Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2019/Fall/Section 1/Ruth Moore



= Ruth Moore =

Overview
Ruth Moore was born Rose Martin to her parents, William Martin and Hattie Horne, in North Carolina. She was married to L.W. Humphries, having 5 children, who all loved education and helping their family. Humphries passed away in 1931 after getting laid off the year before which then put their family in a tough position causing their house to be foreclosed. Everything in life seemed like it was only getting worse, yet Ruth found a blessing in disguise and focused on how her children loved learning and were working towards college and their dream jobs. She was interviewed for the Federal Writer’s Papers in 1939 by Dudley W. Crawford.

Early-Adult Life
Ruth Moore, also known as Rose Martin, was born on January 30, 1891 in North Carolina. She resided in Rutherford, North Carolina which is also where she died. When she was in her 20’s she married L. W. Humphries on April 22, 1916. Together, they had 5 children. The start of their lives together was financially good in that they had money saved, and Humphries invested in stocks. However, their lives took a turn when her husband was laid off in 1930 at 55 then died the following year due to bad health.

To help support her family, Ruth attempted to sell her husbands stocks but was unsuccessful, thus her house was then foreclosed on and her family moved into a tiny home together. Her failure made her wish for better laws for blacks when it came to buying and selling stocks and putting money into banks. She then got a job through the WPA in a sewing room but was laid off a year later. However, Ruth was optimistic, as all of her children loved education: 2 found well paying jobs, 2 were working toward college, and the last one had dreams to be a doctor. Ruth died January 26, 1975 in Rutherford, North Carolina.

Occupational opportunities for African American people
During the Great Depression, black people had a hard time finding jobs, and when they did jobs tended to be very low income, blue collar jobs. For both black men and women, jobs were not something of high status. There were projects in place, like the WPA, to help employ African Americans even though it confined most black women to traditional domestic work. Women’s jobs tended to be domestic, while men’s jobs tended to be manual-oriented. In this time, women of color had domestic jobs because they had “limited education, little access to the written record and no social power” meaning that women of color had little opportunities to enhance themselves in the workforce. There was a stark contrast in the jobs colored people received and the jobs white people received. Women of color “learned to serve in someone else’s home” while white women “learned to care for their own homes.” This is similar to men in that “white men gained jobs defined as skilled and that paid ‘skilled’ wages [were] denied to black men, who held manual-oriented jobs.” This time period put a lot of strain on black families because they were the first ones to have their hours and jobs cut which allowed them to experience a high rate of unemployment in the 1930’s.

Family Life during the Great Depression
Among both, white and black families, there were many struggles and obstacles that had to be faced though it was exacerbated in black families. Among these obstacles are job loss, foreclosure, death, etc. To help with these obstacles, many children would work to help support their families however, this was the time period when child labor began to decrease. Once the Great Depression hit the rise of unemployment “lead to jobs being filled by adults that were previously held by children”.

Children during this time were impacted greatly which then resulted in their adulthood being altered. From living through the Great Depression, children who were born and grew up in this time “never quite forget what they have once lived through, at however young an age”. While not every child had the same experience growing up during the Great Depression, the children that lived through this will forever be changed by it in that it affects their social adjustment, psychological accommodation, and their temperament. These are the results because these children were able to grow up and see a huge turn in America’s life. They were able to see the nation go from having a terrible economy, and families struggling to a complete turn around and prosperity.