FederalWrightersProject/LifeHistories/Spring2016/Section021/MaryWrightHill

Overview
Mary Wright Hill was the first Black woman to be a primary school principal in Athens, Georgia. The Federal Writer’s Project interviewed Hill on July 27th, 1939 to document her life.

Early Life
Mary Wright Hill was born in Asheville, North Carolina, on March 6th, 1881. Both of her parents were from Greenville, North Carolina and of mixed race. Although Hill was more Native American and French than Black, she was Black to her community. Her father was a contractor for brickwork and moved his family to Atlanta, Georgia when hill was young to find more work. Her family was middle class and had steady income, so Hill and her five siblings all went to either Atlanta University or the Tuskegee Institute. Her dad died when she was seven, and during high school her mother became blind. Although Hill had dreams of being a doctor, she had to drop out of college to begin work to support her mother and siblings.

Professional Life
Hill’s first job was as a teacher an all black primary school in Oxford, Georgia. She was thirteen and made $30 a month. Hill became the first Black woman school principal in Athens, Georgia in 1906. She was the school principal for thirty-three years and made $135 a month. The school improved a lot while she was principal. Before she was principal the school was very small and had no running water. At the time of the interview, the school had more rooms, running water, and better quality toilets. Hill also had the school water tested by the state government to make sure her students would not get sick. Hill did work besides being a principal too. She volunteered to teach illiterate black adults when she first began working and taught social service work for ten years. The role of poverty significantly affected her life, as she pushed for better sanitation in her school through running water and better quality toilets, and learned basic nursing and pediatric care to take care of sick students. She also worked to promote literacy in Georgia, as she created a program to teach illiterate adults. The work she did spoke to the larger issues in the 1930s of poverty specifically affecting black communities, as many moved to the north to find more work. Her successes in terms of social work and academia pushed the boundaries for black women during the time, as many questioned her validity.

Personal Life
Hill married three times and had two daughters, both from her first husband. Her oldest daughter, Viola, lived in Atlanta and was a stay at home mom. Her younger daughter, Namette, got a job with the Workers Progress Administration (a jobs program of the New Deal) as a social worker after she got a divorce. Hill’s husband at the time of the interview was an interior decorator who ran part of his business form their home. The Great Depression did not affect her that much because neither her nor her husband lost their jobs. Hill retired in 1943 and died on November 26th,1946 at the age of 65 in Athens, Georgia.

Education Under the Great Depression
The Great Depression created mass unemployment and poverty throughout the United States. Due to the scale of the problem, the New Deal focused on jobs programs. Education during the 1930s was not a government priority; so many schools had less structural assistance.

Education for African Americans
Many Black schools in the early 1900s did not provide a normal education, instead focused on skills training for agricultural or domestic work. The most famous school for vocational training was the Booker T. Washington Institute, which some of Hill’s relatives attended. Jim Crow schools for primary and secondary education had poorer quality than the schools for white students. Many schools had poor building structures, bad water sanitation, and no plumbing. The buildings were built on bad soil, so the buildings were also unsafe for students and staff. Due to lack of government assistance, many community members within the African American community worked to create better education opportunities. By creating programs for both children and adults, the education for Black Americans continued to grow in the south during the Great Depression despite economic hardship. Between 1890 and 1930, the Black literacy rate rose from 30 to 74 percent in Georgia thanks to various community programs.

African Americans and the New Deal
African Americans were already more poor than White Americans in the early 1900s, and they were not able to receive the full benefits of the New Deal. This time period was when many African Americans were the “last hired and first fired”, so many African Americans entered the depression before the stock market crash in 1929 and stayed in the depression longer than most other Americans.

African Americans in the South
Due to Jim Crow laws, African Americans faced discrimination on a larger scale in the south. A legal system based on racial segregation and discrimination made it difficult for African Americans to find opportunities – both for work and education. They faced more hardship in the south because they had to endure economic catastrophe and severe white racism.