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A Window into Racial Segregation in Atlanta During the Depression

By Eugene F. Bledsoe

October 24,1929, referred to as “Black Thursday” was a day that changed the history of the United States of America. On this day, the bottom fell out of the stock market and the prices of securities steadily went down for three and a half years. This was the beginning of the Great Depression. As banks began to fail and farm prices continued to drop to new lows, the Great Depression was a traumatic experience for almost all Americans. In April of 1935, as part of President Roosevelt’s second major relief effort, coined the 2^nd New Deal, the Works Progress Administration was created through the passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act. The WPA had two divisions: a building project and an art project. A part of the art project was the Federal Writer’s Project. One of the task the Federal Writer’s Project took on, was to interview former slaves who were still alive about the institution of slavery in the South, and these testimonies were first collected by the Georgia Writer’s Project in 1936 and continued to be collected until early 1939. Over this period, around 2,300 narratives of first hand accounts in slavery were turned in to the Washington office from seventeen different states. One of the many interviewers was Edwin Driskell, an African American man who interviewed several slaves in Atlanta for the Georgia Writer‘s Project. One of Driskell’s interviewees was William Ward, a former slave who claimed to be one hundred and five years old at the time of the interview in 1936. By focusing on one interviewer’s, Edwin Driskell’s, life, it allows one to see the context of life during the Great Depression for an African American in Atlanta. It also enables one to place Driskell in the context of interviewing a former slave during the Jim Crow era. The actual interview with Ward gives the reader a window into the past, by being able to hear first hand the affects slavery had on marriage, religion, and education for slaves. The discussion also gives a first hand account how an elderly African American, William Ward, was living during the Great Depression in Atlanta. An interesting dynamic to this particular interview is that Driskell was an African American, which few of the writers were, for Ward would not have feared of holding any information back, which he may have with a white interviewer in the racially charged South of the 1930’s.^{^[i]}

Before looking at Driskell’s life, it is important for one to understand the challenges of African Americans in Atlanta during the Great Depression and with New Deal programs, for as an African American these challenges affected his life. At the outset of the Great Depression, whites worked to displace African American workers from even the most unskilled jobs, that had previously been representative of African American’s low social status. Whites took the jobs of hotel bellmen, janitors, and bricklayers; these positions had all previously filled by African Americans. Some white Atlantans even foresaw African Americans leaving the city’s labor market altogether and moving to the countryside as farm tenants, being self sufficient with their own garden plots. However, blacks did not leave Atlanta but battled one of the United State’s toughest periods while enduring overt racism in a place where they were now supposedly equal citizens.

Poor African Americans in Atlanta had little reason to believe that federal relief programs would help them, given their previous exclusion from such aid. In fact, a founder of the Atlanta relief commission estimated that before 1933, the year of federal intervention, out of the eight or nine thousand families receiving emergency relief in Atlanta only eighteen hundred of those families were African American, even though unemployment escalated to seventy five percent in some black neighborhoods. When federal officials took over, they found the programs dominated by local politics with racial oppression. The New Deal had offered the white elite politicians in Georgia greater participation in the dealings of their state.

As Atlanta became involved in relief, the foundation of public policies was based on racist beliefs about African Americans. A shocking example of this racism is that African American families received less relief that their white counterparts, based on the assumption that they could survive with less money. Relief that was given to African Americans in Atlanta was given in an unsystematic way, failing to take time to discover the size of families or the specific needs of these families.

Even after federal involvement in Atlanta, relief administrators did not attempt to bring African Americans, the city’s poorest group, out of poverty. While things like daycare and public health services were provided for African Americans, administrators did not attempt to change the plight of African American workers by offering the vocational training needed for skilled jobs. Instead, the programs strove to improve the adjustment of the poor by aiding their situation, not changing it. White “New Dealers” wanted to preserve the status quo, by using relief programs to control African American behavior in ways that had been impossible since emancipation. In Atlanta, the discrimination permeated gender lines in the African American community as well.

The Great Depression weighed possibly the heaviest in Atlanta on its African American women. According to a survey in May of 1934, it is estimated that African American women accounted for forty-three percent of Atlanta’s relief recipients. Eighty percent of black women in Atlanta were employed in the domestic work, and the city’s relief officials intended to keep it that way.

New Deal administrators limited work relief opportunities for black women on purpose. These administrators did not want to disturb the way that race and gender lines played into the state of Georgia’s economy, for this would confuse the patriarchal premise of white men in Atlanta. These restraints limited African American women in Atlanta to low paying domestic work, which was horrific for the entire African American community, considering almost one-third of African American women were the primary breadwinners for their families. In addition, administrators in Georgia always cut women’s relief projects first, when the WPA was forced to reduce its funding to the state. In 1935, the WPA cuts its women’s programs from eighteen thousand workers to twelve thousand. Two thousand of these women who lost their jobs found private employment in believe it or not domestic services.^{^[ii]}

Although the New Projects in Atlanta were discriminatory, the city was given generous funding by the WPA. My the middle of 1937, federal administrators had given Atlanta almost fifteen million dollars funding 168 projects. Other than Birmingham, the WPA had given Atlanta more funds than any other Southern city. It would seem that while African Americans were discriminated against that there was enough money flowing into Atlanta through federal funding to allow families to get by, however miserable the quality of life. This was not the case because of several factors.

Several factors made it hard for the average African American to endure the hardships of the depression. On May 6, 1940, the Atlanta Journal reported that the WPA had the effect of broadening “necessary hope and encouragement to the unemployed.” While the WPA may have extended hope and encouragement, it did not necessarily provide nearly all the help that was needed. A WPA survey in 1935 concluded that the cost of living in Atlanta was higher than the average for all American cities. In fact, it was the highest cost of living of any major city in the entire South. Even Memphis and New Orleans, two large Southern cities with a high proportion of African Americans in their populations, were even aligned with the national average. In fact, living in Atlanta in the 1930’s can be compared to living in Philadelphia during the same period in relation to cost of living expenses. The problem is that Philadelphia recorded a much higher average pay wage and work relief pay scale.^{^[iii]}

The mixture of a overly high cost of living and low wages, especially for African Americans, took Atlantans to the breaking point in the fall of 1935. The WPA workers wanted an increase in wages and threatened to go as far as striking if their demands were not met. Federal officials administering the WPA programs in Atlanta appealed to Harry L. Hopkins, the head of the WPA as appointed by Roosevelt, in Washington for an answer to the workers’ pleas. These officials told Hopkins the whole Atlanta community is waiting for our response to their threat or really for you to answer them on these issues.

Hopkins answer would come soon; however, it circumvented the answer that Atlanta workers were looking for, especially African American workers. While Atlanta’s WPA officials continued to worry about the looming strike, they made last ditch efforts to convince labor leaders that increased wages would only lead to other cuts. The cuts would amount to the conclusion of several projects. Cutting projects would obviously result in people, who were barely surviving on their meager wages, losing their jobs altogether. The leaders could not stand for more unemployment and pushed aid officials that getting more money from Washington was the answer to their problem. Although Hopkins was trying to avoid the issue in Atlanta, he yielded and agreed to change the wage schedule so that the increase would be standardized across the country. Atlanta’s WPA officials announced that skilled laborers would be paid an established higher wage and that ten percent of the other workers would receive a ten percent increase in their wage pay. Atlanta’s labor leaders wanted a uniform wage increase across the board for all WPA workers, but this small concession was enough to avert the alarming threat of a strike, just as Hopkins had planned. It is not a surprise who was not on the receiving end of this wage improvement.

African Americans, for the vast majority, were not on the recipients of the wage increase. As discussed earlier, white “new dealers “ used relief to keep the order of society according to their own racist ideologies. Blacks were not placed in skilled labor positions but instead in lower paying service industry jobs. Although many whites were helped immensely by the wage increase in response to the high cost of living, the majority of African Americans were not any better off than when the threat of strike by the labor leaders began.^{^[iv]}

It is interesting to note that while African Americans in Atlanta were still being subject to prejudice and racism, the United States as a whole began to change their views on one race being inferior. By 1930 scientific and scholarly influence was now very affirmatively against racism. Even the appeal of Southern extremist weakened throughout the very states that had seceded for this reason less than seventy years previously. During this process, racist, for the most part, lost any intellectual appeal that they had once had in the South, as well as the indifference that they enjoyed by the federal government and public opinion in the North. The immense poverty and hardships of the Great Depression made the idea of race seem trivial and unimportant. Whites who had lost their jobs and money, due to the depression, now could somewhat identify with the lack of economic opportunities African Americans had dealt with since emancipation. There was also another reason for the prevailing attitude of the stupidity of racism and of the stupidity of people who tried to justify it.

The other essential reason for this changing of attitude in the entire United States as a nation in the 1930’s was the Nazi Party. The idea in Germany of a superior master race seem absurd and maniacal. Although the American people were with out a doubt right in their opinion, it is comical that the idea struck Americans as so radical. Most white people in America had practiced this ideology, while indeed in a much milder form, for almost three hundred years at this point. No matter the contradiction, Americans did not want anything to do with or be associated with ideas of a superior race that were beginning in Germany at this time.^{^[v]}

The majority of the former slaves were interviewed by white WPA workers which is what makes Edwin Driskell’s interview of William Ward so interesting. Many historians believe that much of the information told by the slaves is tainted. Some former slaves were even interviewed by members of the family who had owned them, probably resulting in even more controlled responses. These older African Americans, more than two-thirds of which were over eighty years of age at the time of their interviews, were for the most part impoverished and wanted to tell white government workers what they wanted to hear. This falsifying of information would not have happened with Driskell because he himself was African American and respondents would have felt comfortable talking to someone who had to deal with the same racial hardships that they were experiencing.^{^[vi]}

Ward’s responses were certainly not controlled. Unlike many of the other slave narratives, Ward did not refer to slavery as “the good ole’ times”. Instead, Ward referred to the hardships of slave life and the use of corporal punishment by even the nicest of masters. Ward’s first master, who actually has a building named after him at the University of Georgia, was Joseph Brown, the former governor of Georgia. The interview was filled with the abuses of masters on their slaves, and Ward did not seem to care who was offended or would hear his remarks even of the former governor, and he should not have been, although that is an easy assertion to make now. At the end of their interview, Ward tells Driskell that he would prefer to live in the present-day conditions of the Great Depression rather than under slavery.^{^[vii]}

Edwin F. Driskell is a hard man to track information about, but the information that is present is remarkably insightful. Although Mr. Driskell is unable to be located in the 1930 census, the last one to be made general record by the government, the information on him in Atlanta City Directories gives one a look into his life. The first finding of Edwin Driskell in the directories is in 1934. In 1934, Driskell was living by himself and was a college student. His attending of college is of particular note because many African Americans were not given the opportunity to obtain this degree of education in the early 1930’s. As we know, by 1936 Driskell was working for the WPA in the Georgia Writer’s Projects interviewing former slaves.^{^[viii]}

Driskell’s job for the WPA is very telling in two regards. The first regard is that very few African Americans were employed by the WPA, even after this disproportion was noticed by the federal government. This shows that Driskell was not only educated, but smart enough for the WPA officials to see past his color which this paper has shown is more that a rarity. The second reason Driskell’s employment in the WPA Writer’s Project is revealing is because of the actual writing he did in his narratives. The interview of William Ward starts off with an overview of what was discussed throughout the two men’s talk. The general ideas that were espoused by Ward thru Driskell‘s writing are not only very well written but written in such a way that makes the reader feel that Driskell not only knew grammar and structure but knew the finer points of writing.^{^[ix]}

Driskell continued to work for the government of the United States in the capital city of Georgia in several different capacities until he retired. By 1940, Driskell was a social worker for the County Department of Public Welfare. By the 1950’s Driskell was married to Nellie and was now working as a carrier for the United States Postal Service. In 1965, Driskell, still married to Nellie, had switched occupations again, now spending his time as an inter-group relations assistant for the United States Public Housing Administration, and by the late 1970’s Driskell was retired with his wife Nellie living in the same house he had lived in since the early 1950’s. The theme, of public service in Driskell’s employment endeavors, is all to apparent and has significant meaning.^{^[x]}

The meaning of Driskell’s employment could be taken two ways. Driskell just happened to work for the government his entire life because that is who employed him, and he needed a paycheck. The latter argument which I believe is much more valid is that giving back to his community was important to him. Driskell came to age in a time where the United States saw the most utter despair of the twentieth century. Perhaps, Driskell felt a responsibility to his community and himself to help the people of Atlanta by donating his life’s work to this cause. Although he never held political office or had much if any power and prestige in these jobs, it is men like Edwin Driskell, who give back to their community, that are the real leaders of the United States.

While information of Driskell’s personal life may seem to be scarce, his life during the Great Depression felt the same hardship of all African Americans, as well as all people, in Atlanta and in the United States. The United States’ attitude about inequality as a whole was beginning to change, but African Americans in Atlanta and other urban centers of the South probably were not thinking about this detail as they were passed over for skilled jobs and skilled job training in order to work in the low paying service industry at a time in Atlanta when their minimum earnings were not close to covering the cost of living. Driskell may have been well educated and employed during this period, but his job and education, while extremely important, most likely did not help him as much as likely though weather the tide of disaster that was the depression that well because almost all people in Atlanta were suffering.

I strongly believe that Driskell’s interview and compilation the a narrative of William Ward is a window not only to slavery but also to the Great Depression. Driskell starts off his opening narration and summary of the dialogue had with Ward by describing the former slaves home. This home is described as a small one room apartment in the back streets of Atlanta. Ward’s home is indicative of and is as telling as any evidence presented in the paper of the status of elderly African Americans in Atlanta with meager financial standing and status whose hardships made the duration of life almost unbearable.^{^[xi]}

I also firmly believe that Edwin Driskell took the unjust hand that life gave him and worked hard to not only make something of himself but of his community. Ward’s educational attainment is reflected in his importance jobs that serviced the Atlanta people, although the jobs may seem inconsequential by today’s income standards that most people today believe has a bearing on the worth of employment.

Finally Driskell’s interview of William Ward, like all slave narratives which are the basis for this paper, is powerful in its exposure of the evils of the institution of slavery. Ward tells the reader of this document through his words, which are pinpointing of his forced lack of education of the English language, not only of the physical hardships of slavery, but how slavery resulted in the break up of him from his parents and his unknown knowledge of the nineteen children he fathered during the unjust institution. Although concluding from narrative that slavery was an outlandish exploitation African Americans is not groundbreaking, this particular slave narrative, authored by Driskell, illustrates for me and any reader the utter importance of this endeavor taken by the WPA. It gives students of history a rare personal account of a man who endured this unmerited racism and unfairness, and talked about the hardships more than candidly during a time in which his race, determined by his skin color, was still a factor of oppression. This is not to say that race, which is still determined by the amount melanin of one’s skin cells, is still not the cause of unfairness today, yet the unfairness is not as taboo to discuss today as it was during the 1930’s, less that seventy years since Lincoln freed the slaves.

Like all of history, the study of slave narratives hopefully helps society as a whole not forget what has taken place. The study of history, whether of a country or the accounting record of a corporation, is to serve as a lesson for future generations not to do things that are wrong, which is a drastic understatement of the slavery. As the old lesson goes, as a modern civilization we must not forget, as much as people would like to, what has happened in the past but learn from our mistakes to build equality in the future.

Related Web Sites

Documenting the South

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fedric/menu.html

Slave Voices From The Special Collections Library

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/slavery/