggled to maintain housing and financial security without familial or marital connections. Family homes and farms would've been very useful for surviving the depression, especially in the south, avoiding some of the struggles that came with paying for a house or rent in urban areas. Small farms allowed their caretakers to grow their own food if the crops were viable without the finanical pressures to make a profit on the goods as a means of income.

While the right to vote was given to women in 1919, the stigma of unmarried women remained. Women of higher classes did face increased access to employment and education; however, lower-class women still faced the inequality of before. Single women of the depression were forced to take care of themselves and faced the discrimination accosted with being unmarried: “Certainly there was no shift in the assumption of male superiority and power, and, in the 30s, grounds for the “old agitation” were as strong as ever” (Souhami 2018). During the depression, women who were alone, without an education, often would have struggled to pursue one, and without a husband, would've likely faced barriers to admission as while as financial struggles. Single women at the time often faced isolation from communities and family due to being unmarried.

Homesteads of the 1930s

During the era of the great depression the Dust Bowl ravaged dry areas of the United States. Farms were destroyed, unable to produce for profit or subsistence farming. “Topsoil from millions of acres of failed and abandoned wheat fields was lifted by strong spring winds, creating the dreaded “black blizzards” that buried farms, killed livestock and brought desperate poverty to the region” (Hewett 2021). The hardest hit areas of the country were the western states, and the east, and southeast would've likely been left less affected. Subsistence farming would've likely been able to survive the Dust Bowl, especially in the southern US due to large farms facing "agricultural capitalism" and economic exploration of their farms, leaving them poor and without their farm and/or livelihood.

References

“Alice Smith,” Interview by Adyleen G Merrick, date 11 November 1938, Folder 635, Federal Writer's 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/579/rec/1

Benjamin, A. E. “An Historical Perspective on Home Care Policy.” The Milbank Quarterly 71, no. 1 (1993): 129–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/3350277.

Helmbold, Lois Rita. “Beyond the Family Economy: Black and White Working-Class Women during the Great Depression.” Feminist Studies 13, no. 3 (1987): 629–55. https://doi.org/10.2307/3177885.

Abelson, Elaine S. “‘Women Who Have No Men to Work for Them’: Gender and Homelessness in the Great Depression, 1930-1934.” Feminist Studies 29, no. 1 (2003): 105–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178478.

Hewett, Frederick. 2021. “What the Dustbowl of the 1930s Can Teach Us About the Origins of a Looming Megadrought.” WBUR. https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2021/04/20/megadrought-climate-change-frederick-hewett.

Souhami, Diana. 2018. “The 1930s: 'Women had the vote, but the old agitation went on.'” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/04/the-1930s-women-had-the-vote-but-the-old-agitation-went-on.