Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2023/Fall/Section33/The Stembler Family

Overview

Minnie Stembler was a woman who lived in Miami, Florida during the 1930’s with her husband Tom and extended family of four daughters and their husbands. She was interviewed in 1939 by Elvira E. Burnell as part of the Federal Writers Project Oral Histories.

Florida in the Great Depression; Used under Library of Congress Common Use

Biography

Personal Life

Minnie Stembler was born in 1889 in Syracuse, New York, grew up on a farm in Quitman, Georgia, and in 1939, when the interview took place, was the matriarch of a large family in Miami, Florida. While she didn’t work, she expressed interest in selling some plants in the front lawn, and the interviewer remarked on how well-kept and plentiful the plants in her household were, even without a lot of extra spending money.

Religiosity

Stembler was much more religious than the rest of her family and spent years paying for a Bible she bought. When she couldn’t keep up with the payments and tried to return it, the saleswoman generously forgave her remaining debts and allowed her to keep it. Stembler mentions praying daily and attempting to involve her other family members in her faith.

Appearance

Stembler was described as very thin and relatively frail for a woman of her age, part of which is attributed to the very little her family ate, both out of a repeated fear of ‘getting fat’ and lack of money to buy lots of food. Her daughters are all described as looking very similar.

Photo of the first page of the Life History of the Stembler Family; Used under Library of Congress Common Use

Family Life

Stembler’s husband Tom had struggled to find consistent work, but was currently employed selling furniture by a friend of his. All the women in the family, including Stembler and her daughters, while described as attractive, were notably thin, and money was very tight, so there wasn’t much to eat. At some point, Stembler's husband, Tom, took a trip to Cuba to get a medical operation and visit friends, which she didn’t approve of, so she visited her parents in Georgia. It’s remarkable, in a historical context, that Tom was able to visit Cuba during this time period, especially given the lack of extra money the family had.

Daughters and Grandchildren

Stembler's three eldest daughters, Lizbeth, Laura, and Martha, were all married or engaged, but she didn’t have any grandchildren due to health issues with that all three shared and a stillborn child. Anna, the youngest, was still in high school at the time of the interview and could have been the first in the family to graduate, an accomplishment that Tom was very hopeful about. Stembler was very involved in the lives of her children and was supportive of their living with herself and Tom.

Social Context

Educational Attainment in the 1930's and Great Depression

Although the figure is close to 85% today, in 1930, less than one in three American teenage students graduated from high school. The Great Depression changed the way Americans thought about education, and this figure began to rise rapidly, but during this decade, most were able to work in a variety of professions, even if those careers were unstable, without anything past a middle school education or a few incomplete years of high school.

Impact of the Great Depression

Prior to the Depression, the dominant perspective on going to college was that it was not worth it, given the lack of perceived practical, hands-on skills provided, and as a result it was reserved for largely upper-echelon students from wealthy families. However, during times of economic depression, lower-skilled workers, or those shakily employed, are first to be laid off, and therefore the public is reminded of how valuable a college degree can be. The Great Depression was a striking example of this phenomenon given the depth economic crisis that occurred. An economic depression doesn't only increase the number of students seeking high school or college degrees, but also further education, including graduate school or professional degrees: “A downward turn in the economic index, indicating depression, has ordinarily been followed by an upward turn in the index for graduate-school enrollment”.

Florida-Cuba relations during the 1930’s

In 1933, The United States and President Truman aided a military coup, with a base of operations in Florida, that led to General Fulgencio Batista assuming the presidency. Batista’s rule persisted until Fidel Castro’s rebellion began in 1953, but the Batista era was characterized by notably friendly relations with the United States, especially economically. In 1934, the US formally stepped out of Cuba’s domestic policy, and changed economic policy to integrate their economy more closely with the United States’, especially related to the import of sugar.

Cultural Relationship and Ongoing Impact

Given its geographic proximity to Cuba, Florida reaped many of benefits of cultural diffusion and was culturally influenced by this relationship. Less common than Floridians traveling to Cuba was the reverse: Cuban immigration to Florida, and Miami-Dade county in specific, which created a thriving community of immigrants and also increased cultural connection between the two areas. As Fidel Castro came to power, these diplomatic and economic ties were almost completely shut down, but the impact of large communities of Cuban immigrants in Florida as well as the cultural and economic ties that many Floridians had to Cuba, persisted. This has led to a large base of Cuban-Americans in Florida that hold significant economic, cultural, and political power.

Works Cited

Biebel, Charles D. “Private Foundations and Public Policy: The Case of Secondary Education during the Great Depression.” History of Education Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1976): 3–33. https://doi.org/10.2307/367780.

Eckstein, Susan. “Cuban Émigrés and the American Dream.” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 2 (2006): 297–307. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3688268.

Edwards, Marcia. “College Enrollment during Times of Economic Depression.” The Journal of Higher Education 3, no. 1 (1932): 11–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/1974157.

Leonhardt, David. "Students of the Great Recession." The New York Times, 7 May 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09fob-wwln-t.html#:~:text=The%20Great%20Depression%20did%20not,teenagers%20graduated%20from%20high%20school.

"The Stembler Family." Interview by Elvira E. Burnell and Minnie Stembler. The Southern Historical Collection. Accessed October 29, 2023. https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/03709/id/936.

"Timeline: US-Cuba relations." British Broadcasting Corporation, 11 Oct. 2012, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-12159943.