Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2013/Spring/Eddie Thomas

This page is connected with English 105 at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill - Federal Writers' Project - Life Histories



Overview:
Eddie L. Thomas, a white male interviewed for the Federal Writers' Project, was born in North Carolina around 1905, and lived in Raleigh North Carolina for the majority of his life. Thomas worked on a dairy farm in his early years then worked as bus driver in Raleigh for White and African American routes. Thomas was interviewed March 16, 1939.

Biography
Eddie L. Thomas had three brothers and three sisters. Thomas and his siblings grew up in their mother’s religious household even though they did not have strong feelings toward religion. Thomas married Elsie. Living in the country, Thomas worked on a dairy farm, but Elsie became jealous of all the girls on his milk route. Thomas looked for a better job to provide for Elsie. Elsie and Thomas moved to Raleigh where an old girlfriend of Thomas helped find a job as a bus driver. Elsie was not pleased that he would be seeing more pretty women on his route. Thomas dated a redhead woman on his route and Elsie caught Thomas cheating. Elsie had Thomas’ route changed and this was the first of his many affairs. Thomas wanted to have a baby, but Elsie refused because one of her sisters died during childbirth. Elsie adopted a baby hoping that Thomas would stay home and care for the child. However, Thomas met a young sixteen year-old girl, Jane, to have his child. Thomas took care of Jane at night. When Jane was in labor, Thomas had her taken to the hospital. Jane and the baby died during childbirth. After telling his wife the story of Jane, she wanted to have a child but Thomas did not believe her. Thomas tried to stay home with his family but he found himself getting drinks on multiple occasions with a different woman, Kate. Kate assaulted Elsie after Elsie found out and approached Kate. Elsie took the children and left for her mothers’ house with the intent of never returning. Thomas went to visit Elsie and he convinced her that he had changed and wanted her back. Elsie warned him against having another affair. A married woman fell in love with Thomas. Elsie found out and assaulted Thomas and the woman. Elsie then demanded Thomas to change his bus route to the Negro route or else she would leave. Thomas changed his route to the Negro route designated for African Americans and stayed with Elsie. After one of Thomas’ sister’s death of tuberculosis, he focused on his family. He lived his life hoping his adopted children would be college educated and did not run around chasing women. (Hicks, 7236-7250).

Segregated Neighborhoods
During the 1900s, local laws in the United States were enacted in southern states that separated white Americans from black laws. These were called the Jim Crow Laws. These laws enabled the blacks to be “separate but equal” to the whites. According to Ann Kim, “much segregation work focused on residential patterns of white ethnic group and blacks.” Thomas was a bus driver who worked on a white bus route and eventually worked for a black route. This illustrates that public transportation was indeed segregated and implies that there are neighborhoods separated for whites and blacks. According to Kevin Gotham, “Racially restrictive covenants helped nurture and reinforce emerging racial stereotypes that identified black living space and culture with deterioration neighborhoods and dilapidated housing.” These racial stereotypes that created theses “black living spaces” were influenced by the Jim Crow Laws creating separate places for whites and blacks. The conditions of the black neighborhoods were described as deteriorating and in ruin during the 1900s to the 1950s.

Maternal and Infant Mortality
In the early 1900s, the maternal and infant mortality rates were high because medicine and methods of childbirth delivery were not advanced as they are. According to an article published in the NY York Times, “every year, according to the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, 23,000 women die in childbirth in the United States.” Elsie was afraid of giving birth because her sister died during childbirth and Jane died during childbirth also. During this time, home childbirths began shifting towards hospitalized childbirths. However, Melissa Thomasson stated “even as increasing numbers of American women gave birth in hospitals, maternal mortality did not decline. It may be argued that the lack of decline in maternal mortality rates simply resulted from more accurate reporting of maternal deaths by physicians as time progressed.” Jane was a young mother and “very young mothers (under 15) and older mothers (over 35) face a greater risk of maternal mortality than mothers in between, so a changing age structure of mothers at first birth may have also impacted maternal mortality” In the 1900s, it was common for women to have children at a young age however the risk was not known. When a mother dies during childbirth the chance for an infant to survive is also decreased.

Historical Production
For some people, during The Great Depression, it was more difficult to find jobs than others. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a program apart of the New Deal called the Federal Writers’ Project which provided jobs for authors, writers, and journalists. Their job was to interview and create life histories about common everyday people. However some stories of the Federal Writer’s Project may not be entirely true. Thomas’ story was interviewed by Mary A. Hicks and the entire interview was quoted as if the entire story was spoken from Thomas’ mouth. While reading life histories, it is difficult to know which parts of the story are true and which parts are not. Leonard Rapport stated, “Looking back, I don’t believe that writers… were the best people for life stories. In their heart of hearts begin to think of themselves as creative writers… potential fiction writers.” Writers, to add creativity to the story, may subliminally add their own opinions into the story. A common way of adding historical production is creating vernacular. Certain life histories that have an African American speaking, have the way they speak directly written. This gives the speaker a specific accent or dialect for readers to picture what they sounded like.