I try not to think too much on things – just try to stay above water and not dwell too much. But I have a little more time on my hands these days since they’ve shortened my schedule at South Works If I thought it was to share the burden among everybody at the steel mill it would sit all right with me, but it’s obvious that the boss is giving special treatment based on skin color. Aren’t we all in this together?

I voted for President Roosevelt. For the first time in my life, no one kept me from the polls with fake taxes, impossible tests or beatings. I guess I thought the vote would mean something, but here I am on a three-day work week, sitting in my crumbling apartment on the South Side of Chicago, and I’m hoping for the best and expecting the worst. My wife and daughters aren’t home. The girls are in school, and Susan is looking for housework. They can’t see me just sitting here, listening to the radio. So many celebrations around me, but I just can’t help thinking:

I left my home in Mississippi for this?

Daddy says I have to turn down the Gramophone. But doesn’t this make you want to dance? I want to be a The Rockettes, we went to go see them a few Christmases ago, but Mommy says I should just forget about them. But I don’t want to! They’re more fun to remember than anything SHE wants me to think about right now. SHE wants me to think about Peter and Eric all the time like she does, or to watch over Kurt and John. But there’s so much else to see, right here in New York! Like the dancing on Election Day.  She said it didn’t matter, because Peter and Eric and Daddy still have no work. My brothers have been out of school for a year now, trying to find work. Gracie Adler asked me at school yesterday why they don’t just stay at home like Daddy if no one is hiring anyway. Daddy can’t find work after the Saloon closed and didn’t need him there. I think Gracie’s right, because Peter told me a secret that he and Eric are thinking of sneaking onto a train and going far away so they’re not a burden anymore. I promised not to tell, but I really don’t want them to go.

…..Daddy let me turn up the radio, but only because they’ve stopped playing music and now President Roosevelt is speaking –

“We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity, with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values, with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike.”

Mommy’s crying again. I am too, but because “stern performance of duty” makes me think President Roosevelt is going to force me to do more chores.

Over the past few years my husband, Al’s, barber shop has become the congregating place where the local unemployed men spend their days shooting the breeze when not looking for work. It keeps them out of the house (and out of their wife’s hair!) Even in this economy men still need haircuts and shaves, so initially we were not greatly affected by this depression. But then Al started to ask the fellas to pay up their tabs and many simply didn’t have the money A few weeks ago, money had gotten so tight for us that Al was forced to close up the shop and move his business into our kitchen. Now he just sits all day reading the paper most of the time, cutting a few men’s hair, as I cook and clean around him. I can see that he is worrying about paying our bills and providing enough to put food on the table. Although I have not consulted him, I have begun to look for jobs to supplement his income. I know that if the shop can open up again, he will be much happier. I can’t stand to see him so dejected.

Al's Barber Shop

I worked as a teacher before I married Al, but that is certainly not an option for me now. They refuse to employ married women in most school districts, and now with the unemployment rate at nearly 25% it would really be impossible for me to get a teaching job. Besides, I’ve heard that in some places teachers have been working for months without any compensation. I’m trying to find clerical or factory work. My neighbor Ann has been working in various clerical jobs for almost two years. Often times she will work for a few weeks, get laid off and find another jobs a few weeks after that, which is common.

Today in his inaugural address, our new president, Franklin Roosevelt stated that “This nation is asking for action, and action now.” He’s sure right; we need work so that we can continue to manage to put food on the table and a roof over our head. I sure hope that “action now” means NOW and not in a few months, because we have to pay the bills NOW and eat NOW!

I’m a long way from home, now. Working for Secretary Perkins is going to be quite the change from being a social worker back in Indianapolis. I got the call that the office of the President could use a woman with my capabilities within the Public Employment Bureau. Imagine my surprise! The Labor department is going to be a meaningful place with Roosevelt taking office. Part of my job will be to cooperate on interdepartmental initiatives and communicate policy properly. Although, based on the speech happening behind me, the President will be quite effective at communicating on his own. Can you hear that?

I was not a part of his Brain Trust or even the New York governor’s office, which means I still do not know what to expect. Other colleagues with a social worker background have been speculating that the President’s hatred of the Dole is going to keep us from helping the poor the way we would like to. Maybe I am naive, as some of the men in the office have already started to insist, but I think it is our job to show him that these times call for more than what governments have offered in the past. I can see that in him.

But enough about that – It’s time to celebrate, then I will get to work!

The immortal words of Dick Burnett (1913):

I am a man of constant sorrow,
I’ve seen trouble all my day.
I bid farewell to old [Tennessee],
The place where I was born and raised.
(The place where he was born and raised )

For six long years I’ve been in trouble,
No pleasures here on earth I found.
For in this world I’m bound to ramble,
I have no friends to help me now.
(He has no friends to help him now)…

Like many people out there, I’ve been accustomed to hardships my whole life. I was born and raised in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, a beautiful place where I grew up hunting, fishing, farming and learning the family logging trade. Many people in this region do not have cars or electricity and get by as by maintaining small farms for themselves and through the trading of goods and services. Since the crash in ’29 the timber and coal industries have suffered greatly. Like most of the other older lumberjacks, I was laid off from my family’s logging company, and I’ve tried to turn to farming full time now to provide for my family. But since the Great Drought a few years back, in ’30 and ’31, the crops are not growing and vegetable gardens are shriveling up under the hot, unrelenting sun.

I can’t stand the thought of not being able to provide for my family and my wife sought some assistance from the local Red Cross chapter, only to be turned away. This is a small community and word travels fast, so I’ve learned that the local businessmen, who still have some money to throw around in these hard times are trying to curb the amount of assistance by local relief organizations in the hope it will force families to migrate elsewhere. But as I said, I’m accustomed to hardships, they build character and this is my home, so my family is not going anywhere!

The rain has made everything so dreary that I thought it would be nice to go outside today. I usually love to walk along 86th Street, especially after being cooped up inside for so long. Daddy took the subway train downtown and we kept walking without him. I kept wondering where he went, but we passed by Kleine Konditorei and I wanted a pastry. The little ones did too, but Mommy made them stop crying and walk faster. She wouldn’t say where Daddy went, where we were going, or why she wasn’t as happy as everybody else that the bank on the corner just reopened. When we stopped at church, at first I didn’t understand. It wasn’t a holiday, it wasn’t even a Sunday! We weren’t the only ones outside, and instead of going to play in the park I had to wait in a line.
A line for food. We were in line for everyone to see.
Kurt and John were playing hide-and-seek between the people. I wished I could hide too. All of a sudden the St. Mark’s doors opened and some of the workers came up to us, saying, “there’s no more”. One woman gave Kurt and John some leftover rolls and told us to try again in a few days.
It turns out Daddy had been downtown waiting in line too:
I hate waiting.

I have to say, the beer is flowing all over the Black Belt. Last month they started allowing bottles with a 3.2% alcohol content. I’m thinking, maybe there are factories re-opening or expanding because of the new laws. Maybe there’s a job out there for me with more hours.

It was ridiculous, prohibition, to begin with. People always find a way, and all of these politicians were afraid to end this stupidity. Even the President only became “Wet” by the time the convention came around. Why did they stop all this? To restore self-government, protect individual rights, and to put an end to “crime, intemperance and social decay.” I can recall getting flyers from temperance groups in the South, wanting to ban alcohol for these very same reasons.
Susan’s less thrilled than I am; she went to a “Dry” Church in Mississippi. But even she admits it’s better to have saloons than Speakeasyss. Take away the forbidden nature of something and it loses its power. I know a little something about that. It’s the same reason I get along better with my white co-workers after they’ve gotten to know me over a beer. Things are better once they’re less mysterious.
Don’t worry, I’m not about to hit the bottle – I’m just curious to see what’s going to happen next.

There was a commotion on the front lawn of the White House this morning. To celebrate prohibition’s repeal, a factory brought a large truck with cases of beer just after midnight. “President Roosevelt, the first real beer is yours!”
I must say, I always thought of beer merely as a vice. Where I grew up, unrestricted alcohol made men and their families suffer terribly. I worked to repair the damage that drinking did to some families. After all, as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union said, “no nation drank itself out of a Depression.”
However, what are our priorities? I work in the Labor department, and have been constantly seeking the ear of the President to argue for more job-creating measures. Congressman Thomas H. Cullen appealed to our offices personally, promising that the bill would eventually create up to 1 million jobs – how could I disapprove of that?
There are other realities that are accompanying this Economy Act that worry me more than beer. It cuts federal budgets, rewriting veterans’ pensions rules, and even forbids women to work for the government if their husbands are already federally employed. That both the House and the Senate have passed it shows how eager they are to try everything they can to stop the hemorrhaging of the Depression. I only wish the President had listened to more of the members of Congress that spoke up on behalf of the needy that will lose pensions, access to federal aid, and more.

Drink up, everyone.

The news around town is that our President is trying to get a bill through Congress that would establish a project in Muscle Shoals, AL to fix up the land, plant trees, absorb marginal land, and provide flood control—essentially fix what we have destroyed through mining and deforestation (I guess I’m guilty of that last one.) They’re calling it the “Tennessee Valley Authority” a pretty fancy name for such a small project. Is this going to mean more projects throughout the Tennessee Valley? I sure hope it does. They are going to need local workers to get all that done and while I may be blind in one eye and have a few less fingers, I can still swing an ax or wield a shovel. I need to find some work, I’m going a little crazy being stuck at home with a farm that won’t grow anything. My wife and daughters have taken up making these mock handicrafts that are sold around the country as “authentic mountain crafts.” It’s their work that is putting food on our table, but they shouldn’t be doing that, it’s my job.

This is an aerial view of the Muscle Shoals area

After a long day of toiling in the fields and keeping up with the chores I like to relax by sitting out on the porch and whittle little figurines for the kids. I’ve become pretty adept at it even without a few of my fingers. My wife is always busy knitting or quilting in the evening. It is funny that she works all day making these fake “authentic mountain crafts” then we both spend our evenings making real “mountain crafts”! Well, I guess we need to do what we can if we are going to make it through this depression!

I’m trying to stay optimistic. You know that phrase, “The Grass is always greener on the other side?” I caught a glimpse of some very green grass today. Some organizers were trying in vain to start a union at Southworks. It won’t succeed, not the way U.S. Steel does business, but I’ve heard that the President is trying to change the way businesses work. Still, the idea of all of us in the factory helping eachother just seems so great. Well, great for some people. The union isn’t open to colored men. I suppose I understand it – the community takes care of its own. It’s the same in the Black Belt, when I can turn to my neighbors for help. Nonetheless, it’s just another upward move waving in front of my face that I can’t reach.
My daughters came home in a similar mood. They went to an art class at a high school in Elgin, where there are very few blacks. They went on and on at dinner about how well-kept, how nicely dressed the other kids are, how small the classes are. Jeanette has a whole new list of books she wishes she could read. They were very unhappy at the thought of going back to their squalid, overcrowded school on the South Side. I told them some stories of my one-room rural school house to cheer them up.
But I know better than anyone how hard it is to see opportunities and be unable to grab them for myself.